Attentional Lapses under Decision-Making: an Event-Related Potential Study

The causes of everyday errors made by most people remain largely unknown. In order to investigate spontaneous lapses in attentional processing a new task was designed. This task creates an increased attentional load because it is based on impeded decision making involving both stimuli feature binding and response selection. Participants made errors in 9.6 ± 1.1% of trials and response omissions in 5.4 ± 0.7% of trials. In the ERP pattern the N1 and P2 peaks were well pronounced, while P3 peak was almost indistinguishable. The P2 peak was greater in trials with errors and response omissions compared to correct responses. The results obtained substantiate the hypothesis that attentional lapses may be a consequence of mind-wandering, which may compete with the overt task for the attentional resources.