Brain mechanisms underlying behavioral specificity and generalization of short-term texture discrimination learning

Abstract

In this study, we used high-density event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the brain mechanisms underlying behavioral specificity and generalization of short-term learning of texture discrimination task (TDT). Human adults were trained with TDT for a single session of 1.5 h and their ERPs were measured on the following day. Behavioral performance showed that, after a same amount of exposure of the trained and untrained conditions during EEG session, learning effects were specific to the trained background orientation but generalized across target locations. ERP data, however, revealed both target-location and background-orientation specific changes. While the behavioral background-orientation specificity mainly involved amplitude enhancement of early N2pc over occipital cortex, behavioral target-location generalization was associated with modulation of tempo-spatial configurations of the N2pc component (early-occipital vs. late-parietal/temporal pattern) and decrease of frontal P2 amplitudes for the trained relative to the untrained condition. The earliest visual component C1 did not show specific effects for either background orientation or target location. These results indicated different brain mechanisms underlying the behavioral specificity and generalization of TDT learning. Based on the present findings and literatures, we propose that perceptual learning may induce not only enhancement of relatively early visual selection of the trained target among distractors but also decreases of top-down attention originating from high-level brain center. The reactivation of top-down attention control in some conditions (e.g., the untrained target-location condition) may compensate for the specific effect induced by the early visual selective attention mechanism, leading to generalization or less specificity of perceptual learning in behavioral performance.

The role of top‐down spatial attention in contingent attentional capture

“…One might argue that it may be partly due to the fact that, in Experiment 2, half of the participants performed the peripheral task before the central task. There might be some sort of fast or shortterm effects of perceptual learning induced by previous blocks (e.g., Ding, Song, Fan, Qu, & Chen, 2003;Qu, Song, & Ding, 2010;Qu et al, 2014;Vatterott & Vecera, 2012), and this prior experience may account for the fact that previously spatially relevant salient stimuli captured attention to some extent even when they became spatially irrelevant (see also Awh, Belopolsky, & Theeuwes, 2012). To rule out this possibility, in Experiment 3, we only adopted the central RSVP task, keeping the peripheral color cues spatially irrelevant throughout the experiment.…”

Generalization of Context-Specific Training in Individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment: An Event-Related Potential Study

“…Whether learning can be facilitated through specific or generalized learning has been controversial [6, 26]. While a collection of studies supports that perceptual learning would be contextually specific [27, 28, 29], others suggest that perceptual learning could be transferred across different types of stimuli [26, 30, 31, 32].…”

“…While a collection of studies supports that perceptual learning would be contextually specific [27, 28, 29], others suggest that perceptual learning could be transferred across different types of stimuli [26, 30, 31, 32]. Such an equivocal phenomenon of perceptual learning is determined by various factors: the duration of training and schedule of the training, the relative familiarity of the two stimuli and task relevance [26]. It was shown that interleaved or less frequent training could decrease the specificity effect as it would reduce the suppressive effect of repeated exposure of the stimuli with similar characteristics [30, 33].…”

Anticipatory alpha oscillation predicts attentional selection and hemodynamic response

“…Interestingly, the N2pc was a lateralized component, which was isolated by subtracting the ipsilateral ERP waveform from the contralateral ERP waveform to the targets. The modulation of the N2pc by task set and anticipation has been interpreted as evidence for top-down attentional control Gaspar, Rousselet, & Pernet, 2011;Kiss, Jolicoeur, Dell'acqua, & Eimer, 2008;Qu et al, 2014). In this case, we expect that there might be a significant correlation between anticipatory alpha lateralization/hemodynamic lateralization and subsequent target-elicited N2pc during visual search (Huang et al, 2015).…”

“…The modulation of the N2pc by task set and anticipation has been interpreted as evidence for top-down attentional control Gaspar, Rousselet, & Pernet, 2011;Kiss, Jolicoeur, Dell'acqua, & Eimer, 2008;Qu et al, 2014). By using rapid event-related design, we manipulated on a trial-by-trial basis advance information about the cued visual side in which a target would appear and examined two primary questions regarding the neural correlates of spatial attention.…”