Implicit Versus Explicit Local Contextual Processing

We investigated the effects of implicit local contextual processing using behavioral and electrophysiological measures. EEG recording blocks consisted of targets preceded by either randomized sequences of standards or by sequences including a predictive sequence signaling the occurrence of a target event. Subjects performed two sessions: in the first the regularity of the predictive sequence was implicit, while in the second this regularity was made explicit. Subjects pressed a button in response to targets. Both the implicit and explicit sessions showed shorter reaction times and peak P3b latencies for predicted versus random targets, although to a greater extent in the explicit session. In both sessions the middle and last most-informative stimuli of the three-standard predictive sequence induced a significant larger P3b compared with randomized standards. The findings show that local contextual information is processed implicitly, but that this modulation was significantly greater when subjects were explicitly instructed to attend to target-predictive contextual information. The findings suggest that top-down attentional networks have a role in modulating the extent to which contextual information is utilized.