From deviance to significance: Contextual influences and aging on automatic visual change detection

OTKA Advanced 150497

The main question of the research is how automatically detected non-regular events affect episodic memory and, conversely, how episodic memory representation affects automatic change detection. The cognitive neuroscience method developed for the investigation of automatic change detection, the mismatch negativity, has mostly been studied in the auditory domain, while the underlying theory based on the predictive coding mechanisms predominantly relies on visual experiments. The study of episodic memory is less connected to any specific modality. Consequently, it is theoretically and empirically important to examine these interactions within a single modality, specifically vision. The neuroscience method of the visual mismatch negativity component of the event-related potentials uniquely does not require motor output, it tests automatic processes directly rather than through behavior. The advantage of researching the visual modality is that it allows for easier comparison of the effects of prior memory contents and later change detection on the level of sensory (e.g. color) and more complex features (e.g. emotional faces), and the subsequent effects of automatic registration on recognition processes. The change in these interactions with age is particularly relevant as everyday information acquisition in old age is mainly incidental, while the use of memory representations is frequently intentional.