The hemispheric asymmetry of negative event-related potentials with selective attention was examined in eight adults while the subjects were instructed to detect plant names ( targets ) among animal names if they were presented in red ( or blue ) and to ignore those names if they were in blue ( or red ). Negativity to names in the attended color was maximum at the vertex and lateralized at the left hemisphere. However, this asymmetry was not found when subjects performed a discrimination on

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... verbal task. In addition, those data on reaction time suggested that the attentional negativity developed during a stimulus discrimination depending on whether the relevant item was a target. The negativity was interpreted as partially reflecting a processing stage associated with the target discrimination for a relevant stimulus.