Not so primitive: context-sensitive meta-learning about unattended sound sequences.
Mismatch negativity (MMN), an evoked response potential elicited when a "deviant" sound violates a regularity in the auditory environment, is integral to auditory scene processing and has been used to demonstrate "primitive intelligence" in auditory short-term memory. Using a new multiple-context and -timescale protocol we show that MMN magnitude displays a context-sensitive modulation depending on changes in the probability of a deviant at multiple temporal scales. We demonstrate a primacy bias causing asymmetric evidence-based modulation of predictions about the environment, and we demonstrate that learning how to learn about deviant probability (meta-learning) induces context-sensitive variation in the accessibility of predictive long-term memory representations that underpin the MMN. The existence of the bias and meta-learning are consistent with automatic attributions of behavioral salience governing relevance-filtering processes operating outside of awareness.
School of Psychology, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia. juanita.todd@newcastle.edu.au
Juanita
J
Todd
Alexander
A
Provost
Lisa R
LR
Whitson
Gavin
G
Cooper
Andrew
A
Heathcote
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D003265:Contingent Negative Variation / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology