Neural correlates of inference-driven attention in perceptual and symbolic tasks: An event-related potential study

摘要

The inferential system anticipates the external environment by building up internal representations ofits regularities. To that purpose, two sources of information are especially important and attract atten-tional resources: expected and unexpected events, which are useful for checking the accuracy of internalrepresentations. In the present study, we investigated the behavioural properties and the neural mech-anisms underlying the strategic allocation of attention triggered by those events. To that end, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during the performance of two tasks requiring detection ofpredictable and unpredictable response events embedded in a visuospatial or numeric sequence. Thebehavioural results in the two tasks mirror each other, suggesting the recruitment of similar attentionalallocation processes between the two domains. The ERPs showed partially similar effects. In bothtasks, a P3a-like component signalled the capture of attention by events clashing with previous expec-tations, whilst a P3b-like component marked the focusing of attention on predicted events and itsredistribution among all possible response events occurring after the detection of an unexpected event.