Representations of physical plausibility revealed by event-related potentials

Maintaining an accurate mental representation of the current environment is crucial to detecting change in that environment and ensuring behavioral coherence. Past experience with interactions between objects, such as collisions, has been shown to influence the perception of object interactions. To assess whether mental representations of object interactions derived from experience influence the maintenance of a mental model of the current stimulus environment, we presented physically plausible and implausible collision events while recording brain electrical activity. The parietal P300 response to ‘oddball’ events was found to be modulated by the physical plausibility of the stimuli, suggesting that past experience of object interactions can influence working memory processes involved in monitoring ongoing changes to the environment.