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N400 Effects Reflect Activation Spread During Retrieval of Arithmetic Facts
Abstract
Arithmetic facts are stored in densely interconnected memory networks, and retrieval errors may occur because activation spreads to associated results. We studied the extension of activation spread by means of the so-called N400 effect of the event-related brain potential (ERP). With semantic stimuli, N400 amplitude has proved to be inversely proportional to the amount of activation that originates from a priming context. ERPs were recorded from 61 scalp positions while 16 subjects verified 600 multiplication problems (a × b = c). The solution to each problem could be correct or incorrect. Incorrect solutions were either table related to one of the operands (e.g., 5 × 8 = 32, 24, or 16) or unrelated (e.g., 5 × 8 = 34, 26, or 18), and were either a small, medium, or large numerical distance from the correct product. Our findings suggest that activation spread in an arithmetic memory network is restricted to numbers that are table related to one of the operands and that are numerically plausible.
... Event-related potentials (ERPs) have provided a window into the cognitive processes underlying multiplication verification in both monolinguals and bilinguals [4,6,14,15,[20][21][22][23][24][25]. ERPs are a measurement of the synchronized firing of cortical neurons with millisecond precision. ...
... When reading a sentence, for example, words that are expected based on preceding context will elicit greater activation in semantic memory, and in turn, smaller N400 amplitude than words that are not supported by context [35,37,38]. Under an N400 interpretation of the arithmetic effect, correct solutions are more facilitated in memory after reading the first two operands, and therefore elicit less N400 amplitude compared to incorrect solutions [23][24][25]. ...
... These studies with bilinguals address a broader body of literature that investigates the cognitive processes underlying multiplication verification in the adult brain. Niedeggen and colleagues were the first to report ERP measures from adults verifying simple multiplication problems [23,24]. In these studies, participants saw three consecutive Arabic numbers (digits) and judged if the third number was the correct product of the first two (e.g., 2 4 9). ...
Many studies of bilingual arithmetic report better performance when verifying arithmetic facts in the language of learning (LA+) over the other language (LA−). This could be due to language-specific memory representations, processes established during learning, or to language and task factors not related to math. The current study builds on a small number of event-related potential (ERP) studies to test this question while controlling language proficiency and eliminating potential task confounds. Adults proficient in two languages verified single-digit multiplications presented as spoken number words in LA+ and LA−, separately. ERPs and correctness judgments were measured from solution onset. Equivalent P300 effects, with larger positive amplitude for correct than incorrect solutions, were observed in both languages (Experiment 1A), even when stimuli presentation rate was shortened to increase difficulty (Experiment 1B). This effect paralleled the arithmetic correctness effect for trials presented as all digits (e.g., 2 4 8 versus 2 4 10), reflecting efficient categorization of the solutions, and was distinct from an N400 generated in a word–picture matching task, reflecting meaning processing (Experiment 2). The findings reveal that the language effects on arithmetic are likely driven by language and task factors rather than differences in memory representation in each language.
... The existence of a semantic stage is supported by the relatedness effect: close neighbors create more interference compared to unrelated numbers, even if the numerical distance is similar (Bahnmueller et al., 2020;Didino, Knops, Vespignani, & Kornpetpanee, 2015;Domahs et al., 2007;Niedeggen & Rösler, 1999). For example, given the operands 3 and 7, it is more difficult to reject the probe 24 (neighbor) compared to the probe 23 (unrelated number). ...
... In small problems, unrelated primes generated more interference than neighbor primes (Figure 1). Since this pattern is reversed compared to a standard relatedness effect (Bahnmueller et al., 2020;Campbell, 1991Campbell, , 1995Didino et al., 2015;Domahs et al., 2007;Meagher & Campbell, 1995;Niedeggen & Rösler, 1999;Verguts & Fias, 2005a), we interpreted it as an S-R association effect. In fact, following our hypothesis, in small problems, the prime processing occurred during the response stage. ...
... The fact that the prime did not generate any stable relatedness effect also suggests that the processing of the prime did not interfere with the retrieval process. In fact, a very large amount of evidence indicates that the retrieval process in multiplication is extremely sensitive to the relatedness factor, independent from the design, the procedure, or the stimuli used in an experiment (Bahnmueller et al., 2020;Campbell, 1991;Campbell, 1995;Didino et al., 2015;Domahs et al., 2007;Galfano et al., 2003Galfano et al., , 2004Galfano et al., , 2009Meagher & Campbell, 1995;Niedeggen & Rösler, 1999;Verguts & Fias, 2005a). Therefore, one would expect the relatedness of the prime to affect the retrieval process. ...
In three experiments, we used a masked prime in a verification task to investigate the processing stages occurring during multiplication fact retrieval. We aimed to investigate the retrieval process by overlapping its execution with the processing of a masked prime consisting of a number. Participants evaluated the correctness of multiplication equations, where the result was preceded by a masked prime (presented for 30 ms, with different stimulus onset asynchrony between the operands and the prime). Decade consistency and relatedness of the prime were manipulated. For example, given the equation 4 x 7 = 28, the prime could be: a neighbor either decade consistent (24) or inconsistent (32), or an unrelated number either decade consistent (23) or inconsistent (31). We expected that the feature of the prime (relatedness or decade consistency) that generates interference depends on the processing stage reached when the prime is processed. Although Experiment 1 showed promising results, Experiments 2 and 3 suggest that the pattern found in Experiment 1 was a false positive. Overall, the paradigm used in this study (i.e., masked prime with a verification ask) does not seem to produce a stable interference during the retrieval process.
... A last component has been observed in arithmetic studies for verification tasks. More precisely, the ERP amplitude in the centroparietal regions around 400 ms after the answer presentation is more negative for trials associated with a false answer than for trials associated with the correct answer (Jost et al., 2004;Niedeggen and Rösler, 1999;Szűcs and Csépe, 2005). Moreover, Niedeggen and Rösler (1999) noted that this difference in amplitude, which is usually defined as the N400 component, is modulated by the nature of the false answer associated with the problem. ...
