The HED Task Catalog is under development. IDs are not stable until formal release. Comments are welcome at github.com/hed-standard/hed-task/issues.

Oddball Task

HED task ID: hedtsk_oddball

Family: Oddball, vigilance and continuous performance tasks

Also known as: P300 Task, Auditory Oddball, Visual Oddball

Sequence of standards with rare deviants or targets; deviants elicit a large positive ERP around 300 ms (P3a/P3b), indexing attention and context updating.

Description

Participants are presented with a stimulus stream containing frequent standard stimuli (80% of trials) and infrequent target (oddball) stimuli (20%) that differ in some dimension (pitch, color, shape). Participants respond (button press) to targets. Target detection elicits the P3b ERP component (300-600 ms, parietal maximum), reflecting stimulus evaluation and working memory updating. Novel or unexpected stimuli also elicit the P3a component (frontocentral), reflecting automatic attention capture. The paradigm is widely used as a biomarker of cognitive function and has clinical applications in ADHD, schizophrenia, and traumatic brain injury.

Inclusion test

An experiment is an instance of this task when its procedure matches, it manipulates at least one of the listed variables, and it records at least one of the listed measures.

Procedure

A sequence of frequent standard stimuli is occasionally interrupted by rare target (and sometimes novel) stimuli; participants count or respond to targets.

Manipulation

Target probability (typically 10–20%); stimulus modality (auditory, visual); inclusion of novel non-target deviants; ISI.

Measurement

P3b amplitude and latency to targets; P3a to novels; target detection accuracy and RT; N2 component.

Variations

Named versions that change what the participant experiences or does. The identifier of a variation is hedvar_<task>__<variation>.

Variation

Description

Justification

Two-Stimulus Auditory Oddball

hedvar_oddball__two_stimulus_auditory_oddball

Standard (80%) + target (20%) tones; classic P3b paradigm.

Canonical: standard + deviant tones; P300 or MMN elicitation

Three-Stimulus Novelty Oddball

hedvar_oddball__three_stimulus_novelty_oddball

Standard + target + novel environmental sounds; elicits P3a and P3b.

Novel distractors added to standard+deviant; different stimulus structure

Visual Oddball

hedvar_oddball__visual_oddball

Geometric shapes or letter stimuli in oddball format.

Visual stimuli; different sensory modality

Passive Oddball

hedvar_oddball__passive_oddball

No overt response; still elicits P300 (smaller amplitude).

No response required; isolates automatic change detection

Active Counting vs. Button-Press Response

hedvar_oddball__active_counting_vs_button_press_response

Count targets silently vs. press button.

Silent count vs. button press; different response modality

Duration Deviance Oddball

hedvar_oddball__duration_deviance_oddball

Deviants differ in duration rather than frequency.

Duration-based deviant; different acoustic dimension from frequency

Cross-Modal Oddball

hedvar_oddball__cross_modal_oddball

Combined auditory-visual deviants.

Deviant crosses sensory modality; different cross-modal attention

Emotional Oddball

hedvar_oddball__emotional_oddball

Emotional stimuli as deviants; tests emotion-attention interaction.

Emotional stimuli as deviants; retained per §5.1 (EMOT retired)

Roving Paradigm

hedvar_oddball__roving_paradigm

Dynamic standard updating; tests predictive coding models.

Standard changes after each presentation; different stimulus history structure

Cognitive processes

This task is designed to engage the following processes:

Key references

  • Sutton, S., Braren, M., Zubin, J., & John, E. R. (1965). Evoked-potential correlates of stimulus uncertainty. Science, 150(3700), 1187-1188. (DOI, PubMed)

  • Donchin, E., & Coles, M. G. H. (1988). Is the P300 component a manifestation of context updating? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 11(3), 357-374. (DOI)

  • Polich, J. (2007). Updating P300: An integrative theory of P3a and P3b. Clinical Neurophysiology, 118(10), 2128-2148. (DOI, PubMed)

Further references

  • Linden, D. E. J. (2005). The P300: Where in the brain is it produced and what does it tell us? Neuroscientist, 11(6), 563–576. [Updated: Bledowski, C., et al. (2004). Localizing P300 generators in visual target and distractor processing: A combined event-related potential and functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Journal of Neuroscience, 24(42), 9353–9360.] (DOI, PubMed)

  • Twomey, D. M., Murphy, P. R., Kelly, S. P., & O’Connell, R. G. (2015). The classic P300 encodes a build-to-threshold decision variable. European Journal of Neuroscience, 42(1), 1636–1643. (DOI, PubMed)

  • Kelly, S. P., & O’Connell, R. G. (2013). Internal and external influences on the rate of sensory evidence accumulation in the human brain. Journal of Neuroscience, 33(50), 19434–19441. (DOI, PubMed)