Cross-Modal Distraction by Deviance - Hogrefe eContent

Research Article

Cross-Modal Distraction by Deviance Functional Similarities Between the Auditory and Tactile Modalities Jessica K. Ljungberg1,2 and Fabrice B. R. Parmentier3,4 1

Department of Psychology, Umeå University, Sweden, 2School of Psychology, Cardiff University, UK, Department of Psychology, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Spain, 4School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

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Abstract. Unexpected task-irrelevant changes in the auditory or visual sensory channels have been shown to capture attention in an ineluctable manner and distract participants away from ongoing auditory or visual categorization tasks. We extend the study of this phenomenon by reporting the first within-participant comparison of deviance distraction in the tactile and auditory modalities. Using vibro-tactile-visual and auditory-visual crossmodal oddball tasks, we found that unexpected changes in the tactile and auditory modalities produced a number of functional similarities: A negative impact of distracter deviance on performance in the ongoing visual task, distraction on the subsequent trial (post-deviance distraction), and a similar decrease – but not the disappearance – of these effects across blocks. Despite these functional similarities, deviance distraction only correlated between the auditory and tactile modalities for the accuracy-based measure of deviance distraction and not for response latencies. Post-deviance distraction showed no correlation between modalities. Overall, the results suggest that behavioral deviance distraction may be underpinned by both modality-specific and multimodal mechanisms, while post-deviance distraction may predominantly relate to modality-specific processes. Keywords: oddball, attention capture, vibration, distraction

The automatic detection of unexpected changes in our surroundings is arguably a pivotal adaptive ability. Evidence indicates, however, that the capture of attention by novel (whenever changing across a task) or deviant (when the same stimulus is used instead of an otherwise repeated standard stimulus) stimuli comes at a cost, namely the momentary disruption of behavioral performance in an ongoing task (an effect referred to as novelty or deviance distraction). While traditionally investigated in electrophysiological studies, this topic has been the object of a number of recent behavioral studies aiming to establish the cognitive mechanisms responsible for this effect (e.g., Parmentier, 2008). The vast majority of past studies focused on auditory deviance (e.g., Berti & Schro¨ger, 2003; Schro¨ger & Wolff, 1998a, 1998b), fewer on visual deviance (e.g., Berti & Schro¨ger, 2004, 2006) or bimodal deviance (e.g., Boll & Berti, 2009), and only one on vibro-tactile deviance (Parmentier, Ljungberg, Elsley, & Lindkvist, 2011). The present study sought to extend this field of study by examining for the first time the functional characteristics of the behavioral impact of rare and unexpected changes in vibro-tactile and auditory stimulation using a within-participant design.

The Functional Characteristics of Deviance Distraction Originally, empirical evidence supporting the existence of a change detection and orientation mechanism emerged from 2012 Hogrefe Publishing

electrophysiological studies examining the brain’s response to rare and unexpected novel or deviant sounds (oddball stimuli) relative to a repeated acoustic signal (referred to as the standard). These studies reported the existence of three specific brain responses (MMN, P3a, and a reorientation negativity or RON; e.g., Schro¨ger, 1997), which were interpreted, respectively, as the detection of a change in an ongoing auditory sequence (e.g., Naä¨ta¨nen, 1990), the obligatory orientation of attention toward novelty (e.g., Friedman, Cycowicz, & Gaeta, 2001), and the reorientation of attention toward an ongoing task (e.g., Berti, 2008; Berti & Schro¨ger, 2001). This triumvirate of responses is observed whether deviant and target information are presented simultaneously and within the same sensory modality (e.g., Berti & Schroger, 2003) or temporally decoupled and presented in different modalities (e.g., Escera, Alho, Winkler, & Naä¨ta¨nen, 1998). Furthermore, similar brain responses have also been reported for visual (e.g., Berti & Schro¨ger, 2004) and tactile (e.g., Knight, 1996) deviant stimuli. Deviant distracters disrupt behavioral performance in an ongoing task. For example, responses in a tone duration judgment task are slower for rare pitch deviants (e.g., Berti, 2008; Berti & Schro¨ger, 2003). The effect is also observed in crossmodal oddball tasks in which participants categorize visual digits preceded by task-irrelevant sounds (e.g., Ljungberg & Parmentier, in press; Ljungberg, Parmentier, Leiva, & Vega, in press; Parmentier, Elsley, & Ljungberg, 2010; Parmentier, Maybery, & Elsley, 2010). Parmentier, Elford, Escera, Andre´s, and San Miguel (2008) demonstrated that this Experimental Psychology 2012; 59(6):355–363 DOI: 10.1027/1618-3169/a000164

