Implicit anticipation of probabilistic regularities: Larger CNV emerges for unpredictable events

Abstract

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. Therefore, in a four-choice reaction time (RT) task performed by young adults (N = 36), the contingent negative variation (CNV) as an ERP marker of anticipation was measured from the onset of an uninformative warning signal until the presentation of the target stimulus. Due to the probability structure of the task, target stimuli were either predictable or unpredictable, but this was unknown to participants. Results showed that the CNV amplitude during response preparation was larger before the unpredictable than before the predictable stimuli. In addition, although RTs increased, the P3 amplitude decreased for the unpredictable as compared with the predictable stimuli, possibly due to the stronger response preparation that preceded stimulus presentation. These results suggest that enhanced attentional resources are allocated to the implicit anticipation and processing of unpredictable events. This possibly results from the formation of internal models on the probabilistic regularities of the stimulus stream, favoring predictable events. Overall, we provide ERP evidence for the implicit anticipation of probabilistic regularities, confirming the role of predictive processes in learning and memory.

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