Flanker compatibility effects in patients with Parkinson's disease: impact of target onset delay and trial-by-trial stimulus variation.

Full Abstract

Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and healthy controls were administered a flanker task that consisted of the presentation of colored targets and distractors. Participants were required to attend to the center target and identify its color. The stimulus displays were either congruent (i.e., the target and flankers were the same color) or incongruent. The time between the onset of the flanker and the target color (the target onset delay) was either short or long. Results indicated that PD patients and controls did not differ in the magnitude of the flanker effect within individual trials in that both groups demonstrated a typical flanker effect at the short target onset delay and neither group demonstrated a flanker effect at the longer delay. However, when performance was examined on a trial-by-trial basis, PD patients demonstrated a slowing of reaction time relative to controls when having to make the same response across consecutive trials at longer inter-trial intervals when the flankers were incongruent across consecutive trials and the display on the second of two trials was incongruent. These results indicate that PD patients are impaired in inhibiting the distractors over an extended delay and that this deficit may impact motor responding in these patients, suggesting that the basal ganglia contribute to the interface of attention and action.

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Author information

Author/s: Cagigas, Xavier E (XE); Filoteo, J Vincent (JV); Stricker, John L (JL); Rilling, Laurie M (LM); Friedrich, Frances J (FJ);

Affiliation: SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, USA.

Grants: R01 NS041372-04 (Agency:NINDS NIH HHS) ; R01 NS41372 (Agency:NINDS NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

Journal: Brain and cognition (Brain Cogn), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Apr; vol 63 (issue 3) : pp 247-59

Dates: Created 2007/03/13; Completed 2007/05/10; Revised 2008/11/20;

PMID: 17049703, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Aged
Attention - physiology
Female
Field Dependence-Independence
Functional Laterality - physiology
Humans
Inhibition (Psychology)
Male

Middle Aged
Parkinson Disease - physiopathology; psychology
Perceptual Masking - physiology
Psychomotor Performance
Reaction Time - physiology
Reference Values
Reproducibility of Results
Time Factors

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