Visual Task Demands and the Auditory Mismatch Negativity: An Empirical Study and a Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Because the auditory system is particularly useful in monitoring the environment, previous research has examined whether task-irrelevant, auditory distracters are processed even if subjects focus their attention on visual stimuli. This research suggests that attentionally demanding visual tasks decrease the auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) to simultaneously presented auditory distractors. Because a recent behavioral study found that high visual perceptual load decreased detection sensitivity of simultaneous tones, we used a similar task (n = 28) to determine if high visual perceptual load would reduce the auditory MMN. Results suggested that perceptual load did not decrease the MMN. At face value, these nonsignificant findings may suggest that effects of perceptual load on the MMN are smaller than those of other demanding visual tasks. If so, effect sizes should differ systematically between the present and previous studies. We conducted a selective meta-analysis of published studies in which the MMN was derived from the EEG, the visual task demands were continuous and varied between high and low within the same task, and the task-irrelevant tones were presented in a typical oddball paradigm simultaneously with the visual stimuli. Because the meta-analysis suggested that the present (null) findings did not differ systematically from previous findings, the available evidence was combined. Results of this meta-analysis confirmed that demanding visual tasks reduce the MMN to auditory distracters. However, because the meta-analysis was based on small studies and because of the risk for publication biases, future studies should be preregistered with large samples (n > 150) to provide confirmatory evidence for the results of the present meta-analysis. These future studies should also use control conditions that reduce confounding effects of neural adaptation, and use load manipulations that are defined independently from their effects on the MMN.

Individuals with autism have no detectable deficit in neural markers of prediction error when presented with auditory rhythms of varied temporal complexity

“…silent movie with subtitles, silent video game, reading a book). An unattended task was chosen to focus on passive generation of neural predictive models, and visual task demands have been shown not to impact the MMN response (Wiens, Szychowska, & Nilsson, 2016). EEG was continuously recorded throughout the task using a 128 channel ActiveTwo acquisition system (BioSemi, The Netherlands).…”

Data on the auditory duration mismatch negativity for different sound pressure levels and visual perceptual loads

“…2 shows the grand mean waveforms of the MMN (i.e., deviant minus standard) for each load at Fz and Cz (left column), the difference wave in MMN between loads (middle column), and a scatterplot of the mean MMN amplitudes between low and high load for the three SPLs. For the actual analyses, only the MMN amplitudes at Fz were used because this electrode is used most often [2] , [5] , and is recommended by guidelines [6] .…”

“…Data collection occurred in two waves. The first group of 28 participants was presented with the sounds at 76 dB SPL [2] . Shortly thereafter, we decided to do a follow-up study with lower SPL (66 dB) in order to investigate the effect of SPL on the MMN [1] .…”

“…The procedure is identical to that in our previous study [2] . Participants performed a speeded letter detection task (detect X) and were instructed to press the spacebar whenever the letter X was shown (target).…”

“…In separate blocks, perceptual load was either low (the six letters were the same) or high (the six letters differed). In the first data collection, tones had only 76 dB SPL [2] . In a follow-up data collection with exactly the same procedure, tones had 56 and 66 dB SPL [1] .…”