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Event-related potentials, semantic processes, and expectancy factors in word recognition
Abstract
Electrophysiological activity was recorded at 16 scalp locations during a word recognition task in order to investigate the effect of expectancy factors on ERPs. In each of 160 trials two stimuli (S1 and S2) were presented with a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 1500 msec. There were four experimental conditions. In the word-antonym (W-A) and the word-nonantonym (W-NA) conditions, both S1 and S2 were words. The subjects' task was to think of the antonym to S1 and respond as fast as possible after the presentation of S2 by pressing a "YES" button if S2 was an antonym to S1 (in the W-A trials), or a "NO" button if S2 was not an antonym to S1 (in the W-NA trials). In the nonword-word (NW-W) and nonword-nonword (NW-NW) conditions S1 was a nonword, while S2 was either a word (in NW-W trials) or a nonword (in NW-NW trials). If S1 was not a word, the subjects were instructed to wait for S2, and respond as fast as possible by pressing the "YES" button if it was a word an the "NO" button if it was not a word. EEG was sampled during a time epoch that started 100 msec before the onset of S1 and continued for another 2560 msec. The ERPs were analyzed separately for each experimental condition and for time epochs related to S1, to S2, and to the SOA. Expected antonyms were recognized significantly faster than any other words or nonwords. The RTs to words in the W-NA and NW-W condition, and to nonwords in the NW-NW condition did not differ significantly from each other. The ERP difference between the four conditions following S2 was interpreted in terms of a negative-going potential which appeared prior to the P300, during a time period which started 200 msec and ended 550 msec from stimulus onset. The negativity related to nonwords was significantly larger than the negativity related to words. The negativity related to the expected antonym was almost nonexistent. It is speculated that this negativity has the same origin as N400, and that it might be related to the process of lexical access.
... The N400 is not elicited by physical deviations (e.g., words appearing in an unexpected font or letter size). Outside of the original sentence paradigm, the N400 has also been identified in experiments using single words or word pairs as stimuli, with tasks such as lexical decision (Bentin, McCarthy, & Wood, 1985), judgments of semantic relatedness (Bentin, 1987), or category membership (Polich, 1985). Further support for the semantic nature of the processing that gives rise to the N400 is that it can be elicited by other meaning-carrying stimuli, such as pictures (Barrett & Rugg, 1990;Holcomb & McPherson, 1994;Nigam, Hoffman, & Simons, 1992) or sign-language gestures (Neville et al., 1997). ...
... On the other hand, the N400 presupposes focused spatial attention (McCarthy & Nobre, 1993), and it does not interact with stimulus degradation (Holcomb, 1993) as would be expected of a prelexical effect. It is influenced by expectancy (Bentin, 1987), and it is larger in an attention-promoting condition than in a low-attention condition (Holcomb, 1988) and earlier at long than at short SOAs (Anderson & Holcomb, 1995). Most pertinent for our present purposes, two studies with masked primes (Brown & Hagoort, 1993;Mttnte & Heinze, 1991) have failed to find N400 effects for the target words, although there was reaction-time priming in one of these studies (Brown & Hagoort, 1993). ...
... Also, it becomes apparent that the present results need not commit us to the view that the processing nature of the N400 is entirely automatic. On the contrary, controlled processes, such as expectancy (Becker, 1980;Bentin, 1987), in all likelihood play a large part in the build-up before the target display, and only the triggering of this pent-up force is automatic. Indeed, Becker's research has shown that priming between category name and category exemplar allows strong expectancies to develop, a mechanism that accounts for a large part of the RT priming in this paradigm. ...
Three event-related potential (ERP) experiments examined whether semantic content can be accessed from visually presented words that cannot be consciously identified. Category labels were shown to participants, followed by masked, briefly exposed words that were either exemplars of the category or not exemplars. The task was to verify the category, by guessing if necessary, and to identify the word, naming it if possible. Exposure durations were selected to allow identification in approximately half the trials. For identified words, there was a marked difference in the ERP response between in-category and out-of-category words because of an N400 component. For unidentified words, there was a similar although smaller difference. Conscious identification was defined using a variety of approaches: verbal report, 6-alternative forced choice, and binary categorization (in the context of the regression method; A. G. Greenwald, M. R. Klinger, & E. S. Schuh, 1995). By any definition, ERPs for unidentified words showed evidence of semantic processing. In addition, there were differences in the neuronal populations recruited to process above-threshold versus below-threshold words, suggesting qualitative differences.
... The N400 has been related to the processing of meaning, with variable topography depending on the task and stimuli used (see [22] for a review). Several studies show N400 effects in frontal scalp sites using lexical stimuli with, for example, concreteness and lexical manipulations [23,24], ambiguity [25], repetition [22], and attention and semantic priming [26][27][28]. N400 effects exist in a range of contexts, so this component could reflect processes related to lexical access, where reduced amplitudes are associated with easier lexical access [26,29], or more generally, with ease of processing stimulus meaning, with reduced amplitudes representative of facilitated semantic processing [22]. ...
... Several studies show N400 effects in frontal scalp sites using lexical stimuli with, for example, concreteness and lexical manipulations [23,24], ambiguity [25], repetition [22], and attention and semantic priming [26][27][28]. N400 effects exist in a range of contexts, so this component could reflect processes related to lexical access, where reduced amplitudes are associated with easier lexical access [26,29], or more generally, with ease of processing stimulus meaning, with reduced amplitudes representative of facilitated semantic processing [22]. ...
... The N400 has traditionally been related to semantic incongruity effects in centro-parietal electrodes (e.g., [65]). Frontal N400 effects also have been found with single word presentations, relating to a variety of conditions [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29], so there is still uncertainty surrounding interpretation of the N400. However, processing of meaning seems central to N400 effects across contexts, so one hypothesis is that N400 effects reflect the ease of processing stimulus meaning, with decreased amplitude reflecting facilitated processing [22]. ...
Visual word recognition is a relatively effortless process, but recent research suggests the system involved is malleable, with evidence of increases in behavioural efficiency after prolonged lexical decision task (LDT) performance. However, the extent of neural changes have yet to be characterized in this context. The neural changes that occur could be related to a shift from initially effortful performance that is supported by control-related processing, to efficient task performance that is supported by domain-specific processing. To investigate this, we replicated the British Lexicon Project, and had participants complete 16 hours of LDT over several days. We recorded EEG at three intervals to track neural change during LDT performance and assessed event-related potentials and brain signal complexity. We found that response times decreased during LDT performance, and there was evidence of neural change through N170, P200, N400, and LPC amplitudes across the EEG sessions, which suggested a shift from control-related to domain-specific processing. We also found widespread complexity decreases alongside localized increases, suggesting that processing became more efficient with specific increases in processing flexibility. Together, these findings suggest that neural processing becomes more efficient and optimized to support prolonged LDT performance.
... Other studies have revealed that modulation of the N400 amplitude can be achieved not only by sentences but also when a single word provides the semantic context (Bentin, 1987;Bentin, McCarthy, & Wood, 1985;Bentin et al., 1999;C. M. Brown & Hagoort, 1993;Franklin, Dien, Neely, Huber, & Waterson, 2007;Holcomb & Neville, 1990;Kutas & Hillyard, 1989;Rugg, 1985;Stuss, Picton, & Cerri, 1988). ...
... Moreover, the description of the N400 scalp distribution seems to vary depending on the task used for testing. For instance, the N400 elicited by semantic incongruities in sentences is largest over the centro-parietal regions (Kutas & Hillyard, 1982;Kutas, Hillyard, & Gazzaniga, 1988) while the N400 elicited by single words is largest over frontocentral sites (Bentin, 1987;Bentin et al., 1985;McCarthy & Nobre, 1993) or even the anterior medial temporal lobe (McCarthy, Nobre, Bentin, & Spencer, 1995). ...
... It is, however, possible that semantic processing was missed in this experiment because it starts later than 200-240 msec. This explanation of the null results is possible given that a large number of electrophysiological studies have associated semantic processing with the late N400 component (e.g., Bentin, 1987;Franklin et al., 2007;Helenius et al., 1999;Holcomb & Kounios, 1990;Kutas & Hillyard, 1980a, 1980b, 1980cPolich & Donchin, 1988;Van Petten & Kutas, 1990;Vartiainen et al., 2009). In addition, the localization data indicated that ANG contributes to the semantic task within the first 500 msec. ...
One of the regions that have consistently been included in the neurological models of reading is the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL), however, the precise functional and temporal contributions of this region to reading have not yet been fully established. There are three hypotheses concerning IPL contributions to visual word recognition. The first one claims that the IPL is the site of stored visual word forms although it remains unclear whether these are stored in supramarginal (SMG) or angular (ANG) fields of the IPL. The second hypothesis argues that the procedures for converting spelling-to-sound are a function of the IPL, but it is unclear whether these are specifically located in SMG or ANG, or both. Finally, a third hypothesis suggests that SMG and ANG preferentially contribute to phonological and semantic processing of written words, respectively. In this thesis, I empirically evaluated these hypotheses using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to temporarily and selectively disrupt processing in left SMG and ANG during visual word recognition and measure the effect on reading behaviour. I also investigated the time course of SMG and ANG involvement to visual word recognition using double-pulse TMS. My research demonstrates that SMG contributes preferentially to phonological aspects of word processing and the processing begins early and over a sustained period of time (between 80 to 200 msec post-stimulus onset). ANG contributes preferentially to semantic aspects of word processing but the temporal dynamics of this contribution were not successfully revealed in this thesis and require further investigation. In addition, I empirically evaluated the efficiency of using functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) and TMS to functionally localize a target site for TMS experiments. I demonstrated that both methods are similarly accurate in identifying stimulation site but neither of them is 100% accurate.
... This pattern has been confirmed in a handful of ERP studies using the antonym paradigm (Bentin, 1987;Kutas and Iragui, 1998;Roehm et al., 2007;Federmeier et al., 2010) that provides strong semantic relatedness as well as high contextual predictability. Because antonyms are the logical endpoints on an opposition scale, antonym word pairs strongly prime each other. ...
... Because antonyms are the logical endpoints on an opposition scale, antonym word pairs strongly prime each other. This effect can be strengthened with a sentence context such as x is the opposite of y or by using an experimental task that requires participants to think of or judge the antonymy relation between words, thereby increasing target cloze probability to nearly 1 (see Bentin, 1987;Roehm et al., 2007). Thus, from among the range of possible cloze probability values that a predictable target can have, the antonym paradigm picks up those with near-perfect cloze probability, yielding an almost binary distribution for predictable vs. unpredictable targets. ...