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J. K. Ljungberg & F. B. R. Parmentier: Auditory & Vibro-Tactile Novelty Distraction

slowing reflects the delayed onset of the target’s processing due to the orientation to and reorientation from the novel sound (a capture followed by an involuntary analysis of the sound’s content; Parmentier, 2008; Parmentier, Turner, & Elsley, 2011). The temporal dynamics of this effect remain largely unexplored but deviant sounds have been shown to affect responses in the first standard trial immediately following a deviant trial (post-deviance distraction; Berti, 2008; Ka¨hko¨nen et al., 2002; Parmentier & Andre´s, 2010), and Parmentier (2008) reported a significant reduction of deviance distraction with task practice.

Deviance Distraction by Vibro-Tactile Stimuli Compared to the auditory and visual modalities, less heed has been paid to attentional mechanisms in the tactile modality (despite evidence of the potential impact of vibration on cognitive performance, e.g., Ljungberg & Neely, 2007; Ljungberg & Parmentier, 2010). Past behavioral research has mostly centered on mechanisms underpinning the cueing of attention to the tactile modality (e.g., Forster & Eimer, 2005), to a specific spatial location (e.g., Santangelo & Spence, 2007), or to the disruption of spatial localization in the face of discrepant tactile and auditory stimuli (e.g., Bruns & Ro¨der, 2010). Past studies using tactile stimuli within oddball tasks did not measure cross-modal behavioral distraction by oddball tactile stimuli and typically fell into one of two categories: (1) studies using passive tasks in which participants were instructed to ignore tactile stimulation (e.g., Downar, Crawley, Mikulis, & Davis, 2000; Knight, 1996; Yamaguchi & Knight, 1991a, 1991b; Zhu, Drisbrow, Zumer, McDonigle, & Nagarajan, 2007); or (2) studies in which participants were instructed to attend to the tactile modality in order to count the number of targets stimuli (e.g., Go¨tz et al., 2011; Hamada, Sugino, Kado, & Susuki, 2004; Oniz, Guducu, Aydin, & Ozorgen, 2008). Neither of these two types of oddball studies reported behavioral data in response to both standard and deviant task-irrelevant vibrations while performing a task in another modality. Interestingly, however, some of these studies highlight the functional similarity of the brain’s response to unexpected changes irrespective of their sensory modality. For example, rare deviant tactile distracters presented in a tactile target detection task yielded a P3a response of similar amplitude and scalp distribution as that observed in response to auditory deviant stimuli among auditory standards (Knight, 1996; Yamaguchi & Knight, 1991a, 1991b). While modality-specific brain activations are observed following unexpected changes in the visual, auditory, and sensorimotor channels, other areas appear to respond to oddball stimuli irrespective of their modality (Downar et al., 2000). To our knowledge, only one study examined the crossmodal behavioral impact of tactile deviance (Parmentier, Ljungberg, et al., 2011). In that study, we used a crossmodal oddball task in which participants categorized the parity of visually presented digits while instructed to ignore a task-irrelevant hand-delivered vibration occurring immediately before each target stimulus. The results showed that Experimental Psychology 2012; 59(6):355–363

deviant vibro-tactile stimuli delayed responses in the visual task compared to a standard vibration (deviance distraction) and that a significant distraction was still measured on the first standard trial following a deviant trial (post-deviance distraction).

The Present Study As pointed out above, auditory-visual and tactile-visual cross-modal oddball tasks appear to yield similar effects on behavioral performance in an ongoing task. Specifically, both auditory and vibro-tactile deviant stimuli yield deviance distraction and post-deviance distraction. This observation is based, in the latter case, on a single study, however. Furthermore, the comparison remains qualitative as it rests on independent samples of participants and distinct experiments differing, for example, with respect to the number of trials presented across the task. The latter observation is of potential significance because one study pointed out that distraction by deviant sounds reduces across blocks of trials (Parmentier, 2008). In our study, participants performed alternating blocks of the auditory-visual and tactile-visual cross-modal oddball tasks. Our aims were to extend the study of deviance and post-deviance distraction to the tactile modality, to compare these effects to those observed in the auditory and, finally, to compare the temporal dynamics of these effects across blocks.

