Attention and Pattern Consciousness Reorganize the Cortical Topography of Event-Related Potential Correlates of Visual Sequential Learning

Statistical or sequential learning (SL) involves comprehending environmental patterns in which some items precede other items with a given likelihood. SL is thought to occur without attention or consciousness (or explicit knowledge) of the learned patterns and thus is sometimes considered to be implicit learning. However, this assumption is still debatable (Daltrozzo & Conway, 2014). We examined the role of selective attention and pattern consciousness (PC) in SL using event-related potentials (ERP) with healthy adults. Thirty-four participants (27 females, 18-49 years) performed a Flanker task to assess their level of selective attention, followed by a visual SL task while ERPs were recorded. Participants’ level of PC was assessed via a questionnaire. In the SL task, participants viewed a sequence of different stimuli on the screen and were instructed to press a button as fast as possible, when they saw a target stimulus. They were unaware that: 1.) two predictor items were embedded in the sequence and 2.) the items predicted target occurrence with high or low probability. ERPs were timelocked to predictor onsets. The mean ERP between 200 and 700ms post-predictor onset revealed an interaction between target occurrence probability, PC, attention, and two scalp topographic factors. Post-hoc tests indicated that higher attention was related to a more rostral left lateralized effect under high PC and a left lateralization of SL ERP effects under low PC. These neural findings suggest that both attention and PC modulate SL.