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The effect of perceptual grouping on the mismatch negativity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2001

HELEN GAETA
Affiliation:
Cognitive Electrophysiology Laboratory, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, USA
DAVID FRIEDMAN
Affiliation:
Cognitive Electrophysiology Laboratory, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, USA
WALTER RITTER
Affiliation:
Department of Neuroscience, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, USA
JEFF CHENG
Affiliation:
Cognitive Electrophysiology Laboratory, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, USA
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Abstract

The mismatch negativity (MMN) was used as a probe to evaluate changes, with age, of transient auditory memory. Subjects were 16 young (M = 23 years) and 16 old (M = 72 years) people. Standard auditory stimuli were presented in trains of eight tones (1000 Hz) with either a 1-s or 8-s intertrain interval (ITI). Occasionally, the first stimulus of a train was replaced with a 1200 Hz tone (deviant). The MMN was recorded while subjects watched a silent movie and ignored the sounds. Both groups of subjects showed an MMN response to deviant stimuli under the 1-s ITI condition, but MMNs were only seen for some subjects under the 8-s ITI condition. After MMN recording, subjects performed a discrimination task to the tones used for recording MMNs. Accuracy for both groups was near 100% at both ITIs. These results suggest that generation of MMN is a function of the perceptual grouping of the acoustical stimuli and that the integrity of perceptual grouping may be maintained with increased age.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2001 Society for Psychophysiological Research

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