Abstract
Recent research has demonstrated that humans are able to implicitly encode and retain repeating patterns in meaningless auditory noise. Our study aimed at testing the robustness of long-term implicit recognition memory for these learned patterns. Participants performed a cyclic/non-cyclic discrimination task, during which they were presented with either 1-s cyclic noises (CNs) (the two halves of the noise were identical) or 1-s plain random noises (Ns). Among CNs and Ns presented once, target CNs were implicitly presented multiple times within a block, and implicit recognition of these target CNs was tested 4 weeks later using a similar cyclic/non-cyclic discrimination task. Furthermore, robustness of implicit recognition memory was tested by presenting participants with looped (shifting the origin) and scrambled (chopping sounds into 10− and 20-ms bits before shuffling) versions of the target CNs. We found that participants had robust implicit recognition memory for learned noise patterns after 4 weeks, right from the first presentation. Additionally, this memory was remarkably resistant to acoustic transformations, such as looping and scrambling of the sounds. Finally, implicit recognition of sounds was dependent on participant's discrimination performance during learning. Our findings suggest that meaningless temporal features as short as 10 ms can be implicitly stored in long-term auditory memory. Moreover, successful encoding and storage of such fine features may vary between participants, possibly depending on individual attention and auditory discrimination abilities.Significance Statement Meaningless auditory patterns could be implicitly encoded and stored in long-term memory.Acoustic transformations of learned meaningless patterns could be implicitly recognized after 4 weeks.Implicit long-term memories can be formed for meaningless auditory features as short as 10 ms.Successful encoding and long-term implicit recognition of meaningless patterns may strongly depend on individual attention and auditory discrimination abilities.
Highlights
Despite decades of research on the mechanisms of memory in humans, several questions regarding the spatial and temporal correlates of sensory memory remain unanswered
Our findings suggest that meaningless temporal features as short as 10 ms can be implicitly stored in long-term auditory memory
Evidence for our ability to detect statistical regularities in meaningless information comes from a classic study in which participants were presented with segments of auditory white noise played back to back continuously and were able to detect the recurrence of some “features” (Guttman and Julesz, 1963)
Summary
Meaningless auditory patterns could be implicitly encoded and stored in long-term memory. Acoustic transformations of learned meaningless patterns could be implicitly recognized after 4 weeks. Implicit long-term memories can be formed for meaningless auditory features as short as 10 ms. Successful encoding and long-term implicit recognition of meaningless patterns may strongly depend on individual attention and auditory discrimination abilities
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