Long-term memory traces facilitate short-term memory trace formation in audition in humans

Long-term memory traces of one's native language have an effect on the short-term memory traces formed by phonemes, Nature 385 (1997) 432. We investigated whether they also affect the number of stimulus repetitions needed to form an adequate memory trace used in the elicitation of the mismatch negativity (MMN), an event-related response to a change in an ongoing sound stream. We recorded MMNs to infrequent stimuli occurring in trains of prototype and non-prototype phonemes, matched in their physical distances, and in trains of sinusoidal tones. We found that the number of standards needed to produce a prominent MMN was smaller for native-language prototype phonemes than to non-prototype phonemes, suggesting a faster trace development.