Stimulus expectations do not modulate visual event-related potentials in probabilistic cueing designs

Abstract

Humans and other animals can learn and exploit repeating patterns that occur within their environments. These learned patterns can be used to form expectations about future sensory events. Several influential predictive coding models have been proposed to explain how learned expectations influence the activity of stimulus- selective neurons in the visual system. These models specify reductions in neural response measures when expectations are fulfilled (termed expectation suppression) and increases following surprising sensory events. However, there is currently scant evidence for expectation suppression in the visual system when confounding factors are taken into account. Effects of surprise have been observed in blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signals, but not when using electrophysiological measures. To provide a strong test for expectation suppression and surprise effects we ran a predictive cueing experiment while recording electroencephalographic (EEG) data. Participants (n=48) learned cue-face associations during a training session and were then exposed to these cue-face pairs in a subsequent experiment. Using univariate analyses of face-evoked event-related potentials (ERPs) we did not observe any differences across expected (90% probability), neutral (50%) and surprising (10%) face conditions. Across these comparisons, Bayes factors consistently favoured the null hypothesis throughout the time-course of the stimulus-evoked response. When using multivariate pattern analysis we did not observe above-chance classification of expected and surprising face-evoked ERPs. By contrast, we found robust within- and across-trial stimulus repetition effects. Our findings do not support predictive coding- based accounts that specify reduced prediction error signalling when perceptual expectations are fulfilled. They instead highlight the utility of other types of predictive processing models that describe expectation-related phenomena in the visual system without recourse to prediction error signalling.

Prior probability cues bias sensory encoding with increasing task exposure

“…Crucially, however, this effect only emerged with substantial task exposure suggesting that previous studies may have overlooked such sensory-level effects because they administered significantly fewer trials (e.g. den Ouden et al, 2023 ).…”

Prior probability cues bias sensory encoding with increasing task exposure

“…Crucially, however, this effect only emerged with substantial task exposure suggesting that previous studies may have overlooked such sensorylevel effects because they administered significantly fewer trials (e.g. den Ouden et al, 2023).…”

“…Findling et al, 2023;Fiser et al, 2016;Gavornik & Bear, 2014), but the evidence from human electrophysiology is more mixed (e.g. Aitken et al, 2020;den Ouden et al, 2023;Feuerriegel et al, 2018;Hall et al, 2018;Kok et al, 2017;Rungratsameetaweemana et al, 2018;Solomon et al, 2021;Stefanics et al, 2014;Tang et al, 2018). While some have reported expectation effects in humans using EEG/MEG, these studies either measured sensory signals whose relevance to the decision process is uncertain (e.g.…”

Cellular mechanisms of cooperative context-sensitive predictive inference

“…For example, Alilović et al (2019) report that the first transient wave of feedforward processing (<80 ms post-stimulus) is impenetrable by predictive effects. Solomon et al (2021) purported to isolate the markers of subtractive predictive coding in the cortex, and found almost none (see also the negative results of Ouden et al 2023 ). Given the lack of convincing empirical support, the popularity of predictive coding models may be surprising.…”