An article of MEMO CRNL in Neuropsychologia
Kóbor A, Kardos Z, Horváth K, Janacsek K, Takács A, Csépe V, Nemeth D. Implicit anticipation of probabilistic regularities: Larger CNV emerges for unpredictable events. Neuropsychologia, Volume 156, 18 June 2021, 107826.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107826
Anticipation of upcoming events plays a crucial role in automatic behaviors. It is, however, still unclear whether the event-related brain potential (ERP) markers of anticipation could track the implicit acquisition of probabilistic regularities that can be considered as building blocks of automatic behaviors. Our results showed that the CNV (contingent negative variation) amplitude during response preparation was larger before the unpredictable than before the predictable target stimuli. These results suggest that enhanced attentional resources are allocated to the implicit anticipation and processing of unpredictable events. We provide ERP evidence that supports the role of implicit anticipation and predictive processes in the acquisition of probabilistic regularities.
