Abstract: It has been suggested that deviance distraction is caused by unexpected sensory events in the to-be-ignored stimuli violating thecognitive system’s predictions of incoming stimuli. The majority of research has used methods where the to-be-ignored expected (standards)and the unexpected (deviants) stimuli are presented within the same modality. Less is known about the behavioral impact of deviancedistraction when the to-be-ignored stimuli are presented in different modalities (e.g., standard and deviants presented in different modalities).In three experiments using cross-modal oddball tasks with mixed-modality to-be-ignored stimuli, we examined the distractive role ofunexpected auditory deviants presented in a continuous stream of expected standard vibrations. The results showed that deviance distractionseems to be dependent upon the to-be-ignored stimuli being presented within the same modality, and that the simplest omission ofsomething expected; in this case, a standard vibration may be enough to capture attention and distract performance.