... More precisely, the ERP amplitude in the centroparietal regions around 400 ms after the answer presentation is more negative for trials associated with a false answer than for trials associated with the correct answer (Jost et al., 2004;Niedeggen and Rösler, 1999;Szűcs and Csépe, 2005). Moreover, Niedeggen and Rösler (1999) noted that this difference in amplitude, which is usually defined as the N400 component, is modulated by the nature of the false answer associated with the problem. More precisely, N400 amplitude was smaller when the false answer was an answer of a neighbour problem, that is a close table-related problem (e.g., 3 × 6 = 24), than an answer of an unrelated or a far table-related problem (e.g., 3 × 7 = 32). ...
... Half of the problems were followed by the correct answer, and the other half was followed by an incorrect answer. In order to study difference in the N400 component depending on the category of problems, proposed answers of a given problem were answers of its neighbour table-related problems (Niedeggen and Rösler, 1999). More precisely, incorrect answers were constructed by subtracting or adding 1 to one of the operands of the problem and calculating the answer (e.g., one of the incorrect answers to 3 × 2 was 3 x (2 + 1) = 9, while one of the answers to 3 + 2 was 3 + (2 + 1) = 6). ...
Using ERP, we investigated the cause of the tie advantage according to which problems with repeated operands are solved faster and more accurately than non-tie problems. We found no differences in early or N400 ERP components between problems, suggesting that tie problems are not encoded faster or suffer from less interference than non-tie problems. However, a lesser negative amplitude of the N2 component was found for tie than non-tie problems. This suggests more working-memory and attentional resource requirements for non-tie problems and therefore more frequent use of retrieval for tie than non-tie problems. The possible peculiarity of problems involving a 1 was also investigated. We showed less negative N2 amplitudes for these problems than for other non-tie problems, suggesting less working-memory resources for 1-problems than other non-tie problems. This could be explained either by higher reliance on memory retrieval for 1-problems than non-1 problems or by the application of non-arithmetical rules for 1-problems.
... It has been related to the detection of an incongruence in semantic, lexical or conceptual processing, including arithmetic computing (Kutas & Iragui, 1998;Lau, Phillips, & Poeppel, 2008). Niedeggen and Rösler (1999) investigated whether incongruent solutions of simple multiplication problems would elicit similar event-related brain potentials as inappropriate words in sentences and found larger N400s (as opposed to P300s) to incorrect than correct arithmetic solutions. Singledigit multiplication problems were used to construct correct and incorrect arithmetic equations for a verification task. ...
... This hypothesis is supported by Spearman correlations showing an inverse relationship between performance and P300 amplitude to incorrect solutions. The finding of a larger P300 to correct than incorrect arithmetic solutions is in accordance with previous electrophysiological literature (El Yagoubi, Lemaire, & Besson, 2003;Niedeggen & Rösler, 1999;Núñez-Peña & Escera, 2007;Núñez-Peña & Suárez-Pellicioni, 2012;Szűcs & Csépe, 2005). The reduced P300 amplitude in response to incorrect solutions corroborates many findings reporting enhanced negativities to incorrect solutions (Szűcs & Csépe, 2005;Wang, Kong, Tang, Zhuang, & Li, 2000). ...
... The reduced P300 amplitude in response to incorrect solutions corroborates many findings reporting enhanced negativities to incorrect solutions (Szűcs & Csépe, 2005;Wang, Kong, Tang, Zhuang, & Li, 2000). Niedeggen and Rösler (1999) found that incorrect solutions of multiplications elicited a negativity (named arithmetic N400) starting at about 300 ms poststimulus, which was followed by a centro-parietal late positivity. They interpreted these biphasic responses as indicating a conflict between the operation presented and the solution offered (see also Núñez-Peña et al., 2011). ...
Inter‐individual differences in the numerical ability of healthy adults have been previously demonstrated, mainly with tasks involving mental number line or size representation. However, electrophysiological correlates of superior vs. poor arithmetic ability (in the healthy population) have been scarcely investigated. We correlated electric potentials with math performance in 13 skilled and 13 poor calculators selected from a sample of 41 graduate students on the basis of their poor or superior math abilities assessed through a timed test. EEG was recorded from 128 channels while participants solved 352 arithmetical operations (additions, subtractions, multiplications, divisions) and decided if the provided solution was correct or incorrect. Overall skilled individuals correctly solved a higher number of operations than poor calculators and had faster response times. Consistently, the latency of fronto‐central P300 component of event‐related potentials (ERPs) peaked earlier in the skilled than poor group. The P300 was larger in amplitude to correct than incorrect solutions, but just in the skilled group, with a tendency found in poor calculators. Spearman's Rho correlation coefficient analyses showed that the larger P300 response was to correct arithmetic solutions, the better the performance; conversely, the larger the P300 amplitude was to incorrect solutions the worse the performance. The results suggest that poor calculators had a less clear representation of arithmetic solutions, and difficulty in quickly accessing it. This study provides a standard method for directly investigating math abilities throughout ERP recordings that could be useful for assessing acalculia/dyscalculia in the clinical population (children, elderly, brain‐damaged patients).
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... Studies have shown that reaction time reflects the late process of decision competition (Duncan-Johnson and Kopell, 1981), while the electrophysiological index occurs earlier than explicit reaction, and its latency is usually regarded as the end point of individual analysis (McCarthy and Donchin, 1981), which is not affected by the reaction preparation process. Therefore, the behavioral response occurs later than the electrophysiological response in most studies, and the lag of this response time has been found in some studies (Brown and Hagoort, 1993;Holcomb, 1993;Niedeggen and Rösler, 1999). Research on neighborhood consistency has primarily focused on behavioral experiments; hence, the study of electrophysiology must be further discussed. ...
