Oddball Task

HED Task ID: hedtsk_oddball

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

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

Variation

Description

Justification

Two-Stimulus Auditory Oddball

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

Canonical: standard + deviant tones; P300 or MMN elicitation

Three-Stimulus Novelty Oddball

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

Novel distractors added to standard+deviant; different stimulus structure

Visual Oddball

Geometric shapes or letter stimuli in oddball format.

Visual stimuli; different sensory modality

Passive Oddball

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

No response required; isolates automatic change detection

Active Counting vs. Button-Press Response

Count targets silently vs. press button.

Silent count vs. button press; different response modality

Duration Deviance Oddball

Deviants differ in duration rather than frequency.

Duration-based deviant; different acoustic dimension from frequency

Cross-Modal Oddball

Combined auditory-visual deviants.

Deviant crosses sensory modality; different cross-modal attention

Emotional Oddball

Emotional stimuli as deviants; tests emotion-attention interaction.

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

Roving Paradigm

Dynamic standard updating; tests predictive coding models.

Standard changes after each presentation; different stimulus history structure

Cognitive processes

This task engages the following cognitive processes:

Key references

  • {‘authors’: ‘Sutton, S., Braren, M., Zubin, J., & John, E. R.’, ‘year’: 1965, ‘title’: ‘Evoked-Potential Correlates of Stimulus Uncertainty’, ‘venue’: ‘Science’, ‘venue_type’: ‘journal’, ‘journal’: ‘Science’, ‘volume’: ‘150’, ‘issue’: ‘3700’, ‘pages’: ‘1187-1188’, ‘doi’: ‘10.1126/science.150.3700.1187’, ‘openalex_id’: None, ‘pmid’: None, ‘citation_string’: ‘Sutton, S., Braren, M., Zubin, J., & John, E. R. (1965). Evoked-potential correlates of stimulus uncertainty. Science, 150(3700), 1187-1188.’, ‘url’: ‘https://doi.org/10.1126/science.150.3700.1187’, ‘source’: ‘crossref’, ‘confidence’: ‘high’, ‘verified_on’: ‘2026-04-20’}

  • {‘authors’: ‘Donchin, E., & Coles, M. G. H.’, ‘year’: 1988, ‘title’: ‘Is the P300 component a manifestation of context updating?’, ‘venue’: ‘Behavioral and Brain Sciences’, ‘venue_type’: ‘journal’, ‘journal’: ‘Behavioral and Brain Sciences’, ‘volume’: ‘11’, ‘issue’: ‘3’, ‘pages’: ‘357-374’, ‘doi’: ‘10.1017/s0140525x00058027’, ‘openalex_id’: None, ‘pmid’: None, ‘citation_string’: ‘Donchin, E., & Coles, M. G. H. (1988). Is the P300 component a manifestation of context updating? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 11(3), 357-374.’, ‘url’: ‘https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x00058027’, ‘source’: ‘crossref’, ‘confidence’: ‘high’, ‘verified_on’: ‘2026-04-20’}

  • {‘authors’: ‘Polich, J.’, ‘year’: 2007, ‘title’: ‘Updating P300: An integrative theory of P3a and P3b’, ‘venue’: ‘Clinical Neurophysiology’, ‘venue_type’: ‘journal’, ‘journal’: ‘Clinical Neurophysiology’, ‘volume’: ‘118’, ‘issue’: ‘10’, ‘pages’: ‘2128-2148’, ‘doi’: ‘10.1016/j.clinph.2007.04.019’, ‘openalex_id’: None, ‘pmid’: None, ‘citation_string’: ‘Polich, J. (2007). Updating P300: An integrative theory of P3a and P3b. Clinical Neurophysiology, 118(10), 2128-2148.’, ‘url’: ‘https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2007.04.019’, ‘source’: ‘crossref’, ‘confidence’: ‘high’, ‘verified_on’: ‘2026-04-20’}

Recent references

  • {‘authors’: ‘Polich, J.’, ‘year’: 2007, ‘title’: ‘Updating P300: An integrative theory of P3a and P3b’, ‘venue’: ‘Clinical Neurophysiology’, ‘venue_type’: ‘journal’, ‘journal’: ‘Clinical Neurophysiology’, ‘volume’: ‘118’, ‘issue’: ‘10’, ‘pages’: ‘2128-2148’, ‘doi’: ‘10.1016/j.clinph.2007.04.019’, ‘openalex_id’: None, ‘pmid’: None, ‘citation_string’: ‘Polich, J. (2007). Updating P300: An integrative theory of P3a and P3b. Clinical Neurophysiology, 118(10), 2128–2148.’, ‘url’: ‘https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2007.04.019’, ‘source’: ‘crossref’, ‘confidence’: ‘high’, ‘verified_on’: ‘2026-04-20’}

  • {‘authors’: ‘Linden, D. E. J.’, ‘year’: 2005, ‘title’: ‘The P300: Where in the Brain Is It Produced and What Does It Tell Us?’, ‘venue’: ‘The Neuroscientist’, ‘venue_type’: ‘journal’, ‘journal’: ‘The Neuroscientist’, ‘volume’: ‘11’, ‘issue’: ‘6’, ‘pages’: ‘563-576’, ‘doi’: ‘10.1177/1073858405280524’, ‘openalex_id’: None, ‘pmid’: None, ‘citation_string’: ‘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.]’, ‘url’: ‘https://doi.org/10.1177/1073858405280524’, ‘source’: ‘crossref’, ‘confidence’: ‘high’, ‘verified_on’: ‘2026-04-20’}

  • {‘authors’: “Twomey, D. M., Murphy, P. R., Kelly, S. P., & O’Connell, R. G.”, ‘year’: 2015, ‘title’: ‘The classic P300 encodes a build‐to‐threshold decision variable’, ‘venue’: ‘European Journal of Neuroscience’, ‘venue_type’: ‘journal’, ‘journal’: ‘European Journal of Neuroscience’, ‘volume’: ‘42’, ‘issue’: ‘1’, ‘pages’: ‘1636-1643’, ‘doi’: ‘10.1111/ejn.12936’, ‘openalex_id’: None, ‘pmid’: None, ‘citation_string’: “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.”, ‘url’: ‘https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.12936’, ‘source’: ‘crossref’, ‘confidence’: ‘high’, ‘verified_on’: ‘2026-04-20’}

  • {‘authors’: “Kelly, S. P., & O’Connell, R. G.”, ‘year’: 2013, ‘title’: ‘Internal and External Influences on the Rate of Sensory Evidence Accumulation in the Human Brain’, ‘venue’: ‘The Journal of Neuroscience’, ‘venue_type’: ‘journal’, ‘journal’: ‘The Journal of Neuroscience’, ‘volume’: ‘33’, ‘issue’: ‘50’, ‘pages’: ‘19434-19441’, ‘doi’: ‘10.1523/jneurosci.3355-13.2013’, ‘openalex_id’: None, ‘pmid’: None, ‘citation_string’: “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.”, ‘url’: ‘https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.3355-13.2013’, ‘source’: ‘crossref’, ‘confidence’: ‘high’, ‘verified_on’: ‘2026-04-20’}