Not so Primitive: Context Sensitive Meta-Learning About Unattended Sound Sequences
Juanita Todd, Alexander L. Provost, Lisa Whitson, Andrew Heathcote · PsycEXTRA Dataset · 2012
Mismatch Negativity (MMN) -an evoked response potential elicited when a "deviant" sound violates a regularity in the auditory environment -is integral to auditory scene processing and has been used to demonstrate "primitive intelligence" in auditory shortterm memory.Using a new multiple context and timescale protocol we show that MMN magnitude displays a context sensitive modulation depending on changes in the probability of a deviant at multiple temporal scales.We demonstrate a primacy bias causing asymmetric evidence-based modulation of predictions about the environment, and that learning how to learn about deviant probability (meta-learning) induces contextsensitive variation in the accessibility of predictive long-term memory representations that underpin the MMN.The existence of the bias and meta-learning are consistent with automatic attributions of behavioural salience governing relevance-filtering processes operating outside of awareness.