Auditory discrimination of the German determiners der and den: A mismatch negativity paradigm with 5- and 6-year-old children

The mismatch negativity (MMN) is a frontal deflection in the human event-related potential (ERP) that typically occurs when a repeating auditory stimulus (standard stimulus) changes in some manner (deviant stimulus). It occurs only if a stable (auditorysensory) memory representation of the standard stimulus has developed (Picton et al., 2000) and reflects an automatic attention response. The present study used a passive oddball paradigm (e.g. Cowan et al., 1993) with the German determiners der and den as stimuli in a reversed standard-deviant condition. Participants were 5- and 6-year-oldchildren and adults. The ERPs showed the presence of a MMN with a fronto-central distribution in all age groups. For adults the peak was around 300 ms. In contrast for the children, two peaks occurred (5-year-olds: around 380 and 640 ms; 6-year-olds: around 380 and 690 ms). Note, that a comparison between different methods of reference were applied to prove that this ERP was a significant MMN and not the attention-based N2b component. Therefore, the present study provides electrophysiological evidence for the existence of an automatic auditory brain response for the German determiners without attentive processing of deviance