... Strikingly, even though this design revealed distinct P300 effects for expected antonyms and N400 amplitude increases for unpredicted non-antonyms across studies, the behavioral patterns do not converge with the ERPs. While some found that RT and error rates show facilitative effects for antonyms (Bentin, 1987), others found that non-antonym conditions fare better than antonyms behaviorally (Roehm et al., 2007;Federmeier et al., 2010). The lack of the typical behavioral priming effect for antonyms (i.e., reduced RT or error rates, see Neely, 1991) in some experiments is especially striking given that the ERP pattern is rather stable across studies. ...
Although the N400 was originally discovered in a paradigm designed to elicit a P300 (Kutas and Hillyard, 1980), its relationship with the P300 and how both overlapping event-related potentials (ERPs) determine behavioral profiles is still elusive. Here we conducted an ERP (N = 20) and a multiple-response speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) experiment (N = 16) on distinct participant samples using an antonym paradigm (The opposite of black is white/nice/yellow with acceptability judgment). We hypothesized that SAT profiles incorporate processes of task-related decision-making (P300) and stimulus-related expectation violation (N400). We replicated previous ERP results (Roehm et al., 2007): in the correct condition (white), the expected target elicits a P300, while both expectation violations engender an N400 [reduced for related (yellow) vs. unrelated targets (nice)]. Using multivariate Bayesian mixed-effects models, we modeled the P300 and N400 responses simultaneously and found that correlation between residuals and subject-level random effects of each response window was minimal, suggesting that the components are largely independent. For the SAT data, we found that antonyms and unrelated targets had a similar slope (rate of increase in accuracy over time) and an asymptote at ceiling, while related targets showed both a lower slope and a lower asymptote, reaching only approximately 80% accuracy. Using a GLMM-based approach (Davidson and Martin, 2013), we modeled these dynamics using response time and condition as predictors. Replacing the predictor for condition with the averaged P300 and N400 amplitudes from the ERP experiment, we achieved identical model performance. We then examined the piecewise contribution of the P300 and N400 amplitudes with partial effects (see Hohenstein and Kliegl, 2015). Unsurprisingly, the P300 amplitude was the strongest contributor to the SAT-curve in the antonym condition and the N400 was the strongest contributor in the unrelated condition. In brief, this is the first demonstration of how overlapping ERP responses in one sample of participants predict behavioral SAT profiles of another sample. The P300 and N400 reflect two independent but interacting processes and the competition between these processes is reflected differently in behavioral parameters of speed and accuracy.
... word in reading. Bentin (1987) has considered the negative potentials related to word-antonym, word-non-antonym, nonword-word and nonword-nonword pairs. Some of the researchers have used MEG to capture the activity of the brain that is caused by the magnetic field created by neuron activity. ...
... The amplitude of the N1 component from 132,164 ms was less for High-Frequency than Low-Frequency words. The authors in Bentin (1987) have conducted the experiment on word-antonym, word-nonantonym, nonword-word and nonword-nonword pairs. After analysis of ERPs, it was found that antonyms were recognized faster than words or nonwords. ...
... After filtering, Smoothing of data has been performed one by one on each electrode signal. It removes the high peaks in the data by using moving average filter where every data point is replaced by the average of its neighboring data (2000) EEG, event-related desynchronization N.A. Rhodes and Donaldson (2007) EEG, word pairs 408 three-to-nine letter word-pairs, 25 subjects Sereno and Rayner (2003) EEG, eye tracking, N1 component High and low frequency words, N.A. Bentin (1987) EEG,word antonym pairs, negative potentials 80 pairs of antonyms and 40 additional words, 16 subjects Mormann et al. (2005) EEG, wavelet, gamma and theta bands continuous words, 12 epilepsy patients Holcomb and Grainger (2006) EEG, N400 animal names Hauk et al. (2006) EEG, word length, Semantic coherence 300 nouns, 20 subjects points within the defined span. The neighboring data points are decided on the basis of the data point which is at the center of the span and there are no neighboring data points for the end points, so they cannot be smoothed. ...
The appearance of unknown words often disturbs communication and reading. This paper focuses on detecting those words which are unfamiliar to the users while reading using Electroencephalography (EEG). In particular, a word-familiarity prediction approach based on EEG signals from the user's brain waves has been developed. Word-familiarity refers whether a user is familiar with the word or not while reading the text. The recorded signals have been processed using Wavelet decomposition technique and four features, namely mean, standard deviation, Root Mean Square (RMS) and power have been computed from beta and gamma frequency bands. The prediction of word-familiarity has been performed using Random Forest (RF) classifier. Next, a decision fusion approach has also been used to boost the prediction performance. A dictionary based pop-up window has been developed to provide the meaning of the word when a user is found to be unfamiliar with the text. EEG dataset of 12 users has been developed while they are reading 25 words. The results show that the characteristics of brain waves at the time of unknown word perception can be detected, i.e., when the user comes across an unknown word then the pattern of his brain waves comes out to be totally different from the pattern when he is familiar with the word. Similarly, the pattern of brain waves has been found to be different for the word for which the user has confusion in his mind. An accuracy of 82% has been recorded using the proposed classifier combination approach. Finally, a comparative study with other popular classification technique is also discussed.
... The N400 was observed to semantic deviations, but not to physical deviations. The N400 has since been elicited to speech stimuli [11,12,28] and in visual, aural and cross modal semantic priming tasks [1,2]. ...
... The N400 peak amplitudes proved sensitive to experimental conditions [ F(3,33) = 12.41, p < 0.001, e = 0.53], with significantly larger amplitudes observed in the IW and IN conditions (which did not differ) compared to the CN and CW conditions ( p < 0.05) (which did not differ) (Figs. 1 and 3). A main effect of site [ F(14,154) = 4.79, p < 0.05, e = 0.30] was attributable to larger N400 amplitudes recorded over 1 The CW condition contained more trials (125) than each of the other 3 conditions (25 each), which meant that the signal-to-noise ratio was higher in the CW condition than in each of the other conditions. An analysis not presented in this text was conducted on a portion of the CW trials so as to ensure that the difference in signal-to-ratio was not the reason for the effects observed in the experiment. ...
... The N400 to semantic incongruities is characterized typically as having a centro-parietal distribution accompanied by a slight asymmetry favoring the right hemisphere [25]. However, this characterization has been shown to vary according to task [1,2,31]. In this study, the N400 was apparently distributed bilaterally over temporal and parietal regions. ...
... Moreover, the magnitude of this effect is the same on words and pseudowords (Laszlo & Federmeier, 2011). On the other hand, several studies have reported that pseudowords elicit larger N400s than words (*BAVE > GAVE; Bentin, 1987), even when controlling for orthographic neighborhood size (Holcomb et al., 2002;Meade, Midgley, Dijkstra, & Holcomb, 2018;Braun et al., 2006; although see Laszlo & Federmeier, 2011). ...
... In addition, our model was able to simulate, for the first time, the larger N400 produced by pseudowords than by words (cf. Bentin, 1987), even when orthographic neighborhood size is held constant (for empirical findings, see Heilbron et al., 2022;Meade et al., 2018;Braun et al., 2006; but see Laszlo & Federmeier, 2011). In our model, the reason for this is that pseudoword string inputs (e.g., *W-E-E-N) activated multiple lexical units in parallel (e.g. ...
... We taught our participants novel names, one set on each of two consecutive days (remote and recent set, respectively), and then, using continuous primed lexical decision, studied (a) whether behavioural (faster response times for related vs. unrelated targets) and/or electrophysiological (reduced N400 and enhanced LPC amplitudes for related vs. unrelated targets) priming effects would emerge for the trained novel name targets, and (b) whether these effects would vary depending on the length of the consolidation opportunity (0 hours for the recent set vs. 24 hours for the remote set). Furthermore, since enhanced negativity for unknown pseudowords (compared to familiar words) in the N400 spatiotemporal window has been suggested to reflect differences in the lexical status (e.g., Bentin, 1987;Kutas & Federmeier, 2011), we also contrasted the ERP responses for trained novel names with ERP responses for untrained pseudowords and with those for familiar words in this spatiotemporal window. ...
... As processing continues, if the stimulus is a word, lexical activity associated with it is thought to suppress the activity of its lexical neighbours, leading to a reduction in the N400 response. However, if the stimulus is a nonword, no suppression can occur, resulting in larger (more negative) N400 responses as compared to those for the familiar words (e.g., Bentin, 1987;Bentin et al., 1985;Holcomb et al., 2002). Applying this logic to word learning, shortly after training (when integration is still ongoing), trained novel names could be expected to elicit more positive responses than the nonwords but more negative responses than the familiar words. ...
According to the Complementary Learning Systems model of word learning, only integrated novel words can interact with familiar words during lexical selection. The pre-registered study reported here is the first to examine behavioural and electrophysiological markers of integration in a task that relies primarily on automatic semantic processing. 71 young adults learned novel names for two sets of novel concepts, one set on each of two consecutive days. On Day 2, learning was followed by a continuous primed lexical decision task with EEG recording. In the N400 window, novel names trained immediately before testing differed from both familiar and untrained novel words, and, in the time window between 500ms-800ms post onset, they also differed from novel names that had undergone a 24-hour consolidation, for which a small behavioural priming effect was observed. We develop an account that attributes the observed effects to processes rooted in episodic, rather than semantic, memory.
... Moreover, the magnitude of this effect is the same on words and pseudowords (Laszlo & Federmeier, 2011). On the other hand, several studies have reported that pseudowords elicit larger N400s than words ("bave" > "gave"; Bentin, 1987), even when controlling for orthographic neighborhood size (Holcomb, Grainger & O'Rourke, 2002;Meade, Midgley, Dijkstra & Holcomb, 2018;Braun, Jacobs, Hahne, Ricker, Hofmann & Hutzler, 2006; although see Laszlo & Federmeier, 2011). ...
... In addition, we were also able to simulate for the first time, the larger N400 that is often reported in response to pseudowords, relative to words (cf. Bentin, 1987), even when holding orthographic neighborhood size constant (Holcomb, Grainger & O'Rourke, 2002;Meade, Midgley, Dijkstra & Holcomb, 2018;Braun, Jacobs, Hahne, Ricker, Hofmann & Hutzler, 2006; but see Laszlo & Federmeier, 2011). The reason for this is that a pseudoword string input (e.g., *W-E-E-N) activated multiple lexical units in parallel (e.g. ...
The N400 event-related component has been widely used to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying real-time language comprehension. However, despite decades of research, there is still no unifying theory that can explain both its temporal dynamics and functional properties. In this work, we show that predictive coding – a biologically plausible algorithm for approximating Bayesian inference – offers a promising framework for characterizing the N400. Using an implemented predictive coding computational model, we demonstrate how the N400 can be formalized as the lexico-semantic prediction error produced as the brain infers meaning from linguistic form of incoming words. We show that the magnitude of lexico-semantic prediction error mirrors the functional sensitivity of the N400 to various lexical variables, priming, contextual effects, as well as their higher-order interactions. We further show that the dynamics of the predictive coding algorithm provide a natural explanation for the temporal dynamics of the N400, and a biologically plausible link to neural activity. Together, these findings directly situate the N400 within the broader context of predictive coding research, and suggest that the brain may use the same computational mechanism for inference across linguistic and non-linguistic domains.