... N400 is a negative component observed at the end when the participants read words and sentences with inconsistent semantics (Kutas and Hillyard, 1989). The amplitude of the N400 effect is inversely proportional to the amount of activation diffusion from the arithmetic problem (Friederici, 1995;Niedeggen and Rösler, 1999). This suggests that if the target word is preceded by a relevant context (word or sentence), the amplitude is smaller, while if there is an irrelevant context before the target word, the amplitude is larger. ...
Simple multiplication errors are primarily shown in whether the lures are related to the operands (relatedness, such as 3 × 4 = 15 vs. 17) or whether the same decades are shared with the correct answers (consistency, such as 3 × 4 = 16 vs. 21). This study used a delayed verification paradigm and event-related potential technique to investigate the effects of relatedness and consistency in simple multiplication mental arithmetic for 30 college students in an experiment of presenting probes in auditory channels. We found that, compared to the related inconsistent lures, the related consistent lures showed significantly faster reaction time and induced significantly large amplitudes of N400 and late positive component. The findings suggest that related consistent lures are less affected by the activation diffusion of the arithmetic problem, and the credibility of being perceived as the correct answer is less; the lures related to operands and sharing the same decades with the accurate results can promote the judgment of multiplication mental arithmetic, and the results support the Interacting Neighbors Model.
... One open question concerns the choice of the task design. While in neuropsychological 22 and DCE 10,11 studies, patients are asked to orally retrieve the result (in this way the experimental task corresponds closely to the behavior of interest), most of the evidence on the time-course of single-digit multiplication in neuroimaging (e.g., PET, fMRI) and neurophysiology (e.g., EEG, MEG) is based on verification tasks 3,8,[23][24][25][26][27][28] . Indeed, the experimental design based on verification has some advantages, as it avoids the problem of oral response artifacts and allows for finer control of the experimental setting. ...
... Rights reserved Stimuli. All combinations between one-digit numbers were used in each session, excluding same number multiplication (e.g., 5 × 5, 2 × 2) and multiplication including 1 or 0 as an operand (as in Ref. 23 ). This led to 54 different operations that were repeated three times in the three sessions, which constituted the whole experiment. ...
Despite decades of studies, it is still an open question on how and where simple multiplications are solved by the brain. This fragmented picture is mostly related to the different tasks employed. While in neuropsychological studies patients are asked to perform and report simple oral calculations, neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies often use verification tasks, in which the result is shown, and the participant must verify the correctness. This MEG study aims to unify the sources of evidence, investigating how brain activation unfolds in time using a single-digit multiplication production task. We compared the participants' brain activity—focusing on the parietal lobes—based on response efficiency, dividing their responses in fast and slow. Results showed higher activation for fast, as compared to slow, responses in the left angular gyrus starting after the first operand, and in the right supramarginal gyrus only after the second operand. A whole-brain analysis showed that fast responses had higher activation in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. We show a timing difference of both hemispheres during simple multiplications. Results suggest that while the left parietal lobe may allow an initial retrieval of several possible solutions, the right one may be engaged later, helping to identify the solution based on magnitude checking.
... Thus, a word block was in essence a semantic processing task. Therefore, the N400-which is closely related to semantic processing [68,69]-was used as the ERP measure in the word blocks. ...
... (c) The independent sample t -test results that the altered values of the N400 amplitude were greater in the experts than in the amateurs. [69]. Furthermore, EFW Stroop research found a stronger N400 in the incongruent condition than in the congruent condition [57], suggesting that the N400 may reflect the degree of incongruency in the Stroop paradigm. ...
Action video gaming (AVG) experience has been found related to sensorimotor and attentional development. However, the influence of AVG experience on the development of emotional perception skills is still unclear. Using behavioral and ERP measures, this study examined the relationship between AVG experience and the ability to decode emotional faces and emotional word meanings. AVG experts and amateurs completed an emotional word-face Stroop task prior to (the pregaming phase) and after (the postgaming phase) a 1 h AVG session. Within-group comparisons showed that after the 1 h AVG session, a more negative N400 was observed in both groups of participants, and a more negative N170 was observed in the experts. Between-group comparisons showed that the experts had a greater change of N170 and N400 amplitudes across phases than the amateurs. The results suggest that both the 1 h and long-term AVG experiences may be related to an increased difficulty of emotional perception. Furthermore, certain behavioral and ERP measures showed neither within- nor between-group differences, suggesting that the relationship between AVG experience and emotional perception skills still needs further research.
... In a collaboration between the Facultad de Estudios Superiores-Iztacala and the Instituto de Neurobiología at UNAM, Prieto-Corona et al. (2010) compared arithmetical fact retrieval strategies of nine-year-old children and young adults. Previous studies have shown (Niedeggen & Rösler, 1999) that two event-related brain potentials (ERPs) appear while the young adults judge whether solutions for single-digit multiplication problems are correct: the arithmetic N400, which show a higher amplitude for incorrect than correct solutions, and the late positive component (LPC), which also shows a higher amplitude for incorrect than correct solutions and is associated with a verification process. Consistent with these findings, in the study of Prieto-Corona et al., adults showed the two ERP effects; however, children showed an N400 effect with a latency that was longer and more widely distributed than in adults. ...
