Event-related potential evidence that working memory whether inside or outside a virtual reality environment can reduce the extent of attention capture by irrelevant novel stimuli

These findings suggest that early processes associated with detection of acoustic change operate automatically, regardless of the demands of the visual task. On the other hand, the P3a, associated with attention-capture and the switching of attention from the task-at-hand, was reduced in the VR a WM task. It was, however, also reduced in the 2D WM task. It is thus not clear whether the VR environment or the fact that participants were engaged in a WM task was responsible for the reduction of the P3a.