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How predictability affects habituation to novelty
Kazutaka Ueda1, Takahiro Sekoguchi2, Hideyoshi Yanagisawa2
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Creative Design Laboratory, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
Plos One
|June 1, 2021
Summary
Repeated exposure helps habituation to novel stimuli, especially in uncertain situations. Greater initial uncertainty accelerates habituation to new events, as shown by our arousal model and experiments.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Computational Psychiatry
Background:
- Habituation to repeated stimuli is a fundamental learning process.
- Understanding habituation to novelty is crucial for explaining adaptive behavior.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how predictability influences habituation to novel events.
- To formalize habituation to novelty using a mathematical model of arousal.
Main Methods:
- Applied a previously developed mathematical model of arousal based on Bayesian updates.
- Conducted psychophysiological experiments measuring subjective surprise and event-related potentials (P300).
Main Results:
- The model predicted an interaction between initial uncertainty and predictability on habituation.
- Higher initial uncertainty led to a faster decrease in information gain (habituation).
- Experimental results supported the model's prediction, showing enhanced habituation with uncertainty.
Conclusions:
- Habituation to novelty can be quantified as a decrease in information gain (Kullback-Leibler divergence).
- Predictability and initial uncertainty interact to influence the speed of habituation.
- In uncertain environments, repeated exposure facilitates habituation to novel stimuli.
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