... Of note, although the model was able to successfully simulate the effect of orthographic neighborhood size on both words and pseudowords, it did not reproduce another finding that has been reported in the ERP literature: the larger N400s produced by pseudowords, compared to real words (e.g. deg > dog) (Bentin, 1987), even when when orthographic neighborhood size is controlled (e.g., Holcomb, Grainger & O'Rourke, 2002;Meade, Midgley, Dijkstra & Holcomb, 2018;Meade, Grainger & Holcomb, 2019; but see Laszlo & Federmeier, 2011 who found no such effect of lexical status on the N400). Instead, the model showed increased semantic activity in the opposite direction, i.e. words > pseudowords at all levels of orthographic neighborhood size (see Figure 7 in Laszlo & Plaut, 2012). ...
... We also aimed to simulate an additional effect that these previous models were not able tosimulatethe larger N400 elicited in response to pseudowords than to words (cf. Bentin, 1987;Holcomb et al., 2002;Meade et al., 2018). In addition, at the sentence-level, we aimed to simulate several of the contextual effects that were successfully simulated by RHM18, including the effects of cloze probability (Kutas & Hillyard, 1984;DeLong et al., 2005), the null effect of constraint (Kutas & Hillyard, 1984;Federmeier et al., 2007), and the effect of semantic overlap between expected and presented words (Kutas & Hillyard, 1984;Federmeier & Kutas, 1999). ...
The N400 event-related brain potential is elicited by each word in a sentence and offers an important window into the mechanisms of real-time language comprehension. Since the 1980s, studies investigating the N400 have expanded our understanding of how bottom-up linguistic inputs interact with top-down contextual constraints. More recently, a growing body of computational modeling research has aimed to formalize theoretical accounts of the N400 to better understand the neural and functional basis of this component. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of this literature. We discuss “word-level” models that focus on the N400’s sensitivity to lexical factors and simple priming manipulations, as well as more recent sentence-level models that explain its sensitivity to broader context. We discuss each model's insights and limitations in relation to a set of cognitive and biological constraints that have informed our understanding of language comprehension and the N400 over the past few decades. We then review a novel computational model of the N400 that is based on the principles of predictive coding, which can accurately simulate both word-level and sentence-level phenomena. In this predictive coding account, the N400 is conceptualized as the magnitude of lexico-semantic prediction error produced by incoming words during the process of inferring their meaning. Finally, we highlight important directions for future research, including a discussion of how these computational models can be expanded to explain language-related ERP effects outside the N400 time window, and variation in N400 modulation across different populations.
... Within semantic integration, some view the N400 to reflect processes associated with post-lexical integration of words into the given context Baggio and Hagoort, 2011), whereas others position the component to be at the level of semantic access (Van Berkum, 2009;Thornhill and Van Petten, 2012). Nevertheless, whatever its interpretation is, it is clear that the N400 in adults indexes a broad sensitivity to lexical-semantic processing ranging from lower-level to higher contextual factors, indicating that the presence of the N400 can reflect both automatic and more controlled lexical semantic processes (Bentin, 1987;Holcomb, 1988;Kiefer, 2002;Lau et al., 2008). This makes the N400 component an ideal component to study the emerging vocabularies in infancy and factors that contribute to word learning. ...
... The mismatch negativity response, which in adults is a negative peak to deviant sounds peaking around 100-250 ms (Näätänen, 1990), can occur in infants not only as a negativity but also as a positivity, and usually longer-lasting (e.g., Leppänen et al., 2004). Finally, the N170, which in adults is an early-negative component sensitive to the presentation of human faces (Bentin, 1987;Eimer, 2011), is delayed by another 100-150 ms for infants (therefore called the "N290;" Halit et al., 2003). Together, developmental studies on different sorts of cognitive processing all seem to suggest that while infants display distinct ERP components similar to adults, it is not fully matured. ...
The N400 ERP component is a direct neural index of word meaning. Studies show that the N400 component is already present in early infancy, albeit often delayed. Many researchers capitalize on this finding, using the N400 component to better understand how early language acquisition unfolds. However, variability in how researchers quantify the N400 makes it difficult to set clear predictions or build theory. Not much is known about how the N400 component develops in the first 2 years of life in terms of its latency and topographical distributions, nor do we know how task parameters affect its appearance. In the current paper we carry out a systematic review, comparing over 30 studies that report the N400 component as a proxy of semantic processing elicited in infants between 0 and 24 months old who listened to linguistic stimuli. Our main finding is that there is large heterogeneity across semantic-priming studies in reported characteristics of the N400, both with respect to latency and to distributions. With age, the onset of the N400 insignificantly decreases, while its offset slightly increases. We also examined whether the N400 appears different for recently-acquired novel words vs. existing words: both situations reveal heterogeneity across studies. Finally, we inspected whether the N400 was modulated differently with studies using a between-subject design. In infants with more proficient language skills the N400 was more often present or showed itself here with earlier latency, compared to their peers; but no consistent patterns were observed for distribution characteristics of the N400. One limitation of the current review is that we compared studies that widely differed in choice of EEG recordings, pre-processing steps and quantification of the N400, all of which could affect the characteristics of the infant N400. The field is still missing research that systematically tests development of the N400 using the same paradigm across infancy.
... Regarding the second question, namely what properties may constrain semantic processing, previous findings have mostly pointed to the inclusion of pseudowords in semantic processing (Kutas and Van Petten, 1994). Indeed, pseudowords have been reported to show an increased N400, similar to incongruent words, an unlike illegal sequences that show an N400 equivalent to that for congruent words (Bentin, 1987;Holcomb, 1993;Friedrich and Friederici, 2005;Kutas and Federmeier, 2011;Rossi et al., 2011;MacGregor et al., 2012;Kimppa et al., 2015;Gansonre et al., 2018). According to these findings, only illegal sequences are excluded from semantic processing. ...
... We found no differences between high-and low-frequency pseudowords, and none of them differed from congruent words. In previous work contradictory findings had been reported, with most studies pointing to the inclusion of pseudowords (Bentin, 1987;Holcomb, 1993;Kutas and Van Petten, 1994;Friedrich and Friederici, 2005;Kutas and Federmeier, 2011;Rossi et al., 2011;MacGregor et al., 2012;Kimppa et al., 2015;Gansonre et al., 2018), and some studies reporting no differences between pseudowords and illegal sequences (Domahs et al., 2009;Laszlo and Federmeier, 2009). Although the current findings seem to indicate that pseudowords were excluded from semantic processing, in line with the latter set of studies, the fact is that pseudowords did not differ from incongruent words either, contrary to illegal sequences that differed from incongruent words but not from congruent ones. ...
Two outstanding questions in spoken-language comprehension concern (1) the interplay of phonological grammar (legal vs. illegal sound sequences), phonotactic frequency (high- vs. low-frequency sound sequences) and lexicality (words vs. other sound sequences) in a meaningful context, and (2) how the properties of phonological sequences determine their inclusion or exclusion from lexical-semantic processing. In the present study, we used a picture-sound priming paradigm to examine the ERP responses of adult listeners to grammatically illegal sound sequences, to grammatically legal sound sequences (pseudowords) with low- vs. high-frequency, and to real words that were either congruent or incongruent to the picture context. Results showed less negative N1-P2 responses for illegal sequences and low-frequency pseudowords (with differences in topography), but not high-frequency ones. Low-frequency pseudowords also showed an increased P3 component. However, just like illegal sequences, neither low- nor high-frequency pseudowords differed from congruent words in the N400. Thus, phonotactic frequency had an impact before, but not during lexical-semantic processing. Our results also suggest that phonological grammar, phonotactic frequency and lexicality may follow each other in this order during word processing.
... N400 appears to be elicited by any stimulus with a semantic representation, such as pictures (Pratarelli, 1994;Rugg & Doyle, 1992). Pseudo words (non-words that obey orthographic and pronunciation rules) and pseudo-objects also elicit an N400-like component (Bentin, 1987;Holcomb & McPherson, 1994;Rugg & Doyle, 1992;van Petten & Kutas, 1991). N400s in response to pseudo-words were found to be similar to or larger in magnitude than N400s elicited by words, irrespectively to the fact whether they were written or spoken (Bentin, 1987(Bentin, ,1989Holcomb & Neville, 1990;Holcomb, Coffey & Neville, 1992;Rugg, 1987). ...
... Pseudo words (non-words that obey orthographic and pronunciation rules) and pseudo-objects also elicit an N400-like component (Bentin, 1987;Holcomb & McPherson, 1994;Rugg & Doyle, 1992;van Petten & Kutas, 1991). N400s in response to pseudo-words were found to be similar to or larger in magnitude than N400s elicited by words, irrespectively to the fact whether they were written or spoken (Bentin, 1987(Bentin, ,1989Holcomb & Neville, 1990;Holcomb, Coffey & Neville, 1992;Rugg, 1987). Conversely, phonologically or orthographically illegal non-words fail to produce N400s (Holcomb & Neville, 1990;Rugg & Nagy, 1987). ...
Although perceptual processes during reading are activated by the visual and auditory modalities the activation itself starts with visual identification and perception of printed materials. The basic question of interest in this chapter is whether visual processing among dyslexics is impaired when compared with that of regular readers. The focus of this chapter is to review electrophysiological studies pertaining to the visual modality and the table summarizing the research results of these studies indicates a clear difference in cerebral cortical activation during visual processing among dyslexic and regular readers. An in-depth-analysis of various studies indicates differences resulting from different research populations, subjects’ age as well from design of the various experimental paradigms.
... Lehrer and Lehrer 1982) and in much lexicographic worke.g., in the WordNet project (Fellbaum 1998;Miller et al. 1990)antonymy is taken to be the most basic means of organizing the adjective lexicon. There is also extensive psycholinguistic (and so far relatively modest neurolinguistic) research on the role of antonymic associations in the mental lexicon and memory (e.g., Bentin 1987;Deese 1966;Herrmann et al. 1986;Gross et al. 1989;Jeon et al. 2009;Roehm et al. 2007; see also Hay 2001) and a growing corpus-based research on discourse functions of antonymy and its typical manifestations in corpora (e.g., Jones et al. 2007;Kostić 2015;Lobanova et al. 2010;Muehleisen and Isono 2009;Willners and Paradis 2010;Wu 2017). There is, thus, accumulated strong evidence for antonymy being both a psychologically real and an important relation. ...
Antonymy is the lexical relation of opposition. The nature of the oppositeness may differ – e.g., contradictory (‘true’–‘false’) or gradable (‘tall’–‘short’) – and there may be variation as to the relationship in their formal encoding, whether the antonyms are expressed as distinct lexical forms (e.g., true vs. false ) or if one form is derived from the other (e.g., true vs. untrue ). We investigate the relationship between the two members of 37 antonym pairs across 55 spoken languages in order to see whether there are patterns in how antonymy is expressed and which of the two antonym members is more likely to be derived from the other. We find great variation in the extent to which languages use derivation (labeled “neg-constructed forms”) as an antonym-formation strategy. However, when we do find a derived form, this tends to target the member of the pair that is either lower in valence (positive vs. negative) or magnitude (more vs. less), in line with our hypotheses. We also find that antonyms that belong to a core set of property concepts are more likely to encode antonyms as distinct lexical forms, whereas peripheral property concepts are relatively more likely to encode the antonyms with derived forms.
... This seems a logical explanation and it has been shown that with pronounceable non-words or legal nonwords (i.e. those which are more word-like) subjects initially attempt to process them as words, resulting in an N400 (Bentin, 1987b;Smith & Halgren, 1987b;Holcomb et al., 1990;. Holcomb & Neville (1990) reported that a smaller N400 was evoked by illegal rather than legal non-words, in both the visual and auditory modahties. ...
p>The N400 and P600 components of cognitive evoked potentials or event-related potentials (ERP) are context related and usually recordable after a priming stimulus or context consisting of words or any meaningful stimuli. All studies previous to this one used a sequential presentation of stimuli to elicit the ERPs. In this study, however, the picture and word stimuli were presented simultaneously. ERPs were recorded from 79 neurologically normal subjects including 62 right-handed, 10 left-handed and 7 subjects who were suffering from temporal lobe brain damage. Subjects were either asked to respond as to whether the stimuli were congruent, incongruent or non-sensical (semantic incongruency) or as to whether they were 'new' or 'old' (recognition memory). The number of correct responses and the reaction time were both measured. ERPs were recorded using an electrode cap which consisted of 16-channel scalp electrode montage (an enhanced international 10/20 electrode placement system) with linked mastoids as reference electrodes. Data was acquired and analysed using Neuroscan signal averaging and mapping software.
In all the experimental conditions studied the tasks were performed accurately but reaction time was significantly longer for the incongruent stimuli. The same occurred for 'new' items as opposed to 'old' items. In the ERP recordings the N400 and P600 components were independent. The N400 peak was recorded maximally over the frontal locations while the P600 was mainly a parietal component. Differences were observed in their latency, amplitude and spatial distribution within the various test conditions.</p
... The N400 has traditionally been related to semantic incongruity effects in centro-parietal electrodes (e.g., [72]). Frontal N400 effects also have been found with single word presentations, relating to a variety of conditions [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36], so there is still uncertainty surrounding interpretation of the N400. However, processing of meaning seems central to N400 effects across contexts, so one hypothesis is that N400 effects reflect the ease of processing stimulus meaning, with decreased amplitude reflecting facilitated processing [29]. ...
Visual word recognition is a relatively effortless process, but recent research suggests
the system involved is malleable, with evidence of increases in behavioural efficiency after prolonged lexical decision task (LDT) performance. However, the extent of neural changes has yet to be characterized in this context. The neural changes that occur could be related to a shift from initially effortful performance that is supported by control-related processing, to efficient task performance that is supported by domain-specific processing. To investigate this, we replicated the British Lexicon Project, and had participants complete 16 h of LDT over several days. We recorded electroencephalography (EEG) at three intervals to track neural change during LDT performance and assessed event-related potentials and brain signal complexity. We found that response times decreased during LDT performance, and there was evidence of neural change through N170, P200, N400, and late positive component (LPC) amplitudes across the EEG sessions, which suggested a shift from control-related to domain-specific processing. We also found widespread complexity decreases alongside localized increases, suggesting that processing became more efficient with specific increases in processing flexibility. Together, these findings suggest that neural processing becomes more efficient and optimized to support prolonged LDT performance.
... This interpretation may also hold for the pattern we obtained, with the neutral pseudowords triggering a more demanding semantic processing than emotionally intense pseudowords. As an index of lexico-semantic processing, however, the N400 is also sensitive to the lexical status of the stimulus and has been reported to be larger for pseudowords than words (e.g., Bentin, 1987;Kissler & Herbert, 2013). It may be argued that, as a peculiar semantic dimension, emotionality may increase the lexical status of emotional pseudowords, rendering them more word-like, which would thus elicit a smaller N400 for these stimuli than for the neutral ones. ...
The present study investigates the influence of emotional information on language processing. To this aim, we measured behavioral responses and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during four Italian lexical decision experiments in which we used emotionally intense and neutral pseudowords—i.e., pseudowords derived from changing one letter in a word (e.g., cammelto, derived from cammello ‘camel’ vs. copezzolo, from capezzolo ‘nipple’)—as stimuli. In Experiment 1 and 2, half of the pseudowords were emotionally intense and half were neutral, and were mixed with neutral words. In Experiment 3, the list composition was manipulated, with ¼ of the pseudowords being derived from emotionally intense words and ¾ derived from neutral words. Experiment 4 was identical to Experiment 1, but ERPs were recorded. Emotionally intense pseudowords were categorized more slowly than neutral pseudowords, with the difference emerging both in the mean and at the leading edge of the response times distribution. Moreover, emotionally intense pseudowords elicited smaller N170 and N400 than neutral pseudowords. These results speak in favor of a fast and multi-level infiltration of the emotional information into the linguistic process of word recognition.
... It has been shown that a negative potential is elicited when a delay is introduced before sentence-final words or when a specific linguistic stimulus can be predicted (Besson, Faita, Czternasty, & Kutas, 1997;Kaan & Carlisle, 2014;León-Cabrera, Rodríguez-Fornells, & Morís, 2017). Evidence against a simple syntactic interpretation of this anticipatory response (Neufeld et al., 2016) comes from Bentin (1987). In this work, lexical stimuli separated by long ISIs were used to study neural responses to semantic expectancy. ...
We adapted Bemis & Pylkkänen’s (2011) paradigm to study elementary composition in Spanish using electroencephalography, to determine if EEG is sensitive enough to detect a composition-related activity and analyze whether the expectancy of participants to compose contributes to this signal. We found relevant activity at the expected channels and times, and a putative composition-related activity before the second word onset. Using threshold-free cluster permutation analysis and linear models we show a task-progression effect for the composition task that is not present for the list task. In a second experiment we evaluate two-word composition incorporating all conditions in a single task. In this case, we failed to find any significant composition-related activity suggesting that the activity measured with EEG may be in part carried by expectancy processes arising from the block design of the experiment, which can be prevented by using a non-blocked design and data-driven techniques to analyze the data.
... It has been shown that a negative potential is elicited when a delay is introduced before sentence-final words or when a specific linguistic stimulus can be predicted (Besson et al., 1997;León-Cabrera et al., 2017;Kaan & Carlisle, 2014). Evidence against a simple syntactic interpretation of this anticipatory response comes from Bentin (1987). In this work, lexical stimuli separated by long ISIs were used to study neural responses to semantic expectancy. ...
We present an adaptation of Bemis & Pylkkänen’s (2011) two-word, composition-list paradigm to study elementary composition in Spanish using electroencephalography. Our main objective is to determine if EEG is sensitive enough to detect a composition-related activity and to evaluate whether the expectancy of participants to compose contributes to this signal. Although we found relevant activity at the expected channels and times, we also found putative composition-related activity before the second word onset. Using a threshold-free cluster permutation analysis combined with linear models we show a task progression effect for the composition task that is not present for the list task. In a second experiment we evaluate two-word composition while avoiding differential expectancy effects across stimuli by incorporating all conditions to a single task. In this case, we failed to find any significant composition-related activity. We suggest that the composition-related activity measured with EEG may be at least in part carried by expectancy processes arising from the block design of the experiment. We conclude that for this paradigm it is important to complement the block based experiments with those controlling for expectancy, and to use powerful data-driven techniques to analyze the data.
... As claimed in Roehm et al. (2007), effects initially attributed to N400 can actually be influenced by P300 modulations (Bentin, 1987;Kutas and Iragui, 1998;Federmeier and Kutas, 1999). In this regard, the interpretation of the differential lexicality effect found in both tasks should be cautiously addressed, taking into account the simultaneous co-occurrence of both ERP effects. ...
Previous research has pointed out that the combination of orthographic and semantic-associative training is a more advantageous strategy for the lexicalization of novel written word-forms than their single orthographic training. However, paradigms used previously involve explicit stimuli categorization (lexical decision), which likely influence word learning. In the present study, we used a more automatic task (silent reading) to determine the advantage of the associative training, by comparing the brain electrical signals elicited in combined (orthographic and semantic) and single (only orthographic) training conditions. In addition, the learning effect (in terms of similar neurophysiological activity between novel and known words) was also tested under a categorization paradigm, enabling determination of the possible influence of the training task in the lexicalization process. Results indicated that novel words repeatedly associated with meaningful cues showed a higher attenuation of N400 responses than those trained in the single orthographic condition, confirming the higher facilitation in the lexico-semantic processing of these stimuli, as a consequence of semantic associations. Moreover, only when the combined training was carried out in the reading task did novel words show similar N400 responses to those elicited by known words, suggesting the achievement of a similar lexical processing to known words. Crucially, when the training is carried out under a demanding task context (lexical decision), known words exhibited positive enhancement within the N400 time window, contributing to maintaining N400 differences with novel trained words and confounding the outcome of the learning. Such deflection—compatible with the modulation of the categorization-related P300 component—suggests that novel word learning could be influenced by the activation of categorization-related processes. Thus, the use of low-demand tasks arises as a more appropriate approach to study novel word learning, enabling the build-up process of mental representations, which probably depends on pure lexical and semantic factors rather than being guided by categorization demands.
... The best explored ERP component is the N400, which is a negative-going deflection observed 300-500 ms post-stimulus over the central and central-parietal electrode sites, and peaking around 400 ms [13,14,16,17,24]. This ERP component is known to reflect various aspects of and difficulties in semantic processing, such as word frequency [25], priming [26][27][28][29], repetition [30,31], lexical status of the stimuli [17,[32][33][34][35], etc. These factors demonstrate that the N400 can tap into lexical access. ...
