PEBL Hub — IRB Fact Sheet — 2026-08-23
Oddball Task
Category:Attention
Duration:~5 minutes
Parameters:2 configurable parameters available
Version:1.0
Input:Keyboard
Description
The PEBL OddBall Task. A response conflict task where participants respond to red circles and squares appearing on the left or right side of the screen.
A response conflict task where participants respond to red circles and squares appearing on the left or right side of the screen. The standard mapping is: circle → left shift key, square → right shift key. Most trials (90%) are 'coherent' with circles on left and squares on right. The remaining 10% are 'oddball' trials where the stimulus appears on the incongruent side (circle on right or square on left), requiring participants to override the spatial response tendency. Stimuli appear for 500ms with a 2500ms response window. Practice trials provide feedback.
Key Parameters
| numreps | This many reps of the 20-trial design (6 reps + 2= 122 trials was used by Huettel & McCarthy) (default: 6) |
| soa | Fix the stimulus-onset asynchrony. (default: 3000) |
| responsemode | Response method: auto (platform-aware), keyboardShift (L/R shift), keyboardSafe (Z/slash for web), mousetarget (click targets), mousebutton (L/R mouse buttons), touchtarget (tap targets, hides footer) (default: auto) |
References
Huettel, S. A., & McCarthy, G. (2004). What is odd in the oddball task?:: Prefrontal cortex is activated by dynamic changes in response strategy. Neuropsychologia, 42(3), 379-386.