... En una colaboración entre la Facultad de Estudios Superiores-Iztacala y el Instituto de Neurobiología de la UNAM, Prieto-Corona et al. (2010) compararon las estrategias de recuperación de datos aritméticos de niños de nueve años y adultos jóvenes. Estudios previos han demostrado (Niedeggen & Rösler, 1999) que dos potenciales cerebrales relacionados con eventos (PREs) surgen cuando los jóvenes adultos juzgan si las soluciones para los problemas de multiplicación de un solo dígito son correctas: el N400 aritmético, que revela una amplitud mayor para soluciones incorrectas que correctas, y el componente positivo tardío (LPC, por sus siglas en inglés), que también evidencia una mayor amplitud para soluciones incorrectas que correctas y está asociado a un proceso de verificación. Acorde con estos hallazgos, en el estudio de Prieto-Corona et al., los adultos evidenciaron los dos efectos PRE; no obstante, los niños mostraron un efecto N400, con una latencia que se distribuyó durante más tiempo y más ampliamente que los adultos. ...
In Mexico, by the end of compulsory education, half of the junior high school students attain the lowest level in international maths assessments. To reach a better understanding of how people learn mathematical skills and how to improve in teaching methods, researchers have looked at the intersection of cognitive psychology and maths education: the field of numerical cognition. However, there is a limited amount of research with Mexican students. This paper provides an overview of the studies published to date. This overview shows that research started with an interest in how to evaluate maths skills and identify children with maths difficulties; however, in the last five years, researchers have started to study younger and atypical populations using more diverse methods. The field of numerical cognition in Mexico is still emerging; however, in years to come, there should be additional informative and exciting research from laboratories in Mexico.
... В частности, был получен M. Niedeggen и со авт. схожий с семантическим «арифметиче ский эффект» N400 (N400 effect) [40]. В случае появления неверных ответов, следующих за примерами умножения из однозначных чисел, возникало негативное отклонение в интерва ле от 300 до 500 мс, амплитуда пика которого было больше в сравнении с амплитудой пика негативной волны на верные ответы [2]. ...
Relevance . Considering the demand for additional efficient methods among clinicians to assess military mental health, instrumental methods, including psychophysiological and neuropsychological tools, providing objectifying detection of mental disorders (MD) are of particular importance. Event-related potentials (ERP) are a promising additional method of objectification of psychopathological manifestations, allowing to obtain neurophysiological parameters for processes associated with arbitrary attention, identification and decision-making.
Objective . The study provides a generalized analysis of contemporary investigations and research outcomes regarding event-related potentials as a diagnostic tool for mental disorders, its diagnostic and prognostic potential in medical examination of military mental disorders.
Methods . To assess the ERP diagnostic informative value, we analyzed over 40 scientific studies published within the last 10 years dealing with event-related potentials and their implementation in MDs, various brain structure damages and associated functional disorders. We also summarized the results of applying this method to study patients’ cognitive abilities and integrative functions.
Results and discussion . Our analysis of scientific studies shows that the ERP value differs significantly for various MDs, such as: schizophrenic spectrum disorders, affective disorders, or addictive pathology. The conclusion suggests that the assessment of the parameters associated with various ERP modifications can improve objectivity of diagnostic and prognostic outcomes in military mental disorders.
Conclusion. Event-related potentials is a promising method of diagnostic significance to assess severity of perception, attention, short-term memory damage, as well as cognitive disorders. ERP can help determine the boundary values and diagnostic criteria, as well as evaluate treatment efficiency and outcomes in military mental disorders. Moreover, ERP could be a promise as an additional research method to objectify MDs in mental state assessment of the military at military medical examination.
... In a recent large-scale EEG study, N400 was found to be involved in semantic facilitation when composing sentence meaning for predictable words (Nieuwland et al., 2020), a semantic role that was also observed during naturalistic language processing (Alday, 2019). The N400 has been identified with many paradigms beyond the classic semantic violation or incongruities in presented sentences (Beres, 2017), for instance during incongruent arithmetic processing (Jost et al., 2004;Niedeggen and Rosler, 1999). The N400 might reflect the update of semantic information in working memory (Jacob and Huber, 2020), with strong impact of expectations and predictions on its amplitude (Bornkessel-Schlesewsky and Schlesewsky, 2019; Kotchoubey, 2006). ...
Here, the functions of the angular gyrus (AG) are evaluated in the light of current evidence from transcranial magnetic/electric stimulation (TMS/TES) and EEG/MEG studies. 65 TMS/TES and 52 EEG/MEG studies were examined in this review. TMS/TES literature points to a causal role in semantic processing, word and number processing, attention and visual search, self-guided movement, memory, and self-processing. EEG/MEG studies reported AG effects at latencies varying between 32 and 800 ms in a wide range of domains, with a high probability to detect an effect at 300–350 ms post-stimulus onset. A three-phase unifying model revolving around the process of sensemaking is then suggested: (1) early AG involvement in defining the current context, within the first 200 ms, with a bias toward the right hemisphere; (2) attention re-orientation and retrieval of relevant information within 200–500 ms; and (3) cross-modal integration at late latencies with a bias toward the left hemisphere. This sensemaking process can favour accuracy (e.g. for word and number processing) or plausibility (e.g. for comprehension and social cognition). Such functions of the AG depend on the status of other connected regions. The much-debated semantic role is also discussed as follows: (1) there is a strong TMS/TES evidence for a causal semantic role, (2) current EEG/MEG evidence is however weak, but (3) the existing arguments against a semantic role for the AG are not strong. Some outstanding questions for future research are proposed. This review recognizes that cracking the role(s) of the AG in cognition is possible only when its exact contributions within the default mode network are teased apart.
... While in neuropsychological 22 and DCE 10,11 studies, patients are actually asked to orally retrieve the result (in this way the experimental task corresponds closely to the behavior of interest), most of the evidence on the time-course of single-digit multiplication in neuroimaging (e.g., PET, fMRI) and neurophysiology (e.g., EEG, MEG) is based on veri cation tasks 3,8,[23][24][25][26][27][28] . Indeed, the experimental design based on veri cation has some advantages, as it avoids the problem of oral response artifacts and allows for a ner control of the experimental setting. ...