A recent semantic theory of nominal concepts by Löbner [1] posits that–due to their inherent uniqueness and relationality properties–noun concepts can be classified into four concept types (CTs): sortal, individual, relational, functional. For sortal nouns the default determination is indefinite (a stone), for individual nouns it is definite (the sun), for relational and functional nouns it is possessive (his ear, his father). Incongruent determination leads to a concept type shift: his father (functional concept: unique, relational)–a father (sortal concept: non-unique, non-relational). Behavioral studies on CT shifts have demonstrated a CT congruence effect, with congruent determiners triggering faster lexical decision times on the subsequent noun than incongruent ones [2, 3]. The present ERP study investigated electrophysiological correlates of congruent and incongruent determination in German noun phrases, and specifically, whether the CT congruence effect could be indexed by such classic ERP components as N400, LAN or P600. If incongruent determination affects the lexical retrieval or semantic integration of the noun, it should be reflected in the amplitude of the N400 component. If, however, CT congruence is processed by the same neuronal mechanisms that underlie morphosyntactic processing, incongruent determination should trigger LAN or/and P600. These predictions were tested in two ERP studies. In Experiment 1, participants just listened to noun phrases. In Experiment 2, they performed a wellformedness judgment task. The processing of (in)congruent CTs (his sun vs. the sun) was compared to the processing of morphosyntactic and semantic violations in control conditions. Whereas the control conditions elicited classic electrophysiological violation responses (N400, LAN, & P600), CT-incongruences did not. Instead they showed novel concept-type specific response patterns. The absence of the classic ERP components suggests that CT-incongruent determination is not perceived as a violation of the semantic or morphosyntactic structure of the noun phrase.
... The main finding is that the previous presentation of meaningful stimulus might transfer semantic content to the pseudoword, leading to reductions in the N400 amplitude. This component has traditionally been related to the semantic processing of the stimuli and is sensitive to factors such as lexical status or frequency of words (Kutas and Hillyard, 1984;Bentin, 1987;Van Petten, 1993). Consequently, N400 amplitude reductions for meaningful trained pseudowords are considered to index their association with meaning and possibly their integration into the reader's lexicon. ...
The contribution of two different training contexts to online, gradual lexical acquisition was investigated by event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by new, word-like stimuli. Pseudowords were repeatedly preceded by a picture representing a well-known object (semantic-associative training context) or by a hash mark (non-associative training context). The two training styles revealed differential effects of repetition in both behavioral and ERPs data. Repetition of pseudowords not associated with any stimulus gradually enhanced the late positive component (LPC) as well as speeded lexical categorization of these stimuli, suggesting the formation of episodic memory traces. However, repetition under the semantic-associative context caused higher reduction in N400 component and categorization latencies. This result suggests the facilitation in the lexico-semantic processing of pseudowords as a consequence of their progressive associations to picture-concepts, going beyond the visual memory trace that is generated under the non-associative context.
... This effect tends to disappear when words are placed in a supportive semantic context (Van Petten, 1993;Van Petten & Kutas, 1990) or repeated (Smith & Halgren, 1987;Young & Rugg, 1992), perhaps reflecting a different initial threshold of activation. Pseudowords were also found to evoke greater N400 amplitudes than actual words (Bentin, 1987;Chwilla, Brown, & Hagoort, 1995;Renoult, Wang, Mortimer, & Debruille, 2012). However, a pure lexical basis for this effect was questioned by studies showing that pseudowords that resemble real words could be associated with semantic effects, such as congruity (Deacon, Dynowska, Ritter, & Grose-Fifer, 2004) or concreteness (Kounios & Holcomb, 1994). ...
... We opted for a combination of spoken (novel) word forms and pictures to assess lexical-conceptual integration using the N400m evoked response by whole-head MEG as a neurophysiological index of semantic integration, before and after training. In EEG, the N400 arises as a negative deflection, starting at around 300 msec, in response to the semantic goodnessof-fit between stimuli, such as words in sentences (Kutas & Hillyard, 1980), real-word pairs ( Van Petten, 1995), or pseudowords (Bentin, 1987). However, the N400 is also elicited by picture stimuli (Pratarelli, 1994), where it is attenuated as a function of semantic priming (Holcomb & McPherson, 1994;Barrett & Rugg, 1990). ...
... We opted for a combination of spoken (novel) word forms and pictures to assess lexical-conceptual integration using the N400m evoked response by whole-head MEG as a neurophysiological index of semantic integration, before and after training. In EEG, the N400 arises as a negative deflection, starting at around 300 msec, in response to the semantic goodnessof-fit between stimuli, such as words in sentences (Kutas & Hillyard, 1980), real-word pairs ( Van Petten, 1995), or pseudowords (Bentin, 1987). However, the N400 is also elicited by picture stimuli (Pratarelli, 1994), where it is attenuated as a function of semantic priming (Holcomb & McPherson, 1994;Barrett & Rugg, 1990). ...
... In his early work, he investigated reading processes (e.g. Bentin, 1987;Frost et al., 1987). Based on his findings, among others using the special cases of Hebrew and Arabic, he argued (strongly, as always) for the critical importance of phonological processing in reading (e.g. ...
This should have been the time for a festschrift for Shlomo Bentin, at the occasion of his “retirement” from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he had been a professor for many years at the Department of Psychology and at the Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation. We write “retirement” with double quotes, because no one who knew Shlomo Bentin could have conceived of him actually stopping to do what he was so passionate about – science. It is sad that instead of a festival, this special issue has to be in memory of Shlomo, who was tragically killed riding his bicycle while on sabbatical with Lynn Robertson in UC Berkeley in July 2012, at his prime, only weeks after receiving Israel’s most distinguished honor for his ongoing scientific achievements, the Israel Prize in Psychology.
... N400 is a negative wave with onset latency between 200 ms and 250 ms post-stimulus and maximal amplitude around 400 ms. This wave has been related to semantic processing, since its amplitude is enhanced with semantic incongruence between word and context (14,15) and decreases for conditions in which the context enables the subject to predict the word (16), or when semantically related stimuli have previously been presented (17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23). ...
Background: Categorization is one of the basic cognitive skills in human beings. In fact, it can organize knowledge and arrange human behavior. Objectives: The present study deals with the organization of conceptual knowledge by investigating and studying the ways in which different semantic domains are categorized. Materials and Methods: In the present study, event-related potentials (ERPs) have been recorded from 12 healthy right-handed male university students, who performed a semantic judgment task using 100 animal and tool words. Results: The interesting results of this study show a significant difference between both conditions in all time-windows, with more negativity for the tool category. Also, more negativity for both conditions is noticed when moving from anterior to posterior regions. Conclusions: These results are in accordance with findings of previous stud ies in this field and may be explained on the basis of the feature-based account of semantic knowledge organization.
... (Kutas & Hillyard, 1984, p. 162) Various other factors have also been shown to modulate the amplitude of the N400 (for review see Kutas & Federmeier, 2011). These include ease of contextual integration (King & Kutas, 1995), lexical status (Bentin, 1987), word frequency (Holcomb & Neville, 1990), word class (Kutas & Hillyard, 1983), orthographic neighborhood ( Holcomb, Grainger, & O'Rourke, 2002), semantic priming (Bentin, McCarthy, & Wood, 1985), repetition priming (Bentin & Peled, 1990), and word position (Van Petten, 1995), among others. Many perspectives exist as to the nature of the processing that underlies the N400 component. ...
... Grosvald, Gutierrez, Hafer, and Corina (2012) examined EEG data collected for target words that were semantically appropriate (baseline), semantically inappropriate, or a pseudo-sign that was formationally possible (i.e. a permissible articulation) but a non-existing ASL sign. Similar to what has been reported for spoken languages (Bentin, 1987;Bentin, McCarthy, & Wood, 1985;Hagoort & Kutas, 1995;Holcomb & Neville, 1990;Kutas & Hillyard, 1980), relative to the appropriate ending conditions, the two anomalous sign conditions elicited a greater negativity at approximately 400 ms after stimulus onset. Moreover, the formationally possible non-signs (i.e. ...
The human auditory system distinguishes speech-like information from general auditory signals in a remarkably fast and efficient way. Combining psychophysics and neurophysiology (MEG), we demonstrate a similar result for the processing of visual information used for language communication in users of sign languages. We demonstrate that the earliest visual cortical responses in deaf signers viewing American Sign Language signs show specific modulations to violations of anatomic constraints that would make the sign either possible or impossible to articulate. These neural data are accompanied with a significantly increased perceptual sensitivity to the anatomical incongruity. The differential effects in the early visual evoked potentials arguably reflect an expectation-driven assessment of somatic representational integrity, suggesting that language experience and/or auditory deprivation may shape the neuronal mechanisms underlying the analysis of complex human form. The data demonstrate that the perceptual tuning that underlies the discrimination of language and non-language information is not limited to spoken languages but extends to languages expressed in the visual modality.
... The N400 is especially suitable as a measure of lexical and semantic integration, as its amplitude is modulated by various linguistic properties. Firstly, pseudowords elicit more negative responses than real words (Bentin, 1987), thus providing a test of the lexical status of a newly-acquired word. The present study tested whether consolidation influences these lexical effects in the N400 response to novel words. ...
Novel words can be recalled immediately and after little exposure, but require a post-learning consolidation period to show word-like behaviour such as lexical competition. This pattern is thought to reflect a qualitative shift from episodic to lexical representations. However, several studies have reported immediate effects of meaningful novel words on semantic processing, suggesting that integration of novel word meanings may not require consolidation. The current study synthesises and extends these findings by showing a dissociation between lexical and semantic effects on the electrophysiological (N400, LPC) response to novel words. The difference in N400 amplitude between novel and existing words (a lexical effect) decreased significantly after a 24-hour consolidation period, providing novel support for the hypothesis that offline consolidation aids lexicalisation. In contrast, novel words preceded by semantically related primes elicited a more positive LPC response (a semantic-priming effect) both before and after consolidation, indicating that certain semantic effects can be observed even when words have not been fully lexicalised. We propose that novel meanings immediately start to contribute to semantic processing, but that the underlying neural processes may shift from strategic to more automatic with consolidation.
... Deciding whether or not the opposite of black is white seems a rather demanding task for people with SZ [40,41], but it is instead a low demanding task for healthy participants [38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. In fact, antonyms are recognized faster than any other words or non-words in word recognition, elicit each other in word association tests (constituting approximately a quarter of the responses coded in free association norms [30,45]) and are often mistaken in speech error analyses (making up approximately 30% of word substitution errors of healthy participants [36,41,46]). ...
In this study, we tested the online comprehension of antonyms in 39 Italian patients with paranoid schizophrenia and in an equal number of pairwise-matched healthy controls. Patients were rather accurate in identifying antonyms, but compared to controls, they showed longer response times and higher priming scores, suggesting an exaggerated contextual facilitation. Presumably, this reflects a deficient controlled semantic processing and an overreliance on stored semantic representations.
... Deciding whether or not the opposite of black is white seems a rather demanding task for people with SZ [40,41], but it is instead a low demanding task for healthy participants [38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. In fact, antonyms are recognized faster than any other words or non-words in word recognition, elicit each other in word association tests (constituting approximately a quarter of the responses coded in free association norms [30,45]) and are often mistaken in speech error analyses (making up approximately 30% of word substitution errors of healthy participants [36,41,46]). ...
