Testing the S-R link hypothesis of P3b: The oddball effect on S1-evoked P3 gets reduced by increased task relevance of S2

We had previously reported that the oddball effect on the P3b EEG potential evoked by infrequent vs. frequent S1 presented in a sequence of two stimuli, S1 and S2, gets reduced in a “combination task”. In this task, responses were determined by the combinations of S1 and S2 rather than by S1 only. We had attributed this reduction of the oddball effect to increased task difficulty. The present study investigated possible reasons for this reduction of S1-evoked P3b in more detail, by making the combination task easier in several respects: allowing for forming associations from S1 to responses (Experiment 1), reducing the complexity of stimulus-response (S-R) mappings (Experiment 2), and decreasing S2 relevance in defining responses (Experiment 3). The results showed that only S2 relevance affected the oddball effect on S1-evoked P3b. Namely, when S2 attained some relevance by inducing a go/no-go decision for S1-defined responses, the oddball effect on S1-evoked P3b was intermediate between the large effect in the simple oddball task and the small effect in the combination task. The results may be explained in terms of the S-R link hypothesis of P3b which interprets P3b as reflecting reactivation of well-established S-R links.