The temporal selectivity of additive factor effects on the reaction process revealed in ERP component latencies.

An experiment was conducted to relate individual components of the event-related brain potential to specific stages of information processing in a two-choice reaction time (RT) task in a group of undergraduate students. Specifically, the latency of the P300 component and the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) were studied as a function of variations in stimulus degradation and response complexity. It was hypothesized that degrading the stimulus would delay the P300 and LRP to the same extent as RT, and that increasing response complexity would affect RT but not P300 latency. The extant literature did not permit any hypothesis regarding the effect of response complexity on LRP latency. The two task variables were found to have additive effects on RT. As predicted, variations in stimulus degradation influenced the latencies of both components, whereas alterations in response complexity had no effect on P300 latency. A significant new finding was that the onset latency of the LRP remained unchanged across levels of response complexity. The overall pattern of results supports the notion of temporal selectivity of stage manipulations that is derived from discrete stage models of human information processing. Furthermore, these results refine the functional interpretation of the LRP by indicating that within the conceptual framework of a stage model the processes this component indexes succeed the start of response choice but preceded the start of motor programming.

[1]  G. Logan,et al.  In search of the point of no return: the control of response processes. , 1990, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[2]  C. Eriksen,et al.  Pre- and poststimulus activation of response channels: a psychophysiological analysis. , 1988, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[3]  J. Miller.  Discrete versus continuous stage models of human information processing: in search of partial output. , 1982, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[4]  David E. Irwin,et al.  Modern mental chronometry , 1988, Biological Psychology.

[5]  E. Donchin,et al.  On the dependence of P300 latency on stimulus evaluation processes. , 1984, Psychophysiology.

[6]  M. Coles.  Modern mind-brain reading: psychophysiology, physiology, and cognition. , 1989, Psychophysiology.

[7]  Emanuel Donchin,et al.  12 Chronometric Analysis of Human Information Processing , 1983 .

[8]  L. Mulder,et al.  Use of partial stimulus information in response processing. , 1988, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[9]  A Kok,et al.  Effects of task variables on measures of the mean onset latency of LRP depend on the scoring method. , 1996, Psychophysiology.

[10]  Saul Sternberg,et al.  The discovery of processing stages: Extensions of Donders' method , 1969 .

[11]  A. Sanders.  20 Stage Analysis of Reaction Processes , 1980 .

[12]  J Miller,et al.  Response complexity and precue interval effects on the lateralized readiness potential. , 1995, Psychophysiology.

[13]  G Mulder,et al.  The continuous flow model revisited: perceptual and central motor aspects. , 1987, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology. Supplement.

[14]  M G Coles,et al.  On the transmission of partial information: inferences from movement-related brain potentials. , 1992, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[15]  J. C. Woestenburg,et al.  The removal of the eye-movement artifact from the EEG by regression analysis in the frequency domain , 1983, Biological Psychology.

[16]  C W Eriksen,et al.  Information processing in visual search: A continuous flow conception and experimental results , 1979, Perception & psychophysics.

[17]  Allen Osman,et al.  The locus of dual-task interference: psychological refractory effects on movement-related brain potentials. , 1993 .

[18]  E Donchin,et al.  A metric for thought: a comparison of P300 latency and reaction time. , 1981, Science.

[19]  G. Stelmach,et al.  Tutorials in Motor Behavior , 1980 .

[20]  David A. Rosenbaum,et al.  Stimulus-response compatibility and motor programming of manual response sequences , 1984 .

[21]  J Miller,et al.  Electrophysiological evidence for temporal overlap among contingent mental processes. , 1992, Journal of experimental psychology. General.