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Event‐Related Brain Potentials in a Stimulus‐Discrimination Learning Paradigm
Author(s) -
Rösler Frank
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.1981.tb02478.x
Subject(s) - habituation , psychology , n100 , stimulus (psychology) , event related potential , facilitation , cognitive psychology , neuroscience , amplitude , cognition , physics , quantum mechanics
Event‐related brain potentials were recorded from human subjects performing a stimulus‐discrimination learning task. Brain activity was averaged separately for different stimulus attributes, either relevant or irrelevant for the discrimination, and for different stages of learning. Learning‐specific amplitude changes occurred in two positive peaks of the ERP (P160 and P330): a) the amplitudes of both components decreased continuously over blocks; b) with increasing practice the amplitudes to irrelevant attributes became significantly smaller than those to relevant attributes; and c) the point at which the amplitudes to relevant and irrelevant attributes diverged was earlier for P330 and later for P160. The different trends of the amplitudes of the two peaks suggest that they reflect functionally distinct processes of attentional set. Peak latencies and other amplitude measures of the ERP (baseline shift, N100, slow wave) showed no learning‐specific, but systematic long‐ and short‐term habituation/facilitation effects.