The lateralized posterior-occipital ERPs. a, b, The N2-posterior-contralateral (N2pc) component between the congruent and incongruent conditions and between trials with and without salient distractors, respectively. The N2pc responses were sorted relative to the targets that were presented either on the left or the right side of the screen. For trials with salient distractors, we only included trials where the salient distractors were presented at and adjacent to the vertical meridian. Black bars in the bottom of the ERP traces represent significant laterality of the N2pc amplitude difference between the contralateral minus ipsilateral posterior occipital electrodes (corrected based on the cluster-based permutation method). Shaded areas represent within-subject SEM of the N2pc amplitudes. c, The distractor positivity (Pd) component across the congruent and incongruent trials where salient distractors were presented on the left or right side of the screen and targets were presented at the vertical meridian. Note that we observed robust N2pc and Pd components from ∼197–455 and ∼102–246 ms after cue onset, respectively, all of which emerged later than the incongruency-related modulations of the alpha-based reconstructions of selective attention (Fig. 2 and Extended Data Fig. 2-1 for the IEM results with higher temporal precision). Black bars on top of the ERP traces represent significant lateralization of the Pd amplitudes between the contralateral minus ipsilateral posterior occipital electrodes (corrected based on the cluster-based permutation method). Shaded areas represent within-subject SEM of the ERP amplitudes. Bottom panels illustrate topographic maps showing the N2Pc and Pd amplitude difference averaged across significant windows of ∼197–455 and ∼102–246 ms, respectively.