Fig. 1.

Sound sequence. Participants were instructed to ignore the oddball sound sequence and to focus on a silent video clip. Environmental sounds (EMO = emotional novel sounds; NEUTR = neutral novel sounds) were pseudo-randomly presented within a sequence of repeated standard sounds (STA). Examples of novel sounds are illustrated in the trial structure (chinking coins, a crying baby, a siren, toasting glasses, etc.). A total of 56 different novel sounds were presented with a randomized stimulus-onset asynchrony of 1800−2080 ms. Sounds were not relevant for the task (watching a video clip), but novel sounds were expected to capture attention.