Auditory novelty oddball allows reliable distinction of top-down and bottom-up processes of attention

Debener, S., Kranczioch, C., Herrmann, C.S. and Engel, A.K. (2002) Auditory novelty oddball allows reliable distinction of top-down and bottom-up processes of attention. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 46 (1), 77-84. (doi:10.1016/S0167-8760(02)00072-7).

Abstract

An auditory novelty-oddball task, which is known to evoke a P3 event-related potential (ERP) in a target condition and a novelty-P3 ERP in response to task-irrelevant unique environmental sounds, was repeatedly applied to healthy participants (n=14) on two separate recording sessions, 7 days apart. Both target-P3 and novelty-P3 were internally consistent and test–retest reliable. Interestingly, novelty-P3 amplitude declined from the first to the second half of each recording session, whereas no systematic alteration between both sessions occurred. The target-P3 showed the opposite pattern, i.e. a reduced amplitude from the first to the second session, but no systematic change within each session. These findings suggest that novelty-P3 amplitude changes reflect habituation, whereas target-P3 session effects may indicate the adjusted amount of processing resources invested into the task. In general, the results support the interpretation of the novelty-P3 as indicating automatic, bottom–up related aspects of attention, whereas the target-P3, in the present paradigm, seems to reflect voluntary, top–down related aspects of attention

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