Can auditory deviant stimuli temporarily suspend cognitive processing? Evidence from patients with anxiety Pacheco Unguetti, Antonia Pilar Gelabert, Joan Miquel Parmentier, Fabrice B. R. auditory-visual oddball task oddball task deviant sounds anxiety disorders Deviance distraction While anxiety is typically thought to increase distractibility, this notion mostly derives from studies using emotionally loaded distractors presented in the same modality as the target stimuli and tasks involving crosstalk interference. We examined whether pathological anxiety might also increase distractibility for emotionally neutral irrelevant sounds presented prior to target stimuli in a task where these stimuli do not compete for selection. Patients with anxiety and control participants categorized visual digits preceded by task-irrelevant sounds that changed on rare trials (auditory deviance). Both groups exhibited an equivalent increase in response times following a deviant sound but patients showed a reduction of response accuracy, which was entirely due to an increase in response omissions. We conclude that the involuntary capture of attention by unexpected stimuli may, in patients with anxiety, result in a temporary suspension of cognitive activity. 2025-01-29T07:01:56Z 2025-01-29T07:01:56Z 2016-01-01 journal article Pacheco-Unguetti, A. P., Gelabert, J. M., & Parmentier, F. B. R. (2016). Can auditory deviant stimuli temporarily suspend cognitive processing? Evidence from patients with anxiety. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69(1), 150-160. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2015.1031145 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/100840 https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2015.103114 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional