Our latest study, in press in Psychophysiology, was led by Annekathrin Weise (Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, Austria, and Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany) and reports magnetoencephalographic and behaviral data indicating that the distraction yielded by unexpected sounds involves a shift of spatial attention.
Topoplot of the alpha power distribution in the 0.2 - 0.6 s time window following deviant onset. Stars indicate channels on which there was a prominent statistical effect.
Reference: Weise, A., Hartmann, T., Parmentier, F. B. R., Weisz, N., & Ruhnau, P. (2023). Involuntary shifts of spatial attention contribute to behavioral crossmodal distraction: Evidence from oscillatory alpha power and reaction time data. Psychophysiology, 00:e14353. http://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.14353
Abstract: Imagine you are focusing on the traffic on a busy street to ride a bike safely when suddenly you hear the siren of an ambulance. This unexpected sound involuntarily captures your attention and interferes with ongoing performance. We test whether this type of behavioral distraction involves a spatial shift of attention. We measured behavioral distraction and magnetoencephalographic alpha power during a crossmodal paradigm that combined an exogenous cueing task and a distraction task. On each trial, a task-irrelevant sound preceded a visual target (left or right). The sound was usually the same animal sound (i.e., standard sound). Rarely, it was replaced by an unexpected environmental sound (i.e., deviant sound). Fifty percent of the deviants occurred on the same side as the target, and 50% occurred on the opposite side. Participants responded to the location of the target. As expected, responses were slower to targets that followed a deviant compared to a standard, reflecting behavioral distraction. Crucially, this distraction was mitigated by the spatial relationship between the targets and the deviants: responses were faster when targets followed deviants on the same versus different side, indexing a spatial shift of attention. This was further corroborated by a posterior alpha power modulation that was higher in the hemisphere ipsilateral (vs. contralateral) to the location of the attention-capturing deviant. We suggest that this alpha power lateralization reflects a spatial attention bias. Overall, our data support the contention that spatial shifts of attention contribute to behavioral deviant distraction.