1987 Volume 5 Issue 1 Pages 1-9
The hemispheric asymmetry of negative event-related potentials with selective attention was examined in eight adults while the subjects were instructed to detect plant names (targets) among animal names if they were presented in red (or blue) and to ignore those names if they were in blue (or red).
Negativity to names in the attended color was maximum at the vertex and lateralized at the left hemisphere. However, this asymmetry was not found when subjects performed a discrimination on non-verbal task. In addition, those data on reaction time suggested that the attentional negativity developed during a stimulus discrimination depending on whether the relevant item was a target.
The negativity was interpreted as partially reflecting a processing stage associated with the target discrimination for a relevant stimulus.