The present investigation sought to expand our understanding of the cognitive processes underlying the recognition of antonyms and to evaluate whether these processes differed in patients with schizophrenia and in healthy controls. Antonymy is the most robust of the lexico-semantic relations and is relevant to both the mental organization of the lexicon and the organization of coherent discourse, as attested by the resurgence of interest in antonymy in the linguistic and psychological domains. In contrast, the vast literature on semantic processing in schizophrenia almost ignored antonymy. In this study, we tested the online comprehension of antonyms in 39 Italian patients with paranoid schizophrenia and in an equal number of pairwise-matched healthy controls. Participants read a definitional sentence fragment (e.g., the opposite of black is), followed by the correct antonym (white) or by a semantically unrelated word (nice), and judged whether or not the target word was OPEN ACCESS Behav. Sci. 2015, 5 94 correct. Patients were rather accurate in identifying antonyms, but compared to controls, they showed longer response times and higher priming scores, suggesting an exaggerated contextual facilitation. Presumably, this reflects a deficient controlled semantic processing and an overreliance on stored semantic representations.
How does language background influence the neural correlates of visual word recognition in children? To address this question, we used an ERP lexical decision task to examine first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) visual word processing in monolingual and bilingual school-aged children and young adults (n = 123). In particular, we focused on the effects of word frequency (an index of lexical accessibility) on RTs and the N400 ERP component. Behaviorally, we found larger L1 versus L2 word frequency effects among bilingual children, driven by faster and more accurate responses to higher-frequency words (no other language or age group differences were observed). Neurophysiologically, we found larger L1 word frequency effects in bilinguals versus monolinguals (across both age groups), reflected in more negative ERP amplitudes to lower-frequency words. However, the bilingual groups processed L1 and L2 words similarly, despite lower levels of subjective and objective L2 proficiency. Taken together, our findings suggest that divided L1 experience (but not L2 experience) influences the neural correlates of visual word recognition across childhood and adulthood.
The authors recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to picture primes and word targets (picture–name verification task) in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and in elderly and young participants. N400 was more negative to words that did not match pictures than to words that did match pictures in all groups: In the young, this effect was significant at all scalp sites; in the elderly, it was only at central-parietal sites; and in AD patients, it was limited to right central-parietal sites. Among AD patients pretested with a confrontation-naming task to identify pictures they could not name, neither the N400 priming effect nor its scalp distribution was affected by ability to name pictures correctly. This ERP evidence of spared knowledge of these items was complemented by 80% performance accuracy. Thus, although the name of an item may be inaccessible in confrontation naming, N400 shows that knowledge is intact enough to prime cortical responses.
Thirty-two Ss studied words presented to 1 ear, while ignoring a concurrent word list presented to the opposite ear. The N400 component of the event-related potentials elicited by attended words was modulated by semantic priming between successive words. The N400 elicited by unattended words was insensitive to semantic manipulation. Recognition memory was better for attended than for unattended words. However, the percentage of false positives was elevated equally for lures that were semantically related to “old” words, whether they had been attended or unattended. Words that were initially attended induced similar repetition effects in a lexical decision task as words that were initially unattended. Hence, both attended and unattended words are semantically processed and activate semantic representations. However, attended words form traces that are subsequently more available to conscious recollection than unattended words.
The neuroanatomical correlates of basic semantic composition have been investigated in previous neuroimaging and lesion studies, but research on the electrophysiology of the involved processes is scarce. A large literature on sentence-level event-related potentials (ERPs) during semantic processing has identified at least two relevant components – the N400 and the P600. Other studies demonstrated that these components are reduced and/or delayed in people with aphasia (PWA). However, it remains to be shown if these findings generalize beyond the sentence level. Specifically, it is an open question if an alteration in ERP responses in PWA can also be observed during basic semantic composition, providing a potential future diagnostic tool.
The present study aimed to elucidate the electrophysiological dynamics of basic semantic composition in a group of post-stroke PWA. We included 20 PWA and 20 age-matched controls (mean age 58 years) and measured ERP responses while they performed a plausibility judgment task on two-word phrases that were either meaningful (“anxious horse”), anomalous (“anxious wood”) or had the noun replaced by a pseudoword (“anxious gufel”).
The N400 effect for anomalous versus meaningful phrases was similar in both groups. In contrast, unlike the control group, PWA did not show an N400 effect between pseudoword and meaningful phrases. Moreover, both groups exhibited a parietal P600 effect towards pseudoword phrases, while PWA showed an additional P600 over frontal electrodes. Finally, PWA showed an inverse correlation between the magnitude of the N400 and P600 effects: PWA exhibiting no or even reversed N400 effects towards anomalous and pseudoword phrases showed a stronger P600 effect. These results may reflect a compensatory mechanism which allows PWA to arrive at the correct interpretation of the phrase. When compositional processing capacities are impaired in the early N400 time-window, PWA may make use of a more elaborate re-analysis process reflected in the P600.
The experimental study of artificial language learning has become a widely used means of investigating the predictions of theories of language learning and representation. Although much is now known about the generalizations that learners make from various kinds of data, relatively little is known about how those representations affect speech processing. This paper presents an event-related potential (ERP) study of brain responses to violations of lab-learned phonotactics. Novel words that violated a learned phonotactic constraint elicited a larger Late Positive Component (LPC) than novel words that satisfied it. Similar LPCs have been found for violations of natively acquired linguistic structure, as well as for violations of other types of abstract generalizations, such as musical structure. We argue that lab-learned phonotactic generalizations are represented abstractly and affect the evaluation of speech in a manner that is similar to natively acquired syntactic and phonological rules.
Semantic priming in Turkish was examined in 36 right-handed healthy participants in a
delayed lexical decision task via taxonomic relations using EEG. Prime–target relations
included related- unrelated- and pseudo-words. Taxonomically related words at long stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) were shown to modulate N400 and late positive component
(LPC) amplitudes. N400 semantic priming effect in the time window of 300–500 ms was
the largest for pseudo-words, intermediate for semantically-unrelated targets, and smallest
for semantically-related targets as a reflection of lexical-semantic retrieval. This finding
contributes to the ERP literature showing how remarkably universal the N400 brain potential is, with similar effects across languages and orthography. The ERP data also revealed
different influences of related, unrelated, and pseudo-word conditions on the amplitude of
the LPC. Attention scores and mean LPC amplitudes of related words in parietal region
showed a moderate correlation, indicating LPC may be related to “relationship-detection
process”
In an event‐related potential (ERP) study of the vowel team rule in American English (“when two vowels go walking, the first does the talking”), we used a visual lexical decision task to determine whether words that do (e.g., braid) and do not (e.g., cloud) follow the rule elicit different processing, and to determine if this extends to nonwords (e.g., braip, cloup). In 32 young adults, N1 amplitude distinguished between rule‐following and rule‐breaking items: N1 amplitude was more negative to rule‐breaking words and nonwords. In contrast, there were no significant effects of vowel team rule adherence on N400 amplitude. Behaviorally, participants responded more quickly and accurately to rule‐following words, a pattern not observed for nonwords. These findings demonstrate that adherence to the vowel team rule can be indexed by both neural and behavioral measures in fluently reading young adults. In a novel event‐related potential (ERP) exploration of the vowel team rule (“when two vowels go walking, the first does the talking”), we discovered that N1 amplitude differentiated between words and nonwords that did and did not follow the rule in young adult readers. Remarkably, a rule taught in many phonics programs—an educational mnemonic, but a poor reflection of linguistic reality—may have lingering effects on neural sublexical processing of vowel digraphs in words and nonwords.
This study employed electrophysiological measures to investigate the processes of expectancy fulfillment and semantic integration during the processing of binding and compound nouns in Chinese. Sequential expectancy and cloze probability between the two constituents of a two-character noun were manipulated in two experiments, resulting in four types of target characters (i.e., the final characters of two-character nouns): (i) high-cloze, binding character (HB); (ii) high-cloze, compound character (HC); (iii) low-cloze, binding character (LB); (iv) low-cloze, compound character (LC). Participants were asked to judge as quickly and accurately as possible whether the two characters, presented sequentially, formed a real word. The two experiments varied in stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the initial and the target characters: 1000 ms and 300 ms. ERPs acquired at the target characters revealed a significant semantic integration effect in both experiments whereby low-cloze target characters elicited more negative-going activities than high-cloze target characters (L > H) with both long and short SOAs. Importantly, there was a graded N400 effect (LC = LB > HC > HB) at the central region: a clearly visible positive deflection for HB relative to HC in synchrony with an equivalence in negativity for LB and LC. This graded pattern was observed with an SOA of 1000 ms but not 300 ms. These results are discussed in terms of the possible coexistence of an expectancy fulfillment mechanism indexed by the P300 that monitors incoming information for realization of expectancies based on stored mental representations and a semantic integration mechanism indexed by the N400 that incorporates incoming information into the preceding context based on semantic-pragmatic knowledge. Manifestation of this coexistence appears sensitive to SOA-modulated attention orientation.
Paired behavioral and ERP measures were used to track change over time in 17 third- and fourth-grade struggling readers. Word and nonword reading on standardized tests improved, but differentiation of words and letter strings, measured by N170 and N400 amplitude, did not significantly change. Sound awareness scores improved, but the ERP rhyming effect did not significantly change. Both digit span scores and latency of the P300 oddball effect decreased. Correlations between the ostensibly matched behavioral and electrophysiological measures of change were not significant, indicating that use of ERP and behavioral measures can provide nonoverlapping insight into change during reading development.
Previous studies have shown that during comprehension readers activate words beyond the unfolding sentence. An open question concerns the mechanisms underlying this behavior. One proposal is that readers mentally simulate the described event and activate related words that might be referred to as the discourse further unfolds. Another proposal is that activation between words spreads in an automatic, associative fashion. The empirical support for these proposals is mixed. Therefore, theoretical accounts differ with regard to how much weight they place on the contributions of these sources to sentence comprehension. In the present study, we attempted to assess the contributions of event simulation and lexical associations to discourse reading, using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Participants read target words, which were preceded by associatively related words either appearing in a coherent discourse event (Experiment 1) or in sentences that did not form a coherent discourse event (Experiment 2). Contextually unexpected target words that were associatively related to the described events elicited a reduced N400 amplitude compared to contextually unexpected target words that were unrelated to the events (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, a similar but reduced effect was observed. These findings support the notion that during discourse reading event simulation and simple word associations jointly contribute to language comprehension by activating words that are beyond contextually congruent sentence continuations.
In this chapter, we propose to put the previously obtained results (theoretical elaboration and adjacent theses) to the test of the neurosciences, in particular, to the test of electroencephalographic (henceforth EEG) observation.
