ABSTRACT
This chapter examines effects of attention on the Event-Related Potentials (ERP). It analyses the attention effects on ERPs by examining these effects first in the oddball paradigm. The chapter also examines that because of certain fundamental intermodal differences, ERP correlates of selective attention in different modalities. It explores ERPs recorded when the subject is concentrating on discriminating occasional deviant stimuli randomly interspersed among standard stimuli. The chapter describes possible selective-attention effects on the obligatory components of the auditory ERP and discusses endogenous effects of auditory selection attention. The early latency of the attention effects upon N1 suggests that the underlying attentional process is a tonically maintained set favoring one ear over the other rather than an active discrimination and recognition of each individual stimulus. The chapter also explores ERP findings associated with visual-spatial attention and also describes ERP signs of selective processing in vision based on other stimulus attributes.
