A multilab investigation into the N2pc as an indicator of attentional selectivity: Direct replication of Eimer (1996).

The N2pc is widely employed as an electrophysiological marker of an attention allocation. This interpretation was in no small part driven by the observation of an N2pc elicited by an isolated relevant target object, which was reported as Experiment 2 in Eimer (1996; The N2pc component as an indicator of attentional selectivity. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 99, 225-234). All subsequent refined interpretations of the N2pc had to take this crucial finding into account. Despite its central role for neurocognitive attention research, there have been no direct replications and only few conceptual replications of this seminal work. Within the context of #EEGManyLabs, an international community-driven effort to replicate the most influential EEG studies ever published, the present study was selected due to its impact on the study of selective attention. We propose to provide a high-powered direct replication, carefully following all the steps laid out in Pavlov et al. (2021; #EEGManyLabs: Investigating the replicability of influential EEG experiments. Cortex, 144, 213–229) to assure a high-quality direct replication of the original study. In doing so, we expect to shed further light on the functional significance of the N2pc as an electrophysiological marker of attentional selectivity.