title: Neurophysiological signs of rapidly emerging visual expertise for symbol strings.
abstract: The current study examined whether the repeated visual presentation of novel, meaningless symbol strings triggers rapid changes in event related potentials (ERP). Adult participants performed three versions of a word and symbol string repetition detection task in the same experimental session. Analyses focussed on the occipito-temporal N1 (approximately 150 ms) known to reflect early word-specific processing and stimulus categorisation. While the N1 to words did not change, the occipito-temporal negativity to symbol strings increased over runs and converged with the word N1. Later (approximately 220 ms) more positive occipito-temporal amplitudes to repeated words in the third compared to the first run implied a repetition priming effect. This suggests that symbol string processing changed over time due to visual learning and increased perceptual expertise.
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Brain Mapping Research, University of Zurich, Neumünsterallee 9/Fach, CH-8032 Zurich.
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Brem
authors.forename: Anette
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lang-Dullenkopf
authors.forename: Urs
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Maurer
authors.forename: Pascal
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Halder
authors.forename: Kerstin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Bucher
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Brandeis
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D012016:Reference Values; D013561:Symbolism; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*