Graduation Year

2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.A.

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Degree Granting Department

Psychology

Major Professor

Emanuel Donchin, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Chad Dubé, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Kristen Salomon, Ph.D.

Keywords

event-related potential, principal component analysis, PCA Woody

Abstract

When stimuli processing time varies in an oddball paradigm, the latency of the P300 will vary across trials. In an oddball task requiring difficult response selections, as the variation of stimuli processing time increases, so does the variation of the P300 latency, causing latency jitters in the measurement. Averaging the P300 across different trials without adjusting this latency jitter will lead to diminished P300 amplitude, resulting in inaccurate conclusions from the data. Verleger et al. (2014) reported a diminished P300 amplitude in a difficult oddball task that required subjects to make response selections among stimuli that are difficult to distinguish, but his work did not correct for any latency jitter observed within his sample. The current study replicated the easy and hard oddball tasks conducted in Verleger et al.. Raw ERPs obtained from 16 subjects indicated a successful replication of the study. An examination of the behavioral data showed that there was substantial variation in the P300 during the hard oddball tasks, and a latency jitter correction was applied in the analysis. Results indicated that there was a significant increase in the amplitude of P300 after latency jitter correction, and that this P300 amplitude did not differ significantly between easy and hard oddball tasks. These results suggest that difficult decision requirement does not reduce the amplitude of the P300, and that latency jitter should be accounted for when analyzing data from tasks involving a difficult decision requirement.

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