Electrophysiological Correlates of Perceptual Auditory Priming Without Explicit Recognition Memory

Abstract

The aim of this study was to identify an event-related potential (ERP correlate) of perceptual auditory priming using a method that can dissociate it from explicit memory similar to Rugg et al. (1998) . EEG was recorded during performance of an auditory word recognition test, where 17 participants discriminated “old” from “new” aural words, encoded using either a “deep” or “shallow” levels-of-processing (LOP) study task. A right-lateralized P200 effect was modulated by words’ old/new status but not by accuracy of recognition or LOP manipulation. Because this effect was driven by simple repetition rather than factors known to influence episodic recognition memory, a “bottom-up” perceptual priming function was inferred which was substantiated by its early temporal appearance. A similar ERP amplitude modulation was evident across a broader topographical region during the subsequent N400 time interval. Conversely the late posterior component (LPC; 500–800 ms) for deeply-encoded, correctly-recognized words was of higher amplitude than LPCs for shallowly-encoded and new words, consistent with proposals that this ERP component indexes episodic memory. To our knowledge this is the first report of an ERP correlate of auditory perceptual priming dissociated from explicit episodic memory.

EEG Correlates of Old/New Discrimination Performance Involving Abstract Figures and Non-Words

“…Such findings are supported by brain imaging studies that have found more positive late parietal P600 amplitudes for the deeply-over the shallowly-encoded stimuli [22,23], which corroborates an episodic memory-related function of this evoked response potential (ERP) [24]. For example, Harris and Cutmore [25] used an auditory word recognition task in which half of the trials made use of shallow encoding (i.e., determine if an auditory word comprised long vowels) and the other half used deep encoding (i.e., incorporate an auditory word into a meaningful sentence). According to their findings, not only were the deeply encoded words more accurately recognized than the shallow, but the related P600 amplitudes of the deeply encoded words were also larger compared to the shallow.…”

Context-dependent impact of presuppositions on early magnetic brain responses during speech perception

“…The P200 potential has also been observed in case of visual word presentation and seems to be modulated by attention-dependent phonological/lexical/semantic processing (Blanchet, Gagnon, & Bastien, 2007;Cheng, Liu, Lee, Hung, & Tzeng, 2012). Furthermore, this evoked magnetic field has been found sensitive to auditory priming (Harris, Cutmore, O'Gorman, Finnigan, & Shum, 2013), audiovisual priming (Schall, Kiebel, Maess, & von Kriegstein, 2013), phonological priming (Cheng, Schafer, & Riddell, 2014), prediction in case if self-initiated speech (Knolle et al, 2013), and to processes of sensory gating (Gjini, Arfken, & Boutros, 2010;Rentzsch, Jockers-Scherübl, Boutros, & Gallinat, 2008). Similarly, context-matching items showed a lower P200c deflection as compared to non-matching items in the present study, due to, conceivably, top-down generated forward predictions of upcoming materials.…”

Processing of novelty and familiarity in the aging brain

“…For example, Harris, Cutmore, O'Gorman, Finnigan, and Shum (2013) used an auditory word recognition task in which half of the trials made use of shallow encoding (i.e., determine if an auditory word comprised long vowels)…”