Despite decades of studies, it is still an open question on how and where simple multiplication is solved by the brain. This fragmented picture is mostly related to the different tasks employed. Although in neuropsychological studies patients are asked to perform and report simple oral calculations, neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies often use verification tasks, in which the result is shown, and the participant must verify the correctness. This MEG study aims to unify the sources of evidence, investigating how brain activation unfolds in time using a single-digit multiplication production task. We compared the participants’ brain activity – focusing on the parietal lobes - based on response efficiency, dividing their responses in fast and slow. Results showed a higher activation for fast, as compared to slow, responses in the left angular gyrus starting after the first operand, and in the right supramarginal gyrus only after the second operand. A whole-brain analysis showed that fast responses had higher activation in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. We show a timing difference of both hemispheres during simple multiplications. Results suggest that while the left parietal lobe may allow an initial retrieval of several possible solutions, the right one may be engaged later, helping to identify the solution based on magnitude checking.
... As for the first assumption, there is ample evidence that responses to violations occur on sensory levels (e.g. Molholm et al., 2005 ) and on higher order levels, such as linguistic ( Kutas and Federmeier, 2011 ) or arithmetic ( Niedeggen and Rösler, 1999 ). For the second assumption, MMRs are shown to appear in response to unattended acoustic environments ( Winkler et al., 1996 ) and even to violated arithmetic statements played auditorily during sleep ( Strauss and Dehaene, 2019 ). ...
Sequence processing is critical for complex behavior, and counting sequences hold a unique place underlying human numerical development. Despite this, the neural bases of counting sequences remain unstudied. We hypothesized that counting sequences in adults would involve representations in sensory, order, magnitude, and linguistic codes that implicate regions in auditory, supplementary motor, posterior parietal, and inferior frontal areas, respectively. In an fMRI scanner, participants heard four-number sequences in a 2×2×2 design. The sequences were adjacent or not (e.g., 5, 6, 7, 8 vs. 5, 6, 7, 9), ordered or not (e.g., 5, 6, 7, 8 vs. 8, 5, 7, 6), and were spoken by a voice of consistent or variable identity. Then, neural substrates of counting sequences were identified by testing for the effect of consecutiveness (ordered nonadjacent versus ordered adjacent, e.g., 5, 6, 7, 9 > 5, 6, 7, 8) in the hypothesized brain regions. Violations to consecutiveness elicited brain activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the supplementary motor area (SMA). In contrast, no such activation was observed in the auditory cortex, despite violations in voice identity recruiting strong activity in that region. Also, no activation was observed in the inferior parietal lobule, despite a robust effect of orderedness observed in that brain region. These findings indicate that listening to counting sequences do not automatically elicit sensory or magnitude codes but suggest that the precise increments in the sequence are tracked by the mechanism for processing ordered associations in the SMA and by the mechanism for binding individual lexical items into a cohesive whole in the IFG.
... The amplitude of the negative component is greater at presentation of a wrong solution compared to a correct solution in solving various mathematical problems (multiplication, subtraction); this component has a frontal distribution and is similar to the mismatch negativity, emerging with a latency of approximately 270 ms [4]. A number of authors consider the negative component with a peak latency of approximately 400 ms as a specific "arithmetic" N400 [5][6][7], which is associated with the presentation of a non-congruent solution. The amplitude of the P300 component is higher at presentation of a correct answer, which is associated with the response to the target stimulus, while the late positive component, the amplitude of which is higher upon presentation of an incorrect answer, is correlated with a recheck of the solution in the conditions of comparing the presented answer with those obtained as result of own calculation. ...
... Indeed, we can specifically question from a functional standpoint whether and how pPNPs like the one observed in the current and similar studies to semantically incongruent information fit into a "family" of posterior positivities; namely, with syntactic anomalies, dispreferred syntactic structures, thematic role reversals, as well as a broader class of late positivities sometimes referred to as late positive components (LPCs), which have been observed to incongruent sentence continuations and also to extralinguistic stimuli, e.g., to incongruent objects in video clips ; to harmonic violations of musical sequences (Patel, Gibson, Ratner, Besson, & Holcomb, 1998); and even to inaccurate arithmetic solutions (Niedeggen & Rösler, 1999). In determining whether the P3b, P600, LPC and the pPNP indeed reflect some common functional process, one tried method is to explore whether the pPNP shares some of the same known sensitivities of the P3b. ...
Any proposal for predictive language comprehension must address receipt of less expected information. While a relationship between the N400 and sentence predictability is well established, a clear picture is still emerging of the link between post-N400 positivities (PNPs) and processing of semantically unexpected words, as well as any relation to other not-specifically-linguistic and/or syntactic late positivities. The current study employs event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to congruent and anomalous words to assess the impacts of semantic relatedness and contextual plausibility on processing unpredictable sentences. We observe PNPs with different scalp topographies to plausible unexpected words unrelated to predictable continuations (anterior PNP) and to anomalous words, regardless of, but delayed by, relatedness (posterior PNP). We offer functional explanations that reconcile inconsistencies with reported PNP findings and place added constraints on the anterior PNP’s proposed link to inhibitory processing. We also suggest a testable general cognitive account for the posterior PNP.
... The decreased N400 was only elicited by the relational mismatch condition in contrast to the identity condition. The N400 is found to be triggered by arithmetic incongruencies in an arithmetic verification task and number sequences (Fogelson, Loukas, Brown, & Brown, 2004;Lang & Kotchoubey, 2002;Niedeggen & Rösler, 1999;Szűcs & Soltész, 2010), which is suggested to reflect semantic integration of arithmetic materials similar to the semantic effect (Kutas & Federmeier, 2011). In the present study, the identity condition required no arithmetic operations, in which no additional information would be anticipated to detect the numerical rules. ...
