The visual P2 is attenuated for attended objects near the hands

Vision is altered when people place their hands near the object they are observing. To investigate the neural processes underlying this effect, we measured electroencephalographic visual-evoked potentials (VEPs) elicited by reversing checkerboards, while participants' hands either surrounded the visual display or rested at their sides. We found the P2 component was attenuated for hand-proximal stimuli, but only when participants attended to the location of the checkerboard. In Experiment 1, participants performed an attention-demanding color-change task that was presented centrally, and the P2 component was attenuated for central, but not peripheral, checkerboards. In Experiment 2, participants performed the attention task in the periphery, and the P2 was attenuated for peripheral, but not central, checkerboards. These results suggest that hand-proximal stimuli benefit from enhanced selective attention at later stages of perceptual processing. The effect only occurs for objects at task-relevant locations, however, even when task-irrelevant locations are physically closer to the hands.