Automatic pairing of real-world stimuli in younger and older adults: An event-related potential study.

Overview

Authors: Petia Kojouharova¹, István Czigler¹, Boglárka Nagy¹, Zsófia Anna Gaál¹

Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, HUN-REN Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

Institutions: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology (Hungary); HUN-REN Research Centre for Natural Sciences (Hungary)

Journal: PloS one, volume 21, issue 3, article e0344733

Dates: received 1 August 2025; accepted 24 February 2026; published online 24 March 2026

Type: Research article · Language: English

License: CC BY

Identifiers: DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0344733 · PMID 41875126 · PMCID PMC13012506 · OpenAlex W7140215140

Open access: gold, a free copy (OpenAlex)

Status: data only (how the code is found and verified)

Categories: EEG (modality), human (organism), cognitive (subfield)

Methods: Spectral & time-frequency, Statistics, Preprocessing, Evoked potentials, fMRI & imaging

MeSH: Evoked Potentials*, Visual Perception*, Adult, Aged, Aging, Electroencephalography, Emotions, Facial Expression, Female, Humans, Male, Photic Stimulation, Reaction Time, Young Adult (* major topic)

Journal subjects: Biology and Life Sciences, Psychology, Emotions, Social Sciences, People and Places, Population Groupings, Age Groups, Adults, Elderly, Anatomy, Head, Face, Medicine and Health Sciences, Research and Analysis Methods, Bioassays and Physiological Analysis, Electrophysiological Techniques, Brain Electrophysiology, Electroencephalography, Event-Related Potentials, Physiology, Electrophysiology, Neurophysiology, Neuroscience, Brain Mapping, Clinical Medicine, Clinical Neurophysiology, Imaging Techniques, Neuroimaging, Cognitive Science, Cognitive Neuroscience, Reaction Time, Behavior, Nonverbal Communication, Facial Expressions, Membrane Electrophysiology, Electrode Recording

Topic: Face Recognition and Perception (Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuroscience), according to OpenAlex

Funding: Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA K 132880, OTKA K 145940)

Citations: not cited yet (Europe PMC); 47 references in the paper

Abstract

Contextual information can influence object perception, even when it is irrelevant to the task. When two unrelated stimuli frequently occur in close temporal succession, they may become associated. This process might be stronger in older adults due to age-related decline in inhibitory control, leading to deeper processing of irrelevant context. Automatic associations and their violations can be studied using visual mismatch negativity (vMMN), an event-related potential component reflecting the detection of violations of regularity in unattended stimuli. In our study, younger (n = 18, M = 21.2 ± 2.1 yrs) and older (n = 17, M = 69.8 ± 2.8 yrs) adults viewed pairs of images presented in succession: a scene (forest or street) followed by an emotional face (happy or angry). One scene–emotional face combination occurred frequently, the other rarely, forming a contextual oddball sequence. All individual stimuli appeared equally often. Participants performed an unrelated colour-change detection task, ensuring that the scene–emotional face pairs were unattended. We expected a vMMN to the emotional face in rare pairings, especially in older adults if they formed stronger associations. A control oddball condition with only emotional faces verified automatic emotion discrimination. In the control condition, vMMN emerged for both deviant emotions (in various ranges within the 94–276 ms post-stimulus time window). However, no vMMN was observed in the scene-emotional face pair condition. Instead, younger adults showed an early posterior positivity (90–161 ms) to rare pairings, while older adults exhibited a later negativity (356–384 ms). These results suggest that task-irrelevant, thematically unrelated visual events can become associated through temporal proximity. However, violations of these associations evoke neural responses distinct from vMMN and vary across age groups, with older adults relying on later, potentially semantic-related mechanisms rather than early visual processes to detect the regularity.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Data

Datasets cited

osf:undja, at OSF; found in “Data Availability”

Data Availability

The data underlying the results presented in the study are available from the Open Science Framework database (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/UNDJA).

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Versions

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Version 1, 30 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 4 authors, 14 MeSH terms, 1 funder, 41 references.

Cite

This paper

Kojouharova, P., Czigler, I., Nagy, B., & Gaál, Z. A. (2026). Automatic pairing of real-world stimuli in younger and older adults: An event-related potential study. PloS one, 21(3), e0344733. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0344733

BibTeX

@article{kojouharova2026automatic, author = {Kojouharova, Petia and Czigler, István and Nagy, Boglárka and Gaál, Zsófia Anna}, title = {{Automatic pairing of real-world stimuli in younger and older adults: An event-related potential study}}, journal = {PloS one}, year = {2026}, month = mar, volume = {21}, number = {3}, pages = {e0344733}, publisher = {PLOS}, issn = {1932-6203}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0344733}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0344733}, pmid = {41875126}, pmcid = {PMC13012506} }

RIS

TY - JOUR AU - Kojouharova, Petia AU - Czigler, István AU - Nagy, Boglárka AU - Gaál, Zsófia Anna TI - Automatic pairing of real-world stimuli in younger and older adults: An event-related potential study T2 - PloS one J2 - PLoS One PY - 2026 DA - 2026/03/24 VL - 21 IS - 3 SP - e0344733 SN - 1932-6203 PB - PLOS DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0344733 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0344733 LA - en ER -

CSL-JSON

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