Parsing the Late Positive Complex: Mental Chronometry and the ERP Components that Inhabit the Neighborhood of the P300

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2004

Keywords

Event‐related potentials, P300, Novelty P3, PCA, Information processing

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.2004.00193.x

Abstract

Falkenstein, Hohnsbein, and Hoorman (1994) suggested that common measures of P300 latency confound a “P‐SR” component whose latency corresponds to stimulus evaluation time and a “P‐CR” component whose latency varies with response‐selection time, thus casting doubt on work in mental chronometry that relies on P300 latency. We report here a replication and extension of Falkenstein et al. (1994) using a high‐density 129‐electrode montage with 11 subjects. Spatiotemporal PCA was used to extract the components of the ERP. A centroid measure is also introduced for detecting waveform‐timing changes beyond just peak latency. In terms of componentry, we argue that the P‐SR and the P‐CR, correspond to the P3a/Novelty P3 and the P300, respectively. Conceptually, we dispute the proposed distinction between stimulus evaluation and response selection. We suggest a four‐stage ERP model of information processing and place the P3a and the P300 in this framework.

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Citation / Publisher Attribution

Psychophysiology, v. 41, issue 5, p. 665-678

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