TY - JOUR
T1 - Predictability awareness rather than mere predictability enhances the perceptual benefits for targets in auditory rhythms over targets following temporal cues
AU - Heynckes, Miriam
AU - Hoffmann, Kim
AU - Formisano, Elia
AU - De Martino, Federico
AU - De Weerd, Peter
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright: © 2023 Heynckes et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2023/10/27
Y1 - 2023/10/27
N2 - Sounds following a cue or embedded in a periodic rhythm are processed more effectively than sounds that are part of an aperiodic rhythm. One might also expect that a sound embedded in a periodic rhythm is processed more effectively than a sound following a single temporal cue. Such a finding would follow the theory that the entrainment of neural rhythmic activity by periodic stimuli renders the prediction of upcoming stimuli more efficient. We conducted a psychophysical experiment in which we tested the behavioral elements of this idea. Targets in periodic and aperiodic rhythms, if they occurred, always appeared at the same moment in time, and thus were fully predictable. In a first condition, participants remained unaware of this. In a second condition, an explicit instruction on the temporal location of the targets embedded in rhythms was provided. We assessed sensitivity and reaction times to the target stimuli in a difficult temporal detection task, and contrasted performance in this task to that obtained for targets temporally cued by a single preceding cue. Irrespective of explicit information about target predictability, target detection performance was always better in the periodic and temporal cue conditions, compared to the aperiodic condition. However, we found that the mere predictability of an acoustic target within a periodic rhythm did not allow participants to detect the target any better than in a condition where the target’s timing was predicted by a single temporal cue. Only when participants were made aware of the specific moment in the periodic rhythm where the target could occur, did sensitivity increase. This finding suggests that a periodic rhythm is not automatically sufficient to provide perceptual benefits compared to a condition predictable yet not rhythmic condition (a cue). In some conditions, as shown here, these benefits may only occur in interaction with other factors such as explicit instruction and directed attention.
AB - Sounds following a cue or embedded in a periodic rhythm are processed more effectively than sounds that are part of an aperiodic rhythm. One might also expect that a sound embedded in a periodic rhythm is processed more effectively than a sound following a single temporal cue. Such a finding would follow the theory that the entrainment of neural rhythmic activity by periodic stimuli renders the prediction of upcoming stimuli more efficient. We conducted a psychophysical experiment in which we tested the behavioral elements of this idea. Targets in periodic and aperiodic rhythms, if they occurred, always appeared at the same moment in time, and thus were fully predictable. In a first condition, participants remained unaware of this. In a second condition, an explicit instruction on the temporal location of the targets embedded in rhythms was provided. We assessed sensitivity and reaction times to the target stimuli in a difficult temporal detection task, and contrasted performance in this task to that obtained for targets temporally cued by a single preceding cue. Irrespective of explicit information about target predictability, target detection performance was always better in the periodic and temporal cue conditions, compared to the aperiodic condition. However, we found that the mere predictability of an acoustic target within a periodic rhythm did not allow participants to detect the target any better than in a condition where the target’s timing was predicted by a single temporal cue. Only when participants were made aware of the specific moment in the periodic rhythm where the target could occur, did sensitivity increase. This finding suggests that a periodic rhythm is not automatically sufficient to provide perceptual benefits compared to a condition predictable yet not rhythmic condition (a cue). In some conditions, as shown here, these benefits may only occur in interaction with other factors such as explicit instruction and directed attention.
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0284755
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0284755
M3 - Article
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 18
JO - PLOS ONE
JF - PLOS ONE
IS - 10
M1 - e0284755
ER -