title: Temporal span of human echoic memory and mismatch negativity: revisited.
abstract: The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA)-related decrease in mismatch negativity (MMN) amplitude has been used to infer a putative auditory sensory memory duration of 4-10 s. However, both increased standard-to-standard (SSA) and standard-to-deviant (SDA) gaps could contribute to the effect. Fourteen subjects were presented with standard and deviant tones with short (0.35 s) and long (3.5 s) SOAs. In addition, the SSA and SDA were separately manipulated to test the relative contributions of slower rate of standard tone presentation and longer SDA gap to the SOA-related decrease in MMN amplitude. The MMN amplitude decreased with long SOA by 61%. Increases in SSA and SDA resulted in intermediate 47% and 31% decreases, these manipulations explaining 67% of the long SOA effect (p<0.001). Consequently, echoic memory length cannot be directly inferred from an MMN-SOA dependency function.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: I P
authors.initials: IP
authors.lastname: Jääskeläinen
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hautamäki
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Näätänen
authors.forename: R J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Ilmoniemi
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004585:Electrooculography; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D012016:Reference Values; D013997:Time Factors; D014741:Video Recording; D014796:Visual Perception