Citation

Marsja E, Neely G, Ljungberg JK. Exp. Psychol. 2018; 65(2): 61-70.

Affiliation

School of Psychology, Cardiff University, UK.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Hogrefe Publishing)

DOI

10.1027/1618-3169/a000390

PMID

29631521

Abstract

It has been suggested that deviance distraction is caused by unexpected sensory events in the to-be-ignored stimuli violating the cognitive system's predictions of incoming stimuli. The majority of research has used methods where the to-be-ignored expected (standards) and the unexpected (deviants) stimuli are presented within the same modality. Less is known about the behavioral impact of deviance distraction when the to-be-ignored stimuli are presented in different modalities (e.g., standard and deviants presented in different modalities). In three experiments using cross-modal oddball tasks with mixed-modality to-be-ignored stimuli, we examined the distractive role of unexpected auditory deviants presented in a continuous stream of expected standard vibrations. The results showed that deviance distraction seems to be dependent upon the to-be-ignored stimuli being presented within the same modality, and that the simplest omission of something expected; in this case, a standard vibration may be enough to capture attention and distract performance.

Language: en

Keywords

attention capture; auditory; multisensory; tactile; visual task