Equiprobable and Oddball Paradigms: Two Approaches for Documenting Auditory Discrimination

Maturation of the mismatch response in pre-school children: Systematic literature review and meta-analysis

Event-related potentials (ERPs), specifically the Mismatch Response (MMR), holds promise for investigating auditory maturation in children. It has the potential to predict language development and distinguish between language-impaired and typically developing groups. However, summarizing the MMR's developmental trajectory in typically developing children remains challenging despite numerous studies. This pioneering meta-analysis outlines changes in MMR amplitude among typically developing children, while offering methodological best-practices. Our search identified 51 articles for methodology analysis and 21 for meta-analysis, involving 0-8-year-old participants from 2000 to 2022. Risk of Bias assessment and methodology analysis revealed shortcomings in control condition usage and reporting of study confounders. The meta-analysis results were inconsistent, indicating large effect sizes in some conditions and no effect sizes in others. Subgroup analysis revealed the main effects of age and brain region, as well as an interaction of age and time-window of the MMR. Future research requires a specific protocol, larger samples, and replication studies to deepen the understanding of the auditory discrimination maturation process in children.

Virtual accident curb risk habituation in workers by restoring sensory responses to real-world warning

In high-risk work environments, workers become habituated to hazards they frequently encounter, subsequently underestimating risk and engaging in unsafe behaviors. This phenomenon has been termed "risk habituation" and identified as a vital root cause of fatalities and injuries at workplaces. Providing an effective intervention that curbs workers' risk habituation is critical in preventing occupational injuries and fatalities. However, there exists no empirically supported intervention for curbing risk habituation. To this end, here we investigated how experiencing an accident in a virtual reality (VR) environment affects workers' risk habituation toward repeatedly exposed workplace hazards. We examined an underlying mechanism of risk habituation at the sensory level and evaluated the effect of the accident intervention through electroencephalography (EEG). The results of pre- and posttreatment analyses indicate experiencing the virtual accident effectively curbs risk habituation at both the behavioral and sensory level. The findings open new vistas for occupational safety training.

Sequential processing in the classic oddball task: ERP components, probability, and behavior

This study compared the ERP components and behavior associated with the auditory equiprobable and classic oddball tasks, to relate the cognitive processing stages in those paradigms and continue the development of the sequential processing schema. Target and nontarget ERP data were acquired from 66 healthy young adults (M_age = 20.1, SD = 2.4 years, 14 male) who completed both equiprobable (target p = 0.5) and oddball tasks (target p = 0.3). Separate temporal PCAs were used to decompose the ERP data in each task and condition, and the similarity of the components identified in each condition was examined between tasks. Probability effects on component amplitudes and behavior were also analyzed to identify task differences in cognitive demands. A highly similar series of components was identified in each task, closely matching the schema: targets elicited N1-3, N1-1, PN, N2c, P3b, SW1, SW2; whereas nontargets elicited N1-3, N1-1, PN, N2b, P3a, SW1, SW2. N1-1 and PN amplitudes increased as stimulus probability decreased, irrespective of the condition. N2b, P3b, SW1, and SW2 amplitudes also varied between tasks, illustrating task-specific demands on those processing stages. These findings complemented the behavioral outcomes, which demonstrated greater accuracy and control in the classic oddball task. Overall, this study demonstrated comparable processing in the auditory equiprobable and classic oddball tasks, extending the generalizability of the schema and enabling further integration of the ERP theory associated with these tasks. This study also clarifies stimulus probability effects on the schema, providing important insight into the functionality of common ERP components.

Feasibility of event-related potential (ERP) biomarker use to study effects of mother's voice exposure on speech sound differentiation of preterm infants

Atypical maturation of auditory neural processing contributes to preterm-born infants' language delays. Event-related potential (ERP) measurement of speech-sound differentiation might fill a gap in treatment-response biomarkers to auditory interventions. We evaluated whether these markers could measure treatment effects in a quasi-randomized prospective study. Hospitalized preterm infants in passive or active, suck-contingent mother's voice exposure groups were not different at baseline. Post-intervention, the active group had greater increases in/du/-/gu/differentiation in left frontal and temporal regions. Infants with brain injury had lower baseline/ba/-/ga/and/du/-/gu/differentiation than those without. ERP provides valid discriminative, responsive, and predictive biomarkers of infant speech-sound differentiation.