Complex reasoning problems are commonly influenced by a combination of top‐down and bottom‐up conflicts; however, the common and distinct brain responses to the two types of conflicts have remained unclear. Participants were required to identify the hidden rules in a number series completion task, which included identity condition (e.g., 13, 13, 13), perceptual mismatch condition (bottom‐up conflict, e.g., 13 13 +≡), and relational mismatch condition (top‐down conflict, e.g., 13 13 14). The ERP results showed that (a) both the perceptual and relational mismatch conditions triggered greater P200, N200, P300, and late positive component than the identity condition, reflecting attention reallocation, perceptual template deviations, feelings of uncertainty, and working memory updating, respectively, and (b) smaller N400 and decreased late negative component were found in the relational mismatch condition in contrast to other conditions, which suggested that changing number values violated rule expectancy as top‐down conflict. Therefore, multiple strategies were utilized to detect the conflicts underlying complex reasoning problems. Numerical inductive reasoning can produce conflicts at both top‐down and bottom‐up levels of processing. We examined these two types of conflicts by comparing neural responses to perceptual mismatch, relational mismatch, and identity rule conditions in a numerical reasoning task. ERP results showed comparable amplitudes of the P200, N200, P300, and LPC in the relational and perceptual mismatch conditions, when driven by feature changes (bottom‐up conflict), and additionally triggered a smaller N400 and LNC for expectancy violations (top‐down conflict). We conclude that multiple executive control mechanisms, specifically conflict detection and inhibition, are involved in reasoning about complex numerical rules.
... To date, only a handful of studies have investigated the neural correlates of the OR interference 98 effect. All of them have used event-related potentials (ERPs) to better understand the temporal brain 99 dynamics associated with the interference effect (e.g., Domahs et al., 2007;Jost, Hennighausen, & 100 Rösler, 2004;Niedeggen & Rösler, 1999). For instance, Niedeggen and Rösler (1999) provided 101 evidence that the OR interference effect is associated with a negative brain potential in healthy adults, 102 peaking between 300 and 500 msec. ...
Single-digit multiplications are mainly solved by memory retrieval. However, these problems are also prone to errors due to systematic interference (i.e., co-activation of interconnected but incorrect solutions). Semantic control processes are crucial to overcome this type of interference and to retrieve the correct information. Previous research suggests the importance of several brain regions such as the left inferior frontal cortex and the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) for semantic control. But, this evidence is mainly based on tasks measuring interference during the processing of lexico-semantic information (e.g., pictures or words). Here, we investigated whether semantic control during arithmetic problem solving (i.e., multiplication fact retrieval) draws upon similar or different brain mechanisms as in other semantic domains (i.e., lexico-semantic).
The brain activity of 46 students was measured with fMRI while participants performed an operand-related-lure (OR) and a picture-word (PW) task. In the OR task participants had to verify the correctness of a given solution to a single-digit multiplication. Similarly, in the PW task, participants had to judge whether a presented word matches the concept displayed in a picture or not.
Analyses showed that resolving interference in these two tasks modulates the activation of a widespread fronto-parietal network (e.g., left/right IFG, left insula lobe, left IPS). Importantly, conjunction analysis revealed a neural overlap in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) pars triangularis and left IPS. Additional Bayesian analyses showed that regions that are thought to store lexico-semantic information (e.g., left middle temporal gyrus) did not show evidence for an arithmetic interference effect. Overall, our findings not only indicate that semantic control plays an important role in arithmetic problem solving but also that it is supported by common brain regions across semantic domains. Additionally, by conducting Bayesian analysis we confirmed the hypothesis that the semantic control network contributes differently to semantic tasks of various domains.
... The direct retrieval strategy would not involve any actual calculation. As previous research showed, number facts are stored in a specific long-term memory lexicon (Dowker, 1992) and are often directly retrieved (e.g., Galfano, Mazza, Angrilli, & Umiltà, 2004;Niedeggen & Rosler, 1999). In contrast to abundant research on single-digit arithmetic, much less is known about the neural bases of multidigit exact and approximate computation. ...
Objective:
The present study used complex approximate and exact arithmetic computation problems to dissociate the brain networks for strategy-based approximate computation and procedure-based exact computation.
Method:
Twenty-eight college students were scanned with MRI while they were solving complex approximate and exact computation problems, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of multidigit integers and fractions. The neuroimaging data were analyzed using whole brain, region of interest, and functional connectivity approaches.
Results:
Results showed that approximate computation relative to exact computation elicited greater activation typically in the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (orbital), middle temporal gyrus, angular gyrus, and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. The brain regions overlapped with the general semantic network that also supports mathematical problem solving. In contrast, exact computation elicited greater activations in the left rolandic operculum and bilateral hippocampus. Functional connectivity analysis based on the psychophysiological interaction approach showed that approximate computation had stronger connectivity from the left intraparietal sulcus to the semantic areas. In contrast, exact computation had stronger connectivity from the left intraparietal sulcus to the phonological areas.
Conclusion:
The results suggest that the semantic network supports complex approximate computation and the phonological network supports complex exact computation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
... ERP results showed that the negative wave peaking around 400 ms (known as N400 component) was larger for incorrect solutions than for correct solutions for LL math and that, crucially, the amplitude of the N400 was modulated by relatedness only in the LA +. During arithmetic fact retrieval, the N400 amplitude is thought to reflect the automatic spread of activation among representations of arithmetic facts (Niedeggen & R€ osler, 1999). In our data, this spread of activation differed between languages. ...
... This negativity was reminiscent of the widely studied N400 component, first reported for incongruent sentence endings (Holcomb, 1993;Hillyard, 1980a, 1980b) and commonly held to reflect semantic integration attempts (for review, see Kutas and Federmeier, 2011). Indeed, N400 was also found for other stimuli which seem to require semantic integration, like unrelated word pairs (Holcomb and Neville, 1990), real-world knowledge violations (Hagoort et al., 2004) or even mathematical errors (Niedeggen and Rösler, 1999). Much like the effect reported by Ganis and Kutas (2003), N400-like effects were reported for other visual, non-linguistic/symbolic stimuli, such as semantically unrelated pairs of images (Barrett and Rugg, 1990;Hamm et al., 2002;McPherson and Holcomb, 1999) or video clips with incongruent endings (Sitnikova et al., 2008(Sitnikova et al., , 2003. ...
