Neural Habituation Enhances Novelty Detection: an EEG Study of Rapidly Presented Words

Abstract

Huber and O'Reilly (2003) proposed that neural habituation aids perceptual processing, separating neural responses to currently viewed objects from recently viewed objects. However, synaptic depression has costs, producing repetition deficits. Prior work confirmed the transition from repetition benefits to deficits with increasing duration of a prime object, but the prediction of enhanced novelty detection was not tested. The current study examined this prediction with a same/different word priming task, using support vector machine (SVM) classification of EEG data, ERP analyses focused on the N400, and dynamic neural network simulations fit to behavioral data to provide a priori predictions of the ERP effects. Subjects made same/different judgements to a response word in relation to an immediately preceding brief target word; prime durations were short (50ms) or long (400ms), and long durations decreased P100/N170 responses to the target word, suggesting that this manipulation increased habituation. Following long duration primes, correct "different" judgments of primed response words increased, evidencing enhanced novelty detection. An SVM classifier predicted trial-bytrial behavior with 66.34% accuracy on held-out data, with greatest predictive power at a time pattern consistent with the N400. The habituation model was augmented with a maintained semantics layer (i.e., working memory) to generate behavior and N400 predictions. A second experiment used responselocked ERPs, confirming the model's assumption that residual activation in working memory is the basis of novelty decisions. These results support the theory that neural habituation enhances novelty detection, and the model assumption that the N400 reflects updating of semantic information in working memory..

A Neural Habituation Account of the Negative Compatibility Effect

“…The theory guiding this work assumes that perceptual habituation is useful for temporally segmenting the stream of visual inputs -by habituating to recently viewed objects, new objects are made perceptually salient. Causal evidence that neural habituation enhances novelty detection was recently reported by Jacob and Huber (2020). In their same/different task with word stimuli, they observed a transition from benefits to deficits with increasing duration of the cue word.…”

“…The neural habituation model's success in explaining the Negative Compatibility Effect (NCE) literature suggests that the NCE is a cognitive aftereffect owing to neural habituation for higher level forms of perception. This explanation connects the NCE literature to perceptual dynamics and RSVP paradigms more generally, demonstrating links between the NCE and higher level repetition deficits in orthographic, semantic, and face priming (Huber, Tian, et al, 2008;Jacob & Huber, 2020;Potter et al, 2018;Rieth & Huber, 2010, spatial cueing (Rieth & Huber, 2013), episodic recognition (Huber, Clark, et al, 2008), the attentional blink (Rusconi & Huber, 2018), evaluative priming (Irwin et al, 2010), and semantic satiation (Tian & Huber, 2010. Similar to these cognitive aftereffects that were previously explained by neural habituation, the NCE in the arrow priming task is explained by neural habituation of orientation perception, which, in turn, reduces activation in the response system.…”

“…In the ensuing years, the neural habituation model explained a wide variety of behavioral paradigms that examine short-term inter-stimulus effects, appealing to the general properties of neural dynamic behavior, rather than paradigm-specific explanations. These applications of the neural habituation model include repetition and semantic priming of words (Huber, Tian, et al, 2008;Jacob & Huber, 2020;Potter et al, 2018;Rieth & Huber, 2017), repetition priming of faces (Rieth & Huber, 2010), change detection with words (Davelaar et al, 2011), semantic satiation (Tian & Huber, 2013), inhibition of return with spatial cueing (Rieth & Huber, 2013), priming of affective valence (Irwin et al, 2010), immediate repetition in recognition memory (Huber, Clark, et al, 2008), and temporal search for targets NEURAL HABITUATION ACCOUNT OF THE NCE in the 'attentional blink' paradigm (Rusconi & Huber, 2018). Here we add to this growing list, demonstrating that a long-standing debate surrounding the causes of the 'negative compatibility effect', or NCE (Eimer & Schlaghecken, 1998) can be resolved with the neural habituation model.…”

“…Given the simple NEURAL HABITUATION ACCOUNT OF THE NCE nature of the stimuli and task used in this experiment, no further layers were needed; for experiments using more complex visual objects additional perceptual layers are needed (i.e. a word priming task would need a third layer representing whole words, with that layer receiving input from letter perception in the second layer), and for experiments involving comparisons between a current test stimulus and something in the past (e.g., same/different decisions or episodic familiarity), an additional memory layer is needed, for instance capturing long-term memory (Huber, Clark, et al, 2008) or working memory (Jacob & Huber, 2020;Rusconi & Huber, 2018).…”

A neural habituation account of the negative compatibility effect.

“…This is a result of inhibitory competition influencing the model's perceptual layers: if the representation of recently viewed objects is weaker due to habituation, novel objects will be subjected to less lateral inhibition, and thus will be easier to perceive. In fact, causal evidence that neural habituation enhances novelty detection was recently reported by Jacob and Huber (2020). In their same/different task with word stimuli, they observed a transition from benefits to deficits with increasing duration of the cue word.…”