P300 event-related potential as an indicator of inattentional deafness?

An analysis of airplane accidents reveals that pilots sometimes purely fail to react to critical auditory alerts. This inability of an auditory stimulus to reach consciousness has been coined under the term of inattentional deafness. Recent data from literature tends to show that tasks involving hig...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Louise Giraudet, Marie-Eve St-Louis, Sébastien Scannella, Mickaël Causse
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2015-01-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118556&type=printable
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1849774795151900672
author Louise Giraudet
Marie-Eve St-Louis
Sébastien Scannella
Mickaël Causse
author_facet Louise Giraudet
Marie-Eve St-Louis
Sébastien Scannella
Mickaël Causse
author_sort Louise Giraudet
collection DOAJ
description An analysis of airplane accidents reveals that pilots sometimes purely fail to react to critical auditory alerts. This inability of an auditory stimulus to reach consciousness has been coined under the term of inattentional deafness. Recent data from literature tends to show that tasks involving high cognitive load consume most of the attentional capacities, leaving little or none remaining for processing any unexpected information. In addition, there is a growing body of evidence for a shared attentional capacity between vision and hearing. In this context, the abundant information in modern cockpits is likely to produce inattentional deafness. We investigated this hypothesis by combining electroencephalographic (EEG) measurements with an ecological aviation task performed under contextual variation of the cognitive load (high or low), including an alarm detection task. Two different audio tones were played: standard tones and deviant tones. Participants were instructed to ignore standard tones and to report deviant tones using a response pad. More than 31% of the deviant tones were not detected in the high load condition. Analysis of the EEG measurements showed a drastic diminution of the auditory P300 amplitude concomitant with this behavioral effect, whereas the N100 component was not affected. We suggest that these behavioral and electrophysiological results provide new insights on explaining the trend of pilots' failure to react to critical auditory information. Relevant applications concern prevention of alarms omission, mental workload measurements and enhanced warning designs.
format Article
id doaj-art-af0b7757c7d94589bca17cf303fc9ba2
institution DOAJ
issn 1932-6203
language English
publishDate 2015-01-01
publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
record_format Article
series PLoS ONE
spelling doaj-art-af0b7757c7d94589bca17cf303fc9ba22025-08-20T03:01:37ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032015-01-01102e011855610.1371/journal.pone.0118556P300 event-related potential as an indicator of inattentional deafness?Louise GiraudetMarie-Eve St-LouisSébastien ScannellaMickaël CausseAn analysis of airplane accidents reveals that pilots sometimes purely fail to react to critical auditory alerts. This inability of an auditory stimulus to reach consciousness has been coined under the term of inattentional deafness. Recent data from literature tends to show that tasks involving high cognitive load consume most of the attentional capacities, leaving little or none remaining for processing any unexpected information. In addition, there is a growing body of evidence for a shared attentional capacity between vision and hearing. In this context, the abundant information in modern cockpits is likely to produce inattentional deafness. We investigated this hypothesis by combining electroencephalographic (EEG) measurements with an ecological aviation task performed under contextual variation of the cognitive load (high or low), including an alarm detection task. Two different audio tones were played: standard tones and deviant tones. Participants were instructed to ignore standard tones and to report deviant tones using a response pad. More than 31% of the deviant tones were not detected in the high load condition. Analysis of the EEG measurements showed a drastic diminution of the auditory P300 amplitude concomitant with this behavioral effect, whereas the N100 component was not affected. We suggest that these behavioral and electrophysiological results provide new insights on explaining the trend of pilots' failure to react to critical auditory information. Relevant applications concern prevention of alarms omission, mental workload measurements and enhanced warning designs.https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118556&type=printable
spellingShingle Louise Giraudet
Marie-Eve St-Louis
Sébastien Scannella
Mickaël Causse
P300 event-related potential as an indicator of inattentional deafness?
PLoS ONE
title P300 event-related potential as an indicator of inattentional deafness?
title_full P300 event-related potential as an indicator of inattentional deafness?
title_fullStr P300 event-related potential as an indicator of inattentional deafness?
title_full_unstemmed P300 event-related potential as an indicator of inattentional deafness?
title_short P300 event-related potential as an indicator of inattentional deafness?
title_sort p300 event related potential as an indicator of inattentional deafness
url https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118556&type=printable
work_keys_str_mv AT louisegiraudet p300eventrelatedpotentialasanindicatorofinattentionaldeafness
AT marieevestlouis p300eventrelatedpotentialasanindicatorofinattentionaldeafness
AT sebastienscannella p300eventrelatedpotentialasanindicatorofinattentionaldeafness
AT mickaelcausse p300eventrelatedpotentialasanindicatorofinattentionaldeafness