TY - JOUR
T1 - Sound category habituation requires task-relevant attention
AU - Moskowitz, Howard S.
AU - Sussman, Elyse S.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2023 Moskowitz and Sussman.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Introduction: Processing the wealth of sensory information from the surrounding environment is a vital human function with the potential to develop learning, advance social interactions, and promote safety and well-being. Methods: To elucidate underlying processes governing these activities we measured neurophysiological responses to patterned stimulus sequences during a sound categorization task to evaluate attention effects on implicit learning, sound categorization, and speech perception. Using a unique experimental design, we uncoupled conceptual categorical effects from stimulus-specific effects by presenting categorical stimulus tokens that did not physically repeat. Results: We found effects of implicit learning, categorical habituation, and a speech perception bias when the sounds were attended, and the listeners performed a categorization task (task-relevant). In contrast, there was no evidence of a speech perception bias, implicit learning of the structured sound sequence, or repetition suppression to repeated within-category sounds (no categorical habituation) when participants passively listened to the sounds and watched a silent closed-captioned video (task-irrelevant). No indication of category perception was demonstrated in the scalp-recorded brain components when participants were watching a movie and had no task with the sounds. Discussion: These results demonstrate that attention is required to maintain category identification and expectations induced by a structured sequence when the conceptual information must be extracted from stimuli that are acoustically distinct. Taken together, these striking attention effects support the theoretical view that top-down control is required to initiate expectations for higher level cognitive processing.
AB - Introduction: Processing the wealth of sensory information from the surrounding environment is a vital human function with the potential to develop learning, advance social interactions, and promote safety and well-being. Methods: To elucidate underlying processes governing these activities we measured neurophysiological responses to patterned stimulus sequences during a sound categorization task to evaluate attention effects on implicit learning, sound categorization, and speech perception. Using a unique experimental design, we uncoupled conceptual categorical effects from stimulus-specific effects by presenting categorical stimulus tokens that did not physically repeat. Results: We found effects of implicit learning, categorical habituation, and a speech perception bias when the sounds were attended, and the listeners performed a categorization task (task-relevant). In contrast, there was no evidence of a speech perception bias, implicit learning of the structured sound sequence, or repetition suppression to repeated within-category sounds (no categorical habituation) when participants passively listened to the sounds and watched a silent closed-captioned video (task-irrelevant). No indication of category perception was demonstrated in the scalp-recorded brain components when participants were watching a movie and had no task with the sounds. Discussion: These results demonstrate that attention is required to maintain category identification and expectations induced by a structured sequence when the conceptual information must be extracted from stimuli that are acoustically distinct. Taken together, these striking attention effects support the theoretical view that top-down control is required to initiate expectations for higher level cognitive processing.
KW - attention
KW - categorical perception
KW - event-related brain potentials (ERPs)
KW - implicit learning
KW - speech
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U2 - 10.3389/fnins.2023.1228506
DO - 10.3389/fnins.2023.1228506
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85175822100
SN - 1662-4548
VL - 17
JO - Frontiers in Neuroscience
JF - Frontiers in Neuroscience
M1 - 1228506
ER -