Method Participants Sixty-four undergraduate students (21 males) from the University of the Balearic Islands took part in this experiment for a small honorarium or course credit. The mean age of the participants was 21.23 years (SD = 3.54). All participants reported normal or corrected-to-normal vision, and normal hearing.

Materials and Stimuli A vibration device was built for the purpose of the experiment, consisting of a pair of handles, each equipped with a motor causing vibration by spinning an eccentric mass on its rotor. The motors were hosted within 136 mm long transparent plastic tubes (30 mm in diameter). A response button was located at the top of each handle. A control unit connected to a computer through a parallel port controlled the rotation speed of the motors. Preset vibrations were triggered programmatically from the computer running the task. Two vibrations were used in this experiment, differing in amplitude and frequency: 2.6 m/s2 (r.m.s.), 33 Hz, and 61 m/s2, 114 Hz. The corresponding weighted amplitudes, 2012 Hogrefe Publishing


according to ISO 5349, were 1.3 m/s2 and 8.6 m/s2, respectively. The first was used as the standard vibration, the second as the deviant vibration. Vibrations were always delivered simultaneously to both hands. The total duration of each vibration was 200 ms. Motors reached 94% and 74% of these respective target speeds within 50 ms (both vibrations stopped within 30 ms). Two sounds were used in the experiment. The standard sound was a 200 ms sinewave tone (600 Hz). The deviant sound was a 200 ms burst of white noise. Both sounds were normalized and edited to include 10 ms rise and fall ramps. Sounds were delivered binaurally at an intensity of approximately 75 dB(A) through high attenuation headphones (Peltor HTB79F, SNR = 33 dB(A)) blocking noise from the handles’ motors. The task, written with E-Prime 1.2, was executed on a computer equipped with a 17 inch screen (refresh rate of 60 Hz).

Design and Procedure Participants were asked to categorize visual digits presented sequentially at the center of a computer screen as odd or even. They did so by pressing the response buttons on the left and right handles (the allocation of keys to responses was counterbalanced across participants). They were required to do so as quickly and accurately as possible. These visual targets were preceded by auditory distracters in the auditory blocks and hand-delivered vibrations in the tactile blocks. The two types of blocks were presented in alternation, half the participants starting with an auditory

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block. Each of the 8 blocks contained 8 practice trials and 120 test trials (so that the total of 480 test trials was presented in each modality). As illustrated in Figure 1, each trial started with the presentation of a fixation cross (which remained on the screen during the whole trial, except when replaced by the visual target) and a 200 ms distracter. This distracter consisted of the standard or deviant vibration in the tactile blocks, and of the standard and deviant sound in the auditory blocks. Standard distracters were presented in 80% of trials (96 trials) within each block, with deviant distracters presented on the remaining 20% (24 trials), randomly dispersed with the constraint that they were never presented on two immediately successive trials. The visual target appeared 300 ms after the distracter’s onset, sustaining a viewing angle of approximately 4.5 and remained on the screen for 200 ms. The target was followed by a 1,000 ms time window for participants to respond, after which the next trial was automatically initiated. The fixation cross and digit were presented in white against a black background. Each digit (1–8) was used equally often across each trial type (standard/deviant), block and modality condition (tactile/auditory). Participants were instructed to ignore the vibrations and sounds and to concentrate on the visual task. Participants held the response handles during the whole duration of the task with their hands resting on the table located in front of them. The monitor used to present the visual targets was also located on this table at a distance of approximately 50 cm. No fixed distance between the participants’ hands was set and participants were free to adopt a position they felt comfortable with.

1000 ms 200 ms 300 ms Figure 1. Schematic representation of two consecutive trials in the cross-modal oddball task. Each trial started with the presentation of a 200 ms distracter followed, 100 ms later, by the visual target (for 200 ms) and a further 1,000 ms response window. In the vibro-tactile blocks, the distracter consisted in a vibration of the handles (in the absence of any auditory stimulation). In the auditory blocks, the distracters were sounds (in the absence of any vibro-tactile stimulation). Distracters consisted of the standard stimulus in 80% of trials and of the deviant stimulus in the remaining trials. 2012 Hogrefe Publishing

