The Effect of the Temporal Position of a Gap on Its Automatic Detection

The presentation of a rarely occurring auditory stimulus that contains a silent interval (or gap) among a sequence of frequently occurring stimuli that do not contain a gap can elicit a negative-going event-related potential known as the deviant-related negativity (DRN). This study investigated how the temporal position of the gap (i.e., temporal distance from stimulus onset) influences DRN amplitude using a novel multideviant paradigm. Seventeen young adults were presented with a sequence in which six gap deviants alternated with a standard stimulus. The standard stimulus was a 500-ms duration white noise burst. The deviants were constructed by inserting a gap in six different temporal positions, ranging from 15 to 400 ms after stimulus onset. In different conditions, gap duration was either 10 or 30 ms. Participants were also presented with single-deviant sequences in which the gap occurred at 100 or 300 ms. The amplitude of the DRN was larger for 30 ms than for 10-ms duration gaps; however, it was much reduced for gaps occurring at 300 or 400 ms after stimulus onset. There was no significant difference in DRN amplitude between the multideviant and single-deviant paradigms. These results confirm the hypothesis that auditory integration occurs within a limited temporal window of less than 300 ms. Moreover, the multideviant paradigm elicited DRN responses of comparable amplitude to those in the single-deviant paradigm, highlighting its potential as an efficient tool for assessing temporal processing.