Objects in the real world typically appear within a broader context, having relationships with the environment. Do these relations between objects and the contexts in which they appear affect object identification? Previous findings of an N300 component evoked by scene-incongruent objects were taken as evidence for such an effect, since N300 is held to reflect object identification processes. Yet this conjuncture was never directly tested, and ignores differences between the fronto-central incongruency-evoked N300 and the typically bi-polar fronto-occipital identification-related N300. Here, the possible influence of context on object identification was examined by manipulating both object-scene congruency and object identifiability. N300 effects were found both for incongruity and for identifiability, in line with previous studies. Critically, a comparison of divergence times of waveforms evoked by congruent/incongruent objects and waveforms evoked by unidentifiable objects showed that incongruent objects started to diverge from unidentifiable ones later than congruent objects did. This provides first direct evidence for the effect of scene context on object identification; arguably, rapidly extracted gist activates scene-congruent schemas which facilitate the identification of congruent objects in comparison to incongruent ones.
... Similar observations were made using multiplication verification 11 tasks (e.g. Koshmider & Ashcraft, 1991;Niedeggen & Rösler, 1999;Stazyk, Ashcraft, & 12 Hamann, 1982;Zamarian et al., 2007). In this type of task, participants have to decide whether 13 a proposed solution of an arithmetic problem is correct or not. ...
In this section, several chapters focused on the domain-general factors that have an association with arithmetic abilities. In this closing chapter we complement these chapters with a review of the involvement of the different executive functions in arithmetic abilities. Three core executive functions are typically distinguished: cognitive flexibility, inhibition and updating. Based both on the broader literature and on the chapters in this section, each of these functions and their relation to arithmetic achievements is reviewed. Reviewing the literature on this relation made it clear that important conceptual and empirical advancements have already been made. At the same time, we also realized that critical pieces of information directly relating executive functions with arithmetic performance is currently still missing. We outline these lacunas in the literature in the hope that we can provide interested researchers with concrete ideas on how to push forward this fascinating line of research.
... ERP results showed that the negative wave peaking around 400 ms (known as N400 component) was larger for incorrect solutions than for correct solutions for LL math and that, crucially, the amplitude of the N400 was modulated by relatedness only in the LA +. During arithmetic fact retrieval, the N400 amplitude is thought to reflect the automatic spread of activation among representations of arithmetic facts (Niedeggen & R€ osler, 1999). In our data, this spread of activation differed between languages. ...
Introduction:
Cochlear implant (CI) users differ greatly in their rehabilitation outcomes, including speech understanding in noise. This variability may be related to brain changes associated with intact senses recruiting cortical areas from stimulation-deprived senses. Numerous studies have demonstrated such cross-modal reorganization in individuals with untreated hearing loss. How it is affected by regular use of hearing devices remains unclear, however. To shed light on this, the current study measured cortical responses reflecting comprehension abilities in experienced CI users and normal-hearing controls.
Methods:
Using multichannel electroencephalography, we tested CI users who had used their devices for at least 12 months and closely matched controls (N = 2 × 13). Cortical responses reflecting comprehension abilities - the N400 and late positive complex (LPC) components - were evoked using congruent and incongruent digit-triplet stimuli. The participants' task was to assess digit-triplet congruency by means of timed button presses. All measurements were performed in speech-shaped noise 15 dB above individually measured speech recognition thresholds. Three stimulus presentation modes were used: auditory-only, visual-only, and visual-then-auditory.
Results:
The analyses revealed no group differences in the N400 and LPC responses. In terms of response times, the CI users were slower and differentially affected by the three stimulus presentation modes relative to the controls.
Conclusion:
Compared to normal-hearing controls, experienced CI users may need more time to comprehend speech in noise. Response times can serve as a proxy for speech comprehension by CI users.
There is a misconception that pictures are easy to comprehend, which is problematic in pedagogical practices that include pictures. For example, if a child has difficulties with verbal narration to picture sequences, it may be interpreted as specific to spoken language even though the child may have additional difficulties with comprehension of visual narratives in the form of picture sequences. The purpose of the present study was therefore to increase our understanding of semantic processing in the pictorial domain in relation to semantic processing in the verbal domain, focusing on 9–13 years-old children with typical language development. To this end, we measured electrical brain responses (event related potentials, ERPs) in 17 children to (i) pictures (panels) that were predicted versus unpredicted in sequences of panels that conveyed visual narratives and (ii) words that were predicted versus unpredicted in sentences that conveyed verbal narratives. Results demonstrated similarities as there were no significant difference in the magnitude of the N400 effect across domains. The only difference between domains was the predicted difference in distribution, that is, a more posterior N400 effect in the verbal domain than in the pictorial domain. The study contributes to an increased understanding of the complexity of processing of visual narratives and its shared features with processing of verbal narratives, which should be considered in pedagogical practices.
Objective: To explore if experience with hearing aid (HA) amplification affects speech-evoked cortical potentials reflecting comprehension abilities.
Design: N400 and late positive complex (LPC) responses as well as behavioural response times to congruent and incongruent digit triplets were measured. The digits were presented against stationary speech-shaped noise 10 dB above individually measured speech recognition thresholds. Stimulus presentation was either acoustic (digits 1-3) or first visual (digits 1-2) and then acoustic (digit 3).
Study sample: Three groups of older participants (N = 3 × 15) with (1) pure-tone average hearing thresholds <25 dB HL from 500-4000 Hz, (2) mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) but no prior HA experience, and (3) mild-to-moderate SNHL and >2 years of HA experience. Groups 2-3 were fitted with test devices in accordance with clinical gain targets.