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Results Main Analysis In order to examine performance across the task, the eight blocks were divided into four phases (each including one tactile block and one auditory block). Hit rates and mean response times for correct responses were analyzed using a 2 (modality: auditory, tactile) · 3 (trial type: deviant, post-deviant standard, standard) · 4 (phases 1–4) repeated-measures ANOVA. Accuracy performance was overall high (M = .879, SD = .095), as can be seen from Figure 2, and revealed little variation across conditions. The analysis of the mean hit rate revealed no main effect of modality, F(1, 63) = 2.62, MSE = 0.008, p = .11, g2p ¼ :034, no main effect of trial type, F(2, 126) = 1.21, MSE = 0.004, p = .303, g2p ¼ :019, but a main effect of phase as performance increased slightly across the task, F(3, 189) = 11.85, MSE = 0.015, p < .001, g2p ¼ :158. This increase was more pronounced in the auditory modality than in the tactile modality, as confirmed by a significant Modality · Phase interaction, F(3, 189) = 2.97, MSE = 0.006, p = .03, g2p ¼ :045. The Modality · Trial Type interaction was also significant, F(2, 126) = 4.66, MSE = 0.003, p = .01, g2p ¼ :069. Further analysis of this interaction revealed the presence of deviance distraction in the tactile modality, F(1, 63) = 8.005, MSE = 0.002, p = .006, but no difference between the deviant and standard 1

Figure 2. Mean hit rate in the visual categorization task as a function of the type of trial (deviant trial, post-deviant trial, standard trial), the modality in which the distracters were presented and the phase of the experiment. The standard error of the mean was too small to be visible in the form of error bars.

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conditions in the auditory modality, F(1, 63) < 1, MSE = 0.006, p = .537. While it is not unclear to us why this difference occurred, it is worth mentioning that accuracy data do not systematically exhibit deviance distraction in past studies, and that effects tend to be manifest themselves in the response latencies instead, possibly because levels of performance are typically close to ceiling.1 A small but significant advantage of the post-deviant standard condition compared to the standard was observed in the auditory modality, F(1, 63) = 7.164, MSE = 0.003, p = .009, while a trend in the other direction was found in the tactile modality, F(1, 63) = 3.328, MSE = 0.003, p = .073. Finally, the Modality · Trial Type · Phase interaction was not significant, F(6, 378) < 1, MSE = 0.003, p = .899, g2p ¼ :006. In sum, hit rates increased with task practice in both modalities. Response times proved more sensitive to our manipulations, as visible in Figure 3. The analysis of mean correct RTs revealed no main effect of modality, F(1, 63) = 1.538, MSE = 3,535, p = .220, g2p ¼ :024, but a reduction across phases, F(3, 189) = 24.187, MSE = 3,093, p < .001, g2p ¼ :277, as well as a main effect of trial type, F(2, 126) = 67.043, MSE = 823, p < .001, g2p ¼ :516. The speeding up of responses across phases was similar across modalities, F(3, 189) < 1, MSE = 1,897, p = .856, g2p ¼ :004. A significant Modality · Trial Type interaction was observed, F(2, 126) = 12.853, MSE = 639, p < .001, g2p ¼ :169, revealing the smaller effect of trial type in the tactile modality compared to the auditory modality. Planned

A speed-accuracy trade-off was ruled out on two grounds. First, an analysis of response latencies with accuracy used as a covariate (ANCOVA) yielded exactly the same results as the ANOVA reported in our Results section. Secondly, correlations between distraction measured from the accuracy data (accuracy standard accuracy deviant) and distraction measured from the RTs (RT deviant RT standard) for the auditory and tactile modalities confirm our observations: r = .003 (p = .985) in the auditory modality and r = .065 (p = .612) in the tactile modality. Furthermore, no relationship between accuracy and RTs was found for post-novelty distraction in the auditory (r = .04, p = .733) or tactile (r = .14, p = .263) modalities. Overall, there was no speed-accuracy tradeoff in any of the modalities and any of the distraction measures.


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Figure 3. Mean response time for correct responses in the visual categorization task as a function of the type of trial (deviant, post-deviant, standard), the modality in which the distracters were presented and the phase of the experiment. Error bars represent one standard error of the mean.

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contrasts showed that the effect of deviance distraction (deviant versus standard) was significant in the auditory and the tactile modalities, F(1, 63) = 84.676, MSE = 1,219.5, p < .001 and F(1, 63) = 33.882, MSE = 626.42, p < .001, respectively. The effect of post-deviance distraction (post-deviant standard versus standard) was also significant in the auditory and tactile modalities, F(1, 63) = 72.713, MSE = 560.15, p < .001 and F(1, 63) = 12.158, MSE = 466, p < .001, respectively. A significant Trial Type · Phase interaction was found, F(6, 378) = 4.187, MSE = 427, p < .001, g2p ¼ :062, which reflected the slightly steeper reduction of deviance distraction across phases compared to post-deviance distraction. That is, both deviance and post-deviance distraction decreased across phases but deviance distraction did so more than post-deviance distraction. Linear polynomial contrasts confirmed the reduction of deviance, F(1, 63) = 24.326, MSE = 400.334, p < .001, and post-deviance distraction, F(1, 63) = 4.227, MSE = 399.445, p = .04. Furthermore, the linear reduction of deviance distraction was steeper than that of post-deviance distraction, F(2, 62) = 12.157, MSE = 393.649, p < .001. Despite the reduction across phases, contrasts between the standard and deviant conditions (deviance distraction) and between the standard and post-deviant conditions (post-deviance distraction) showed that both deviance and post-deviance distraction remained significant at phase 4 where they were both smallest, F(1, 63) = 28.408, MSE = 425.39, p < .001 and F(1, 63) = 14.250, MSE = 396.525, p < .001, respectively. Finally, the Modality · Trial Type· Phase interaction was not significant, F(6, 378) < 1, MSE = 440, p = .956, g2p ¼ :004. In sum, both modalities showed a similar overall reduction of RTs across the task, clear effects of deviance distraction and post-deviance distraction (though larger in the auditory modality than the tactile), and a similar reduction of both these effects across the task. Both deviance and post-deviance distraction remained significant at the end of the task. 2012 Hogrefe Publishing

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Relationship Between Auditory and Tactile Distraction Correlation coefficients were calculated in order to examine whether behavioral distraction correlated between the auditory and tactile modalities. For the accuracy data, distraction was measured as the difference between the standard and deviant conditions. For the RT data, it was defined as the difference between the deviant and standard conditions. As visible from Figure 4, a significant correlation was found between the two modalities for deviance distraction measured from the accuracy data (r = .27, p = .03) but not for post-deviance distraction (r = .05, p = .67). No correlation between the auditory and tactile modalities was found for deviance (r = .17, p = .18) or post-deviance distraction (r = .02, p = .86) as measured from RTs.

General Discussion We reported the first study examining the behavioral impact of both auditory and vibratory oddball distracters, measured within-participant, on performance in an ongoing visual task. The results showed deviance and post-deviance distraction in response to both auditory and tactile deviant stimuli. While these effects were larger in the auditory modality, they decreased with similar amplitude across blocks but remained significant at the end of the task. Our results replicated Parmentier, Ljungberg, et al.’s (2011) demonstration of tactile deviance and post-deviance distraction and highlighted the functional similarity of these effects with those observed in the auditory modality. Furthermore, our data replicated Parmentier’s (2008) finding of a progressive reduction of deviance distraction across blocks and extended it to the tactile modality. More importantly, the analysis of performance across blocks revealed a remarkably similar Experimental Psychology 2012; 59(6):355–363

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Figure 4. Correlations between tactile and auditory distraction: deviance distraction in accuracy (top left panel), deviance distraction in RT (top right panel), post-deviance distraction in accuracy (bottom left panel), and post-deviance distraction in RT (bottom right panel). reduction of these effects across the auditory and tactile modalities. Interpreted in the context of past research, our results suggest that deviance distraction may be underpinned by similar mechanisms across sensory modalities. Deviance distraction is observed in auditory-visual (e.g., Escera et al., 1998), tactile-visual (Parmentier, Ljungberg, et al., 2011) as well as in unimodal oddball tasks (either auditory; e.g., Berti, 2008; or visual; e.g., Berti & Schro¨ger, 2004). Post-deviance distraction has been observed in auditory (Roeber, Widmann, & Schro¨ger, 2003), auditory-visual (Parmentier & Andre´s, 2010), and tactile-visual (Parmentier, Ljungberg, et al., 2011) oddball tasks. The present study complements this picture by showing functionally similar temporal dynamics for auditory and tactile deviance and post-deviance distraction across the course of a task. Experimental Psychology 2012; 59(6):355–363

The functional similarities highlighted above fit with the general and overarching notion of a predictive brain utilizing attention to investigate events violating its predictions. While a deviant stimulus’ low probability of occurrence has traditionally been considered as the key factor responsible for attention capture (Naä¨ta¨nen, 1990; Schro¨ger, 2005), a new view is emerging according to which attention capture follows from the deviant stimulus’ violation of the cognitive system’s expectation of a standard stimulus (Schro¨ger, Bendixen, Trujillo-Barreto, & Roeber, 2007; Winkler, 2007). Such view transcends sensory distinctions because the computation of expectation need not be specific to any sensory modality and can arguably be thought of as an abstract affair in much the same way as incidental (e.g., Altmann, Dienes, & Goode, 1995; Dienes, Broadbent, & Berry, 1991; Kaufman et al., 2010; Reber, 1989) or statistical learning (e.g., Aslin, Saffran, & Newport, 1998; 2012 Hogrefe Publishing


Conway, Bauernschmidt, Huang, & Pisoni, 2010; Saffran, Newport, & Aslin, 1996). The violation of expectation account is supported by various empirical findings such as the observation of MMN in response to the unexpected omission of a stimulus (e.g., Yabe, Tervaniemi, Reinkainen, & Naä¨ta¨nen, 1997) and to the violation of incidentally learned rules about perceptual transitions (Bubic, Bendixen, Schubotz, Jacobsen, & Schro¨ger, 2010; Schro¨ger et al., 2007; Van Zuijen, Simoens, Paavilainen, Naä¨ta¨nen, & Tervaniemi, 2005). In a study contrasting the role of probability of occurrence and predictability orthogonally, Parmentier, Elsley, Andre´s, and Barcelo´ (2011) demonstrated that behavioral deviance distraction occurs for a sound violating the cognitive system’s expectation irrespective of whether this sound is frequent (standard) or rare (deviant sound), and that a deviant sound fails to yield any behavioral distraction when its presentation is expected on the basis of incidental rule learning. If suggesting functionally similar underpinning mechanisms, the data from our auditory and tactile conditions do not however support the notion of central, multimodal system as entirely responsible for distraction. Indeed, no correlation was found between the two modalities with respect to deviance or post-deviance distraction as measured from RTs, or with respect to post-deviance distraction as measured from response accuracy. If behavioral distraction by deviant stimuli had its locus in a central, multimodal system, then significant positive correlations should have been across the board. Instead, the only positive correlation between modalities was observed for deviance distraction as measured from the accuracy data. The latter do suggest, however, that at least some aspect of behavioral performance may relate to shared mechanisms. Overall, our results would fit well with a hybrid model in which both modality-specific and multimodal mechanisms coexist and influence behavioral performance in distinct ways. It is interesting to note that the processing of change has been shown to involve multiple brain mechanisms, some common to several sensory modalities, and some specific to them (Downar et al., 2000). One might tentatively suggest that the impact of deviant distracters on response latencies may reflect the difficulty in disengaging attention from the distracter’s specific features or sensory modality, rendering this aspect of distraction modality specific and related to sensory areas of the cortex. Such proposition would fit with Parmentier et al.’s (2008) description of deviance distraction as the consequence of the time penalty associated with the orientation to and from deviant distracters. The impact of deviants on response accuracy might stem, instead, from a fronto-parietal network that is active for both modalities and which may serve processing steps common to the auditory and tactile tasks such as the re-activation of the relevant task-set in the face of an unexpected event or the resolution of the conflict resulting from the clash between the system’s expected event (standard distracter) and actual current event (rare unexpected distracter). Either of these functions may be argued to transcend sensory distinctions. In sum, our data clearly indicate that auditory and tactile deviant stimuli affect behavior in functionally similar ways while suggesting that the mechanisms underpinning behavioral distraction probably origi 2012 Hogrefe Publishing

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nate from both modality-specific and multimodal cognitive systems. Finally, our results throw out some puzzling results regarding the interpretation of post-deviance distraction. This type of distraction has been reported in pure auditory tasks in which participants were instructed to judge the duration of tones in the face of rare frequency deviants (Ahveninen et al., 2000; Berti, 2008; Ka¨hko¨nen et al., 2002; Roeber et al., 2003) as well as in auditory-visual (e.g., Parmentier & Andre´s, 2010) and tactile-visual (Parmentier, Ljungberg, et al., 2011, present study) cross-modal tasks. While postdeviance distraction remains relatively poorly understood, electrophysiological evidence of P3a and RON responses on the first standard following a deviant trial (Roeber, Berti, Widmann, & Schro¨ger, 2005; Roeber et al., 2003) led Roeber et al. (2003) to propose that these responses ‘‘may reflect an ongoing process of re-allocation of attention back to the task-relevant stimulus property after the occurrence of an attention-catching task-irrelevant deviation’’ (Roeber et al., 2003, p. 355; see also Berti, 2008). Similarly, Parmentier and Andre´s (2010) suggested that post-deviance distraction may reflect the completion of a general task reconfiguration process following a temporary destabilization. While the observation of post-deviance distraction in both our auditory and tactile conditions fits with the notion of a general taskset reconfiguration mechanism, the absence of correlation between these modalities does not. While further research will be necessary to explore this issue, one may view this absence of correlation as an indication that post-deviance distraction might not, at least in the cross-modal oddball, translate the involvement of high-order processes such as task-set reconfiguration but, instead, more local and sensory-specific processes. One possibility may be that in a task in which distracters are mostly repeated (standard distracters constituting 80% of all distracters), the auditory and tactile perception systems expect the repetition of the distracter’s sensory features. In such circumstances, the presentation of the standard distracter following a deviant distracter may be regarded as a local sensory change, yielding some level of distraction. The smaller amplitude of post-deviance distraction, relative to deviance distraction, might reflect, for the former, the mitigation of the impact of this local change by the absence of change in the larger context of the task (since the distracter in a post-deviant trial matches the mental model of the standard distracter). Some evidence indicates that distracters are assessed by the cognitive system based on global as well as local rules (Bendixen, Roeber, & Schro¨ger, 2007; Mu¨ller & Schro¨ger, 2007; Mu¨ller, Widmann, & Schro¨ger, 2005). This idea was also invoked by Parmentier, Elsley, et al. (2011) to explain why a standard sound following two deviant sounds yields some behavioral distraction (but less than an unexpected standard or deviant sound) despite being predictable and the most frequent distracter in the task. It may also be that the mismatch between a distracter and the sensory trace of its predecessor, irrespective of sensory expectations, triggers the detection of a local change and a subsequent capture of attention. Whether local change is defined in a top-down or bottom-up fashion, the key idea here is that it might be defined at a modalityspecific level. Experimental Psychology 2012; 59(6):355–363

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In summary, our study is the first to examine deviance distraction in the auditory and tactile modalities using a within-participant design and identical design conditions. Our results show that unexpected vibro-tactile deviant stimuli capture attention away from an ongoing visual task in a functionally identical way to that observed in the auditory modality. This functional similarity did not only consist in the presence of deviance distraction but also in that of post-deviance distraction and the similar reduction of both of these effects across blocks. Considered in the context of reports of deviance distraction in unimodal (visual: e.g., Bendixen et al., 2010; Berti & Schro¨ger, 2004; auditory: e.g., Schro¨ger, 1996), multimodal (e.g., Boll & Berti, 2009), and cross-modal (e.g., Escera et al., 1998; Parmentier et al., 2008) oddball tasks, and in the face of reported similarities between the brain’s responses to deviant stimuli across various sensory modalities (Berti & Schro¨ger, 2004; Escera et al., 1998; Knight, 1996), our results suggest the existence of functionally similar mechanisms across sensory modalities. Furthermore, the analysis of the correlations between the two modalities suggests that deviance distraction may invoke modality-specific as well as central multimodal mechanisms while post-deviance distraction may originate predominantly from modality-specific mechanisms.

Acknowledgments Jessica K. Ljungberg is an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Psychology, Cardiff University. Fabrice B. R. Parmentier is an External Research Associate at the School of Psychology, University of Western Australia. This work was carried out with a grant from the Swedish Research Council (421-2011-1782), awarded to Jessica K. Ljungberg and Fabrice Parmentier, as well as a Ramon y Cajal Fellowship (RYC-2007-00701) and a research grant (PSI2009-08427) from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation awarded to Fabrice Parmentier. We thank Markus Lindkvist for designing the vibratory device used in this study and Alicia Leiva for her help in collecting the data.

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Received January 24, 2012 Revision received March 12, 2012 Accepted March 12, 2012 Published online June 29, 2012 Jessica K. Ljungberg Department of Psychology Umea˚ University SE-90187, Umea˚ Sweden Tel. +46 90 786 50 00 E-mail [email protected]
