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Steering Demands Diminish the Early-P3, Late-P3 and RON Components of the Event-Related Potential of Task-Irrelevant Environmental Sounds

The current study investigates the demands that steering places on mental resources. Instead of a conventional dual-task paradigm, participants of this study were only required to perform a steering task while task-irrelevant auditory distractor probes (environmental sounds and beep tones) were inte...

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Autores principales: Scheer, Menja, Bülthoff, Heinrich H., Chuang, Lewis L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4771765/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26973494
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00073
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author Scheer, Menja
Bülthoff, Heinrich H.
Chuang, Lewis L.
author_facet Scheer, Menja
Bülthoff, Heinrich H.
Chuang, Lewis L.
author_sort Scheer, Menja
collection PubMed
description The current study investigates the demands that steering places on mental resources. Instead of a conventional dual-task paradigm, participants of this study were only required to perform a steering task while task-irrelevant auditory distractor probes (environmental sounds and beep tones) were intermittently presented. The event-related potentials (ERPs), which were generated by these probes, were analyzed for their sensitivity to the steering task’s demands. The steering task required participants to counteract unpredictable roll disturbances and difficulty was manipulated either by adjusting the bandwidth of the roll disturbance or by varying the complexity of the control dynamics. A mass univariate analysis revealed that steering selectively diminishes the amplitudes of early P3, late P3, and the re-orientation negativity (RON) to task-irrelevant environmental sounds but not to beep tones. Our findings are in line with a three-stage distraction model, which interprets these ERPs to reflect the post-sensory detection of the task-irrelevant stimulus, engagement, and re-orientation back to the steering task. This interpretation is consistent with our manipulations for steering difficulty. More participants showed diminished amplitudes for these ERPs in the “hard” steering condition relative to the “easy” condition. To sum up, the current work identifies the spatiotemporal ERP components of task-irrelevant auditory probes that are sensitive to steering demands on mental resources. This provides a non-intrusive method for evaluating mental workload in novel steering environments.
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spelling pubmed-47717652016-03-11 Steering Demands Diminish the Early-P3, Late-P3 and RON Components of the Event-Related Potential of Task-Irrelevant Environmental Sounds Scheer, Menja Bülthoff, Heinrich H. Chuang, Lewis L. Front Hum Neurosci Neuroscience The current study investigates the demands that steering places on mental resources. Instead of a conventional dual-task paradigm, participants of this study were only required to perform a steering task while task-irrelevant auditory distractor probes (environmental sounds and beep tones) were intermittently presented. The event-related potentials (ERPs), which were generated by these probes, were analyzed for their sensitivity to the steering task’s demands. The steering task required participants to counteract unpredictable roll disturbances and difficulty was manipulated either by adjusting the bandwidth of the roll disturbance or by varying the complexity of the control dynamics. A mass univariate analysis revealed that steering selectively diminishes the amplitudes of early P3, late P3, and the re-orientation negativity (RON) to task-irrelevant environmental sounds but not to beep tones. Our findings are in line with a three-stage distraction model, which interprets these ERPs to reflect the post-sensory detection of the task-irrelevant stimulus, engagement, and re-orientation back to the steering task. This interpretation is consistent with our manipulations for steering difficulty. More participants showed diminished amplitudes for these ERPs in the “hard” steering condition relative to the “easy” condition. To sum up, the current work identifies the spatiotemporal ERP components of task-irrelevant auditory probes that are sensitive to steering demands on mental resources. This provides a non-intrusive method for evaluating mental workload in novel steering environments. Frontiers Media S.A. 2016-03-01 /pmc/articles/PMC4771765/ /pubmed/26973494 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00073 Text en Copyright © 2016 Scheer, Bülthoff and Chuang. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution and reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Scheer, Menja
Bülthoff, Heinrich H.
Chuang, Lewis L.
Steering Demands Diminish the Early-P3, Late-P3 and RON Components of the Event-Related Potential of Task-Irrelevant Environmental Sounds
title Steering Demands Diminish the Early-P3, Late-P3 and RON Components of the Event-Related Potential of Task-Irrelevant Environmental Sounds
title_full Steering Demands Diminish the Early-P3, Late-P3 and RON Components of the Event-Related Potential of Task-Irrelevant Environmental Sounds
title_fullStr Steering Demands Diminish the Early-P3, Late-P3 and RON Components of the Event-Related Potential of Task-Irrelevant Environmental Sounds
title_full_unstemmed Steering Demands Diminish the Early-P3, Late-P3 and RON Components of the Event-Related Potential of Task-Irrelevant Environmental Sounds
title_short Steering Demands Diminish the Early-P3, Late-P3 and RON Components of the Event-Related Potential of Task-Irrelevant Environmental Sounds
title_sort steering demands diminish the early-p3, late-p3 and ron components of the event-related potential of task-irrelevant environmental sounds
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4771765/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26973494
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00073
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