An ERP developmental study of repetition priming by auditory novel stimuli.
Event-related potentials were recorded from participants 5-7, 9-11, 14-16, and 22-28 years old during an auditory novelty oddball task. In this task, stimuli about which the participant is not instructed (i.e., novel or uncategorized) typically elicit a more frontally oriented P3 scalp topography (novelty P3). In contrast, stimuli to which the participant must respond (i.e., target or precategorized) elicit a P3 with a more posterior scalp topography. Repetition of identical novel stimuli led to a similar reduction in novelty P3 amplitude for all age groups. Moreover, with repetition the shift in scalp topography of the novelty P3 to a more parietally oriented distribution was similar in children and adults. A second component, the P3(2) (assumed to be an analog of the P3b), exhibited a repetition priming effect in both the adults and the youngest children. The fact that age-related differences induced by novel repetition were small and not systematic indicates that the processing of novel information is similar across a wide age range.
Cycowicz
Y M
YM
Cognitive Electrophysiology Laboratory, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York 10032, USA. cycowic@nypsych.cpmc.columbia.edu
Friedman
D
D
Rothstein
M
M
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis