The current study investigated whether consonance (imperfect consonance: major third) and dissonance (minor second) would capture attention differently when they occurred as chords (combinations of two tones) that were deviant from their context. In addition, we also examined how task demand would modulate these chords' attentional capture. For this investigation, we used an auditory three-stimulus oddball paradigm in which these chords were presented as deviant stimuli (5% each) among frequent standard (80%) and infrequent target (10%) pure tones. The task difficulty was manipulated by changing pitch intervals between standard and target tones. The results showed that these chords elicited dual-peak P3a, and that consonance enhanced the late phase of P3a compared to dissonance, only when the task demand was high. These findings revealed that deviant consonance and dissonance captured attention differently; in particular, consonance captured attention more strongly than dissonance, and this effect was induced by high task demand. This attentional capture difference between the chord categories was induced through enhanced focus of attention on the pitch dimension of oddball stimuli. In addition, the deviant chords might have been processed by a mechanism similar to that which processes novel stimuli, and these chords' differences might have affected not the novelty detection process, but a process which orients attentional resources to deviant chords, which were recognized as novel stimuli.

当前的研究调查了协和（不完美的协和：大三度）和不协和（小二）是否会在它们作为偏离上下文的和弦（两个音调的组合）出现时以不同的方式吸引注意力。此外，我们还研究了任务需求如何调节这些和弦的注意力捕获。在本次调查中，我们使用了听觉三刺激古怪范式，其中这些和弦在频繁的标准 (80%) 和不常见的目标 (10%) 纯音中呈现为异常刺激（每个 5%）。通过改变标准音和目标音之间的音高间隔来操纵任务难度。结果表明，这些和弦引发了双峰 P3a，并且仅当任务要求很高时，与不和谐相比，和谐增强了 P3a 的后期阶段。这些发现表明，异常谐和和不谐和引起的注意力不同；特别是，谐和比不谐和更能吸引注意力，这种效果是由高任务要求引起的。和弦类别之间的这种注意力捕获差异是通过增强对古怪刺激的音高维度的注意力引起的。此外，异常和弦可能被一种类似于处理新刺激的机制处理，这些和弦的差异可能影响的不是新颖性检测过程，而是将注意力资源定向到异常和弦的过程，这被认为是新奇刺激。这种效果是由高任务需求引起的。和弦类别之间的这种注意力捕获差异是通过增强对古怪刺激的音高维度的注意力引起的。此外，异常和弦可能被一种类似于处理新刺激的机制处理，这些和弦的差异可能影响的不是新颖性检测过程，而是将注意力资源定向到异常和弦的过程，这被认为是新奇刺激。这种效果是由高任务需求引起的。和弦类别之间的这种注意力捕获差异是通过增强对古怪刺激的音高维度的注意力引起的。此外，异常和弦可能被一种类似于处理新刺激的机制处理，这些和弦的差异可能影响的不是新颖性检测过程，而是将注意力资源定向到异常和弦的过程，这被认为是新奇刺激。