Response repetition vs. response change modulates behavioral and electrophysiological effects of distraction.

If stimulation occasionally contains distracting information, behavioral responses to task-relevant aspects of the stimulation are prolonged and more error prone. Additionally, event-related potentials (ERPs) acquired in an auditory distraction paradigm show that the distracting information elicits the components mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a and reorienting negativity (RON). Here, we assess to what extent sequential dependencies in the stimulation influence such indicators of distraction. Data of four experiments were reanalyzed for response repetition and response change trials separately. Behavioral performance on Deviants suggests markedly smaller distraction effects in change compared to repetition trials. However, the presence of MMN-P3a-RON in both response repetition and response change trials shows that sequential features in stimulation do not dissolve distraction, but might substantially contribute to the (behavioral) effects measured in distraction paradigms and should be controlled for.