Brain potential analysis of selective attention

Selective attention can be investigated by studying performance in simple tasks as a function of the manipulations of task variables. This chapter provides an overview of the research in which selective attention is investigated with the aid of event-related potentials of the brain (ERPs). Selectivity prevents the organism from responding reflexively to its environment: it enables flexibility of behavior. By combining mental chronometry with ERP analysis, an attempt is made to identify particular ERP components as reliable and valid markers of specific aspects or stages of information processing. ERPs can clarify the timing, ordering, and interactions of the intermediate processes that are engaged in specific cognitive activities. ERP research has made it convincingly clear that selective attention may act upon the early stages of information processing. The onset latencies of ERP effects can be quite early under the proper conditions. Results from multi-feature selection tasks show that mostly individual features are selected before the combinations of features. Although ERPs indicate that information processing is modulated by selective attention at early stages, such effects do not necessarily indicate that the processing of irrelevant information is terminated