Special issue: ReviewThe use of repetition suppression paradigms in developmental cognitive neuroscience
Section snippets
Introduction to repetition paradigms in developmental neuroscience research
Repetition suppression paradigms offer two major advantages, which make them useful tools for studies in the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience. First of all, they can be conducted without collecting an overt behavioral response of the participants. This makes it possible to apply repetition suppression paradigms even in age groups where active tasks are difficult to realize, such as infants (see Nakano, Watanabe, Homae, & Taga, 2009, for an auditory paradigm in sleeping
Repetition suppression versus repetition enhancement during development
Although in most cases repetition of a stimulus leads to a suppression of the signal, in some cases an increase of the signal can be found. This phenomenon has been termed repetition enhancement and such effects have been detected using various methods, in regions all over the brain and in a variety of paradigms (for a review, see Segaert, Weber, de Lange, Petersson, & Hagoort, 2013). The exact mechanisms that influence the direction of the effect are not yet well understood. However, it is
Relationship between repetition suppression and habituation in behavioral infant studies
A characteristic of repetition suppression paradigms is that they follow very similar principles as behavioral habituation paradigms which are the most commonly applied measure in infancy research (Turk-Browne, Scholl, & Chun, 2008). In classical infant habituation paradigms the infant is habituated to a certain stimulus until looking time declines to a previously defined criterion level. In a following test phase the infant is presented with two stimuli simultaneously, one of which is the
How does autism affect repetition suppression?
As repetition suppression reflects a fundamental principle of neuronal functioning the question arises, whether some neurodevelopmental disorders affect repetition suppression? In ASD, hints to a special role of repeated stimuli have been described both on a behavioral level in the form of an often observed “need for sameness”, and on a neural level with differential repetition suppression effects in people with autism compared to healthy controls in the visual domain. Here we will review
Overview of cognitive domains targeted by developmental repetition suppression paradigms
In the following paragraphs we will provide an overview of the cognitive domains that have been investigated using repetition suppression paradigms in a developmental context so far, including language, numerical processing, face processing, goal representation and processing of novel information. We show that the advantages of repetition suppression paradigms differ from one cognitive domain to another. For instance, in the domain of visual processing, the great potential of repetition
Conclusion
We conclude that repetition paradigms are valuable tools for studying cognitive and perceptual processes during development and already have provided substantial insights in the field of developmental neuroscience. However, additional research is clearly needed to shed further light on aspects which are particularly relevant for neurodevelopmental studies such as the relationship between differing memory and attention capacities of the age group in question and the direction of repetition
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by a scholarship of the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) awarded to M.N. and grants from the German Research Foundation (WE 5802/1-1) and the Daimler and Benz Foundation awarded to S.W.
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