Brain Imaging Centre, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Magyar tudósok körútja 2, H-1117, Budapest, Hungary.
Brain Imaging Centre, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Magyar tudósok körútja 2, H-1117, Budapest, Hungary; Department of Cognitive Science, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Egry József utca 1, H-1111, Budapest, Hungary.
Neuropsychologia. 2021 Jun 18;156:107826. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107826. Epub 2021 Mar 12.
Anticipation of upcoming events plays a crucial role in automatic behaviors. It is, however, still unclear whether the event-related brain potential (ERP) markers of anticipation could track the implicit acquisition of probabilistic regularities that can be considered as building blocks of automatic behaviors. Therefore, in a four-choice reaction time (RT) task performed by young adults (N = 36), the contingent negative variation (CNV) as an ERP marker of anticipation was measured from the onset of a cue stimulus until the presentation of a target stimulus. Due to the probability structure of the task, target stimuli were either predictable or unpredictable, but this was unknown to participants. The cue did not contain predictive information on the upcoming target. Results showed that the CNV amplitude during response preparation was larger before the unpredictable than before the predictable target stimuli. In addition, although RTs increased, the P3 amplitude decreased for the unpredictable as compared with the predictable target stimuli, possibly due to the stronger response preparation that preceded stimulus presentation. These results suggest that enhanced attentional resources are allocated to the implicit anticipation and processing of unpredictable events. This might originate from the formation of internal models on the probabilistic regularities of the stimulus stream, which primarily facilitates the processing of predictable events. Overall, we provide ERP evidence that supports the role of implicit anticipation and predictive processes in the acquisition of probabilistic regularities.
对即将发生的事件的预期在自动行为中起着至关重要的作用。然而，目前尚不清楚预期的事件相关脑电位 (ERP) 标志物是否可以跟踪作为自动行为构建模块的概率规律的隐性习得。因此，在一项由年轻成年人（N=36）进行的四项选择反应时（RT）任务中，从线索刺激开始到目标刺激呈现，测量了作为预期 ERP 标志物的条件负变（CNV）。由于任务的概率结构，目标刺激是可预测的或不可预测的，但参与者并不知道这一点。线索没有提供关于即将到来的目标的预测信息。结果表明，在不可预测的目标刺激之前，反应准备期间的 CNV 幅度大于可预测的目标刺激之前。此外，尽管 RT 增加，但与可预测的目标刺激相比，不可预测的目标刺激的 P3 振幅减小，这可能是由于在刺激呈现之前进行了更强的反应准备。这些结果表明，增强的注意力资源被分配到不可预测事件的隐性预期和处理中。这可能源于对刺激流概率规律的内部模型的形成，这主要有利于可预测事件的处理。总的来说，我们提供了 ERP 证据，支持隐性预期和预测过程在概率规律习得中的作用。
