Effect of Screen Segmentation on Target Distractor Discrimination Task: an ERP Study

The Distractor positivity (PD) components in Event Related Potential (ERP) studies are generally used as an index of suppression of distractors. A lot of studies have been conducted in the past years to observe the effect of salient stimuli in a typical target distractor discrimination task (TDD), but these studies have addressed only the stimuli's physical properties and not the background of the displayed screen. In the present experiment, we introduced a white cross to properly segment the screen. The task is to identify the target from distractors which varied with slight shading in illuminance. Results showed improved accuracy and lower response time (RT) when screen segmentation was introduced in the TDD. ERP results for our experiment showed that providing the white cross resulted in enhanced PD. The results have unlimited applications in real life where target locations and shapes are unknown.