Attention shift to a task-irrelevant face is inhibited by presenting an additional face: an ERP study

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The interference effect caused by a task-irrelevant face distractor is decreased simply by adding a face, but not an object. To see the role of attention shift in this dilution effect, we used event-related potentials (ERPs). Subjects were asked to categorize the occupation of a presented famous name (target) while ignoring a distractor, which was a face of an individual person from the same occupational category of the target (congruent) or another occupational category (incongruent). A face distractor was presented alone, or it was presented with an anonymous face in Experiment 1 or a scene of house in Experiment 2. N2pc, the component that is related to attention shift, was measured at contralateral electrode site (T5 or T6) to a distractor face. The behavioral data showed a decreased interference effect, which was not significant, when the anonymous face was presented with the name and the face distractor. For the ERP data, when the famous face and the name were presented without an anonymous face or a house scene, N2pc appeared with a more positive peak followed by a sharp negative peak. The change of N2pc indicated that the distractor captured attention. When a house scene appeared with them, a delayed positive change with no negative rebound was observed. When an anonymous face appeared, however, N2pc was not observed. These results imply that the presence of the anonymous face inhibits attention shift to the distractor face indicated by a diminished N2pc, causing a decreased interference effect.

국문 초록 (Abstract)

목차 없음