Results: No group differences were found in the electrophysiological data. N400 amplitudes were larger and LPC latencies shorter with acoustic presentation. For group 1, behavioural response times were shorter with visual-then-acoustic presentation.
Conclusion: When speech audibility is ensured, comprehension-related electrophysiological responses appear intact in individuals with mild-to-moderate SNHL, regardless of prior experience with amplified sound. Further research into the effects of audibility versus acclimatisation-related neurophysiological changes is warranted.
In 2020, 21.5% of US preschoolers spoke a language other than English at home. These children transition into English‐speaking classrooms in different ways, often handling foundational concepts in two languages. Critically, some knowledge may be dependent on the language of learning. For instance, both bilingual children and adults typically prefer, and exhibit higher performance on arithmetic in the language in which they learned math (LA+) compared with their other language (LA−). The typical interpretation is that arithmetic facts are accessed from memory more efficiently or solely in LA+. However, recent research suggests that bilingual arithmetic is not restricted to one language in memory, and that language experience plays an important role in performance. Moreover, evidence suggests children and adults process arithmetic fundamentally differently. Thus, bilingual arithmetic memory may manifest differently across the life span. This review outlines evidence to date at the intersection between the brain basis of bilingualism, arithmetic processing, and development.
The N400 component of the event-related potential (ERP) is the most widely used brain signal in research on semantic processing. It has been discovered now more than 30 years ago, in 1980, as a larger negativity for semantically incongruent sentence continuations such as “I take my coffee with cream and dog” (as compared to congruent continuations such as “sugar”). The N400 has meanwhile been shown to be modulated by a very wide variety of lexical and semantic variables and has taught us a lot about how meaning is processed in language and beyond. This chapter reviews the literature on the N400 component including its relationship to the subsequent P600 component and discusses implications for the neurocognition of semantic processing.Key wordsN400P600Semantic processingMeaningLanguage
When verifying the correctness of single-digit multiplication problems, children and adults show a robust ERP correctness effect thought to reflect similar cognitive processes across groups. Recent studies suggest that this effect is instead a modulation of the negative-going N400 component in children, reflecting access to semantic memory, and the positive-going P300 component in adults, reflecting stimulus categorization. However, the relative difference in ERP amplitude is the same for both components, more positive for correct than incorrect solutions, presenting a challenge to ascertaining the appropriate interpretation. Time-frequency analysis (TFA) of the N400/P300 window provides an objective approach to dissociating these effects. TFA measured from solution onset during single-digit multiplication verification revealed significant modulations of event-related as theta power (3-6 Hz) in both groups. Correct trials elicit less power in children (9-12 years) and more power in adults relative to incorrect trials. These findings are consistent with modulations of the N400 and P300, respectively, where opposite effects were predicted for spectral power. The ERP results further support a reinterpretation of the multiplication correctness effect. In contrast, TFA of the N400 effect elicited to a word-picture verification task revealed the same event-related theta effect in both groups, with increased power for mismatched than matched pictures. Together, these findings provide evidence for a developmental shift in cognitive processing specific to the multiplication task. Models of arithmetic should account for this overlooked difference in cognitive processing between children and adults.
Effective communication requires good speech perception abilities. Speech perception can be assessed with behavioral and electrophysiological methods. Relating these two types of measures to each other can provide a basis for new clinical tests. In audiological practice, speech detection and discrimination are routinely assessed, whereas comprehension-related aspects are ignored. The current study compared behavioral and electrophysiological measures of speech detection, discrimination, and comprehension. Thirty young normal-hearing native Danish speakers participated. All measurements were carried out with digits and stationary speech-shaped noise as the stimuli. The behavioral measures included speech detection thresholds (SDTs), speech recognition thresholds (SRTs), and speech comprehension scores (i.e., response times). For the electrophysiological measures, multichannel electroencephalography (EEG) recordings were performed. N100 and P300 responses were evoked using an active auditory oddball paradigm. N400 and Late Positive Complex (LPC) responses were evoked using a paradigm based on congruent and incongruent digit triplets, with the digits presented either all acoustically or first visually (digits 1–2) and then acoustically (digit 3). While no correlations between the SDTs and SRTs and the N100 and P300 responses were found, the response times were correlated with the EEG responses to the congruent and incongruent triplets. Furthermore, significant differences between the response times (but not EEG responses) obtained with auditory and visual-then-auditory stimulus presentation were observed. This pattern of results could reflect a faster recall mechanism when the first two digits are presented visually rather than acoustically. The visual-then-auditory condition may facilitate the assessment of comprehension-related processes in hard-of-hearing individuals.
Fact retrieval deficits have been documented in children with mathematical learning disabilities. We assessed the retrieval of arithmetic facts in neurotypical 9-to-10-year-old children with different mathematical achievement levels using event-related potential methods while performing an arithmetic verification task (addition, subtraction, and multiplication). Forty-eight participants were divided into High (H), Average (A), and Low (L) mathematics performance according to their scores on The Wide Range Achievement Test 4 (WRAT4). Children determined whether appearing digits matched or not the correct solution of the preceding problem. L group showed a lower number of correct responses, prolonged reaction times, and poorer performance on working memory (WM) tasks. P300 component showed significantly higher amplitudes for correct solutions in H, while N270 showed higher amplitudes for incorrect solutions. L children showed difficulty in recovering arithmetic facts and poorly modulated N270 and P300 components, probably reflecting WM processing problems affecting the construction and retrieval of numerical information. ARTICLE HISTORY
As relational integration performance can be used to predict reasoning ability, the present study aimed to provide electrophysiological evidence for numerical inductive reasoning. Number series with two levels of relational complexity were utilized, including simple and hierarchical problