Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience • Vol 36 • No 7
Finding Pattern in the Noise: Persistent Implicit Statistical Knowledge Impacts the Processing of Unpredictable Stimuli
January 2024 • Andrea Kóbor, Karolina Janacsek, Petra Hermann, Zsófia Zavecz, Vera Varga, Valéria Csépe, Zoltán Vidnyánszky, Gyula Kovács, Dezső Németh
Abstract Humans can extract statistical regularities of the environment to predict upcoming events. Previous research recognized that implicitly acquired statistical knowledge remained persistent and continued to influence behavior even when the regularities were no longer present in the environment. Here, in an fMRI experiment, we investigated how the persistence of statistical knowledge is represented in the brain. Participants (n = 32) completed a visual, four-choice, RT task consisting of statistical regularit…