Reliability of the mismatch negativity in the responses of individual listeners

The mismatch negativity (MMN) was recorded from 12 normal adults during four biweekly sessions. Responses were elicited by a synthetically generated speech contrast (/dalpha/-/galpha/) that all listeners discriminated with at least 90 percent accuracy. Standard and deviant waveforms were replicable across sessions for all listeners; however, replicability of the derived difference waveforms was poor. Of greater importance, the MMN identification rate was too low (29%) to allow reliability to be evaluated. The implications that these findings may have on clinical applicability are discussed.