At the outset of their book Relevance, Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995) remind the reader: ‘In writing this book, we have not literally put our thoughts down on paper. What we have put down on paper are little dark marks, a copy of which you are now looking at. As for our thoughts, they remain where they always were, inside our brains.’ With these witty remarks, they note that while we often think and speak as if language were a conduit for thought, this is only a metaphor, and a deceptive one at that. It is deceptive because it implies that language comprehension can be reduced to a decoding process (Reddy, 1979). Another, perhaps more appropriate, metaphor involves a portrait of the language user as a paleontologist who constructs theories about extinct animals based on linguistic fossil input. But regardless of one’s favourite metaphor for the relative import of coded and inferential aspects of language comprehension, recent advances in the study of language suggest that the many-headed beast we call meaning depends importantly on electrical activity in the brains of the speakers and hearers who construct it.
How do the neural mechanisms involved in word recognition evolve over the course of word learning in adult learners of a new second language? The current study sought to closely track language effects, which are differences in electrophysiological indices of word processing between one's native and second languages, in beginning university learners over the course of a single semester of learning. Monolingual L1 English-speakers enrolled in introductory Spanish were first trained on a list of 228 Spanish words chosen from the vocabulary to be learned in class. Behavioral data from the training session and the following experimental sessions spaced over the course of the semester showed expected learning effects. In the three laboratory sessions participants read words in three lists (English, Spanish and mixed) while performing a go/no-go lexical decision task in which event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. As observed in previous studies there were ERP language effects with larger N400s to native than second language words. Importantly, this difference declined over the course of L2 learning with N400 amplitude increasing for new second language words. These results suggest that even over a single semester of learning that new second language words are rapidly incorporated into the word recognition system and begin to take on lexical and semantic properties similar to native language words. Moreover, the results suggest that electrophysiological measures can be used as sensitive measures for tracking the acquisition of new linguistic knowledge.
The error detection mechanism, which is part of the human cognitive control system, is intended to prevent an error reoccurring. Its activation can be measured by the elicitation of two event-related potential components: error (ERN) and correct-related negativities (CRN). This chapter explores the evidence of the existence of this mechanism among dyslexics, despite their tendency to repeat reading errors. Because the mechanism is part of the brain’s learning circuitry, its ability to change naturally during development and following intervention programs aimed at improving dyslexics’ reading ability is also discussed.
We investigated event-related potentials (ERPs) to estimate the accuracy of eyewitness memories. Participants watched videos of vehicles being driven dangerously, from an anti-impaired driving initiative. The four-letter license plates of the vehicles were the target stimuli. Random numbers were presented while participants attempted to identify the license plate letters, and electroencephalograms were recorded. There was a significant difference in activity 300-500 milliseconds after stimulus onset, between target stimuli and random numbers. This finding contributes to establishing an eyewitness recognition model where different ERP components may reflect more explicit memory that is dissociable from recollection.
N400が心内辞書の特定の語彙表象に対する注意の焦点化に敏感な成分かどうかを検討するために, 事象関連電位 (ERP) を測定した.12名の被験者に, 継時的に呈示される単語および非単語の中から, 特定の単語に先行された非単語を検出することを求めた.この課題では, 被験者は, 特定の単語が呈示されるまで, その単語に意図的な注意を向けていた.注意の二過程説によると (例えば, Posner&Snyder, 1975), 特定の単語に対する制御的な注意は, 心内辞書の対応する表象を活性化させ, その他の表象を抑制させる.もしN400振幅が心内辞書における活性化レベルを反映しているならば, 継時呈示された二つの単語間の意味的関連性に基づくN400減衰は, 被験者が特定の単語に注意を向け, その単語に活性化が限定されている場合には, 観察されないと考えられる.しかしながら, この予測を支持する結果は得られなかった.このような場合のN400は, 被験者の注意がある単語に焦点化されていない場合の減衰量と比較すると小さいが, 刺激が意味的関連性のある単語に先行された時の方が, 関連性のない単語に先行された時よりも小さかった.これらの結果は, N400が心内辞書への注意の焦点化ではなく, 語彙表象の先行文脈への意味的な統合に敏感な成分であることを示唆している。
Prior to each target letter string presented visually to 120 university students in a speeded word–nonword classification task, either {bird, body, building,} or {xxx} appeared as a priming event. Five types of word-prime/word-target trials were used: bird-robin, bird-arm, body-door, body-sparrow, and body-heart. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between prime and target letter string varied between 250 and 2,000 msec. At 2,000-msec SOA, reaction times (RTs) on bird-robin type trials were faster than on xxx-prime trials (facilitation), whereas RTs on bird-arm type trials were slower than on xxx-prime (inhibition). As SOA decreased, the facilitation effect on bird-robin trials remained constant, but the inhibition effect on bird-arm decreased until, at 250-msec SOA, there was no inhibition. For Shift conditions at 2,000-msec SOA, facilitation was obtained on body-door type trials and inhibition was obtained on body-sparrow type. These effects decreased as SOA decreased until there was no facilitation or inhibition. On body-heart type trials, there was an inhibition effect at 2,000 msec SOA, which decreased as SOA decreased until, at 250-msec SOA, it became a facilitation effect. Results support the theory of M. I. Posner and S. R. Snyder (1975) that postulated 2 distinct components of attention: a fast automatic inhibitionless spreading-activation process and a slow limited-capacity conscious-attention mechanism. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Performed 3 experiments with 400 Ss to examine the effect of expectancy on associative facilitation in a lexical decision task. Ss were asked to decide whether a pair of visually presented letter strings were both words (lexical decision task). Positive reaction time (RT) on a single critical trial was faster if the words presented were associated, whether or not Ss had seen any other pairs of associates prior to the critical trial. Similar results were obtained when the letter strings were presented singly in a continuous series, with 2 sec between successive items. Explicitly instructing Ss to try to take advantage of the presence of associates had no effect on the size of the associative facilitation. Results support an automatic spread of excitation model of associative facilitation. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
It is shown that lexical decision times to strong associates with an associative strength of approximately 40% are facilitated
relative to targets following a neutral prime, “blank,” whereas very weak associates with an associative strength of less
then 3% are neither facilitated nor inhibited. It is also shown that relative to the “blank” baseline time, a row of crosses
inhibits processing of the following target. The latter finding has implications for earlier studies that have used crosses
as a neutral prime. In these studies, facilitation effects have been overestimated and inhibition effects have been underestimated.
Neely 1976 has proposed a predict-and-match strategy according to which subjects are assumed to predict one or more targets
from the prime and to match the actual target onto the predicted targets. A part of this theory is not supported by the present
data. The results are discussed in terms of the two-process theory of expectancy (Posner & Snyder, 1975). They are also considered
in the light of a recent theory by Becker (1980). As an alternative interpretation of part of the reported data, a coherence
assumption by the subjects about all reading materials is introduced.
Describes a model in which perception results from excitatory and
inhibitory interactions of detectors for visual features, letters,
and words. A visual input excites detectors for visual features in
the display and for letters consistent with the active features.
Letter detectors in turn excite detectors for consistent words. It
is suggested that active word detectors mutually inhibit each other
and send feedback to the letter level, strengthening activation and
hence perceptibility of their constituent letters. Computer simulation
of the model exhibits the perceptual advantage for letters in words
over unrelated contexts and is considered consistent with basic facts
about word advantage. Most important, the model produces facilitation
for letters in pronounceable pseudowords as well as words. Pseudowords
activate detectors for words that are consistent with most active
letters, and feedback from the activated words strengthens activations
of the letters in the pseudoword. The model thus accounts for apparently
rule-governed performance without any actual rules. (50 ref) (PsycINFO
Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)
Presents a spreading-activation theory of human semantic processing,
which can be applied to a wide range of recent experimental results.
The theory is based on M. R. Quillian's (1967) theory of semantic
memory search and semantic preparation, or priming. In conjunction
with this, several misconceptions concerning Quillian's theory are
discussed. A number of additional assumptions are proposed for his
theory to apply it to recent experiments. The present paper shows
how the extended theory can account for results of several production
experiments by E. F. Loftus, J. F. Juola and R. C. Atkinson's (1971)
multiple-category experiment, C. Conrad's (1972) sentence-verification
experiments, and several categorization experiments on the effect
of semantic relatedness and typicality by K. J. Holyoak and A. L.
Glass (1975), L. J. Rips et al (1973), and E. Rosch (1973). The paper
also provides a critique of the Rips et al model for categorization
judgments.
A cost-benefit and a speed-accuracy analysis of semantic priming in a lexical decision task provided information relevant to the automatic/conscious distinction as well as to the operation of discriminability, criterion bias, and response bias in the facilitation. In both studies half the cues were neutral and half were words, of which 80% were valid and 20% invalid. In Exp I with 79 right-handed undergraduates, cue time, a between-groups factor, was either 200, 300, 400, 500, or 700 msec. Valid cues produced facilitation in reaction time at cue times as short as 400 msec. Invalid cues produced inhibition at cue times as short as 200 msec. Exp II (6 undergraduates) used a response-signal technique to collect information about the speed-accuracy trade-off in a lexical decision task. Cues were always presented for 800 msec; targets were variably presented within S for either 100, 200, 300, 450, or 600 msec. The experiments indicate that discriminality, criterion bias, and response bias are integrated in producing facilitation, but simple applications of criterion bias or response bias alone do not adequately explain the facilitation effect. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
Semantic context and word frequency factors exert a strong influence on the time that it takes subjects to recognize words. Some of the explanations that have been offered for the effects of the two factors suggest that context and frequency should interact, and other explanations imply additivity. In a recent study, Schuberth and Eimas reported that context and frequency effects added to determine their subjects' reaction times in a lexical decision (word vs. nonword) task. The present experiment reexamines this question with improved procedures. The data show that context and frequency do interact, with a semantic context facilitating the processing of low-frequency words more than high-frequency words.
A technique for measuring the latency of the P300 component of event-related brain potentials on individual trials is described.
Choice reaction times and the latency of the P300 were compared under speed-maximizing and under accuracy-mazimising instructions.
The choice stimuli required different levels of semantic categorization. The data support the proposition that the latency
of P300 corresponds to stimulus evaluation time and is independent of response selection.
A dual-task paradigm was used to assess attentional processing demands during visual word recognition. By manipulating the difficulty of each task, it is argued that the procedure estimates the attention demands of the memory-access component of word recognition. Specifically, the the complexity of the secondary task was varied from a simple reaction time task to a choice reaction time task, and the difficulty of a lexical decision (word vs. nonword) primary task was varied by manipulating word frequency. A comparison of the effect of secondary task complexity across levels of word frequency showed that the difference between the two secondary tasks was larger for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words. This result, supported by other characteristics of the data, suggests that the memory-access processing in one type of word recognition task does demand attention.
Presented 2 strings of letters simultaneously, with 1 string displayed visually above the other, to high school students (n = 24). In exp. I, ss responded "yes" if both strings were words, otherwise responding "no." in exp. Ii, ss responded "same" if the 2 strings were either both words or both nonwords, otherwise responding "different." "yes" responses and "same" responses were faster for pairs of commonly associated words than for pairs of unassociated words. "same" responses were slowest for pairs of nonwords. "no" responses were faster when the top string in the display was a nonword, whereas "different" responses were faster when the top string was a word. Results support a retrieval model involving a dependence between separate successive decisions about whether each of the 2 strings is a word. Possible mechanisms that underlie this dependence are discussed. (19 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Previous investigations of sentence context effects (SCEs) on word-naming time have uncovered a pattern of facilitation dominance. Another finding has been that words that are more difficult to recognize in isolation display larger SCEs than easier words. The present experiments with 384 undergraduates showed SCEs to be robust and eliminated several alternative explanations. Two experiments demonstrated the appropriateness of the neutral condition used to assess facilitation and inhibition. Another showed that SCEs did not depend on the procedure used. It was shown that manipulations that were designed to affect S strategies did not change the pattern of results. In 3 experiments, an interaction between stimulus quality and content condition was obtained. The interaction replicated across 2 forms of stimulus degradation, but only 1 form increased inhibition effects as well as facilitation effects. Other inconsistencies between previous SC experiments in the magnitude of the inhibition effects observed were resolved by showing that an SC produced more inhibition in the lexical decision task than in the naming task. It was demonstrated that the 2 tasks produced different amounts of inhibition when the same stimuli were used. Sentence integration processes that occurred after lexical access appeared to be responsible for some of the inhibition observed in lexical decision tasks. (85 ref)
The present paper contrasts two theories about the use of semantic context information. On the one hand, the two-process theory maintains that subjects can use an automatic process alone or in conjunction with an attentional process to take advantage of a context. On the other hand, the strategy assumption maintains that subjects can select one of two semantic strategies in using a context. Two experiments examine the effect of different types of semantic context on third- and fifth-grade readers. The data, from a lexical-decision (word vs. nonword) task, strongly support the strategy assumption while disconfirming two-process theory./// [French] Cette étude met en contraste deux théories concernant l'utilisation d'information de contexte sémantique. D'une part, la théorie des deux processus soutient que les sujets peuvent utiliser un processus automatique et/ou un processus attentionnel pour profiter d'un contexte. D'autre part, l'hypothèse de stratégie soutient que les sujets peuvent sélectionner une des deux stratégies sémantiques en utilisant un contexte. Les deux essais examinent l'effet de différents types de contexte sémantique sur des lecteurs de neuvième et septième. Les données, à partir d'une tâche de décision lexicale (mots par rapport à des mots qui n'en sont pas), supportent avec force la supposition de stratégie tandis qu'elles déconfirment la théorie des deux procédés./// [Spanish] El presente artículo contrasta dos teorías sobre el uso de información de contexto semántico. Por un lado, la teoría de proceso doble declara que a individuos les es posible utilizar un proceso automático y/o un proceso de concentración para aprovechar del contexto. Por otro lado, la estrategia de suposición declara que a individuos les es posible seleccionar una o dos estrategias semánticas utilizando un contexto. Dos experimentos examinan los efectos de los diferentes tipos de contexto semántico en lectores de tercer y quinto grado. Los datos, derivados de una actividad de decisión lexical (palabra contra palabra sin significado) apoya firmemente la estrategia de suposición mientras desecha la teoría de proceso doble.
Wilson (1967, 1974) indicated that when successive measurements are obtained in psychophysiological investigations, analysis of the data with repeated measures F tests will very likely result in positively biased tests of the repeated factor null hypothesis. The present paper demonstrates how the Greenhouse and Geisser (1959) three-step approach to significance testing, a procedure intended to control the probability of a false positive, can be applied to experimental designs containing any number of repeated measures variables. In addition, the paper contains a short computer program for obtaining a numerical solution.
This paper is concerned with methods for analyzing quantitative, non-categorical profile data, e.g., a battery of tests given to individuals in one or more groups. It is assumed that the variables have a multinormal distribution with an arbitrary variance-covariance matrix. Approximate procedures based on classical analysis of variance are presented, including an adjustment to the degrees of freedom resulting in conservativeF tests. These can be applied to the case where the variance-covariance matrices differ from group to group. In addition, exact generalized multivariate analysis methods are discussed. Examples are given illustrating both techniques.
ERPs were recorded during a lexical decision task in order to investigate electrophysiological concomitants of semantic priming. The stimuli were 240 words and 240 nonwords presented one per trial at a fixed intertrial interval. Subjects were required to classify each stimulus as a word or nonword by pressing one of two response buttons. ERPs were recorded from 14 scalp locations, the right suborbital ridge, and the left earlobe, all referred to a balanced non-cephalic reference. RT and error data confirmed that semantic priming occurred under the conditions employed: primed words (those preceded by a semantically related word) were identified as words faster and more accurately than were unprimed words (those preceded by semantically unrelated words or nonwords). ERPs for all stimulus types were characterized by a large positivity peaking between 550 and 650 msec, preceded by a negative-going deflection peaking at approximately 400 msec. ERPs for primed and unprimed words were shown to differ significantly, diverging 200-250 msec following stimulus onset, reaching a maximum near the peak of the negative-going deflection at 400 msec. These differences were observed at locations over both hemispheres and were maximal in the centroparietal region. Although P300 latency differences between primed and unprimed words were also obtained, the priming effect on ERPs at shorter latencies could not be explained solely by P300 latency effects. Possible relationships between these ERP concomitants of semantic priming and P300, N200, and N400 were discussed.
The biphasic late negative wave (Nx-Ny) evoked during the naming of pictures of objects was investigated in a series of experiments. The monitoring of several possible non-cerebral generators indicated that these components were probably cerebral in origin. The Ny wave differed in scalp distribution from the preceding CNV. It was unaffected by stimulus duration or by stimulus repetition. The Nx-Ny complex occurred in both a naming task and a mental rotation task. The slow waves following the biphasic negative wave differed significantly between these two tasks. In the mental rotation task, there was a large prolonged negativity in both parietal regions. The Nx wave (at approximately 250 msec) of the biphasic complex may represent the initial registration of the stimulus. The Ny wave (at approximately 420 msec) does not appear to be specifically related to semantic processing. Rather it may index some process involved in initiating the further evaluation of a complex stimulus. The slow waves that follow the biphasic negative complex may reflect the actual perceptual processing of the stimulus.
Earlier research studying the effects of semantic context on single words suggested that subjects may have two strategies for using a context (Becker, 1980). The present research finds that the semantic context strategies may be used in reading short sentences. Further, individual differences in context effects both in a word-level task and in a sentence-level task are related to individual differences in reading continuous text. These results are presented within the framework of the verification model (Becker, 1976, 1980), and the implications for two-process theory (Stanovich & West, 1979, 1981) are discussed.
The neuroelectric activity of the human brain that accompanies linguistic processing can be studied through recordings of event-related potentials (e.r.p. components) from the scalp. The e.r.ps triggered by verbal stimuli have been related to several different aspects of language processing. For example, the N400 component, peaking around 400 ms post-stimulus, appears to be a sensitive indicator of the semantic relationship between a word and the context in which it occurs. Words that complete sentences in a nonsensical fashion elicit much larger N400 waves than do semantically appropriate words or non-semantic irregularities in a text. In the present study, e.r.ps were recorded in response to words that completed meaningful sentences. The amplitude of the N400 component of the e.r.p. was found to be an inverse function of the subject's expectancy for the terminal word as measured by its 'Cloze probability'. In addition, unexpected words that were semantically related to highly expected words elicited lower N400 amplitudes. These findings suggest N400 may reflect processes of semantic priming or activation.
Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from adults as they read 160 different sentences, half of which ended with a semantically anomalous word. These deviant words elicited a broad, negative component (N400). Measured in the difference wave between ERPs to incongruous and congruous endings, the N400 was slightly larger and more prolonged over the right than the left hemisphere and diminished in amplitude over the course of the experiment. A left-greater-than-right asymmetry was again observed in the slow, positive ERP elicited by the first six words in the sentences, being most pronounced for subjects having no left-handers in their immediate family.
Using a procedure that isolates the facilitatory and interfering effects of a semantic context, the present study examines
two distinct patterns of context effects. One pattern shows a dominance of facilitation for target words in a related context,
and the other pattern shows a dominance of interference for target words in an unrelated context. The controlling factor seems
to be the overall characteristics of the stimulus list. For materials that include semantic relationships that are consistent
in the strength of the relationships, facilitation dominance obtains. For materials that include a wide range of semantic
relationship strengths, interference dominance results. These two patterns of facilitation and interference are attributed
to two semantic strategies available to subjects for using context information. The explication of the strategies includes
a theoretical treatment of the present data.
In a sentence reading task, words that occurred out of context were associated with specific types of event-related brain
potentials. Words that were physically aberrant (larger than normal) elecited a late positive series of potentials, whereas
semantically inappropriate words elicited a late negative wave (N400). The N400 wave may be an electrophysiological sign of
the "reprocessing" of semantically anomalous information.
We confirm that the latency of the P300 component of the human event-related potential is determined by processes involved
in stimulus evaluation and categorization and is relatively independent of response selection and execution. Stimulus discriminability
and stimulus-response compatibility were manipulated independently in an "additive-factors" design. Choice reaction time and
P300 latency were obtained simultaneously for each trial. Although reaction time was affected by both discriminability and
stimulus-response compatibility, P300 latency was affected only by stimulus discriminability.
Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from subjects as they silently read 160 different seven-word sentences, presented one word at a time. Each sentence was in itself a natural, meaningful phrase. Substantial intersubject variability was observed in the ERP waveshapes following the words. More than half of the subjects generated P3 components to word stimuli, but those who did showed similar responses to repeated control presentations of a single word. In addition, it was found that all but the first word in the sentence elicited an ERP with a significant left-greater-than-right asymmetry in the late positivity over temporo-parietal regions. The ERPs to the last words were associated with more late positivity than those to the preceding words. One quarter of the sentences, at random, ended with a word printed in a typeface that was different from that of the preceding words. This infrequent change in typeface elicited a complex ERP having three consistent late positive components.
Processing facilitation in a lexical decision task. Jolcrnal ofExperimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
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Amos, S. J. 1979. Processing facilitation in a lexical decision task. Jolcrnal ofExperimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 5, 527-545.
ERP evidence for semantic priming in a memory recognition parudigm. Paper presented at the third International Conference on Event-related potentials. lexical decision, and semantic priming
- S Bentin
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- G Mccarthy
- C C Wood
Bentin, S., McCarthy, G., & Wood, C. C. 1984. ERP evidence for semantic priming in a memory recognition parudigm. Paper presented at the third International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience, Bristol, England. Bentin, S., McCarthy, G., & Wood, C. C. 1985. Event-related potentials. lexical decision, and semantic priming. EIectroencephalography nnd Clinical Neurophysiology, 60, 343-355.
A balanced non-cephalic reference electrode
- Stephanson
ERP evidence for semantic priming in a memory recognition paradigm
- Bentin
Augmenting mental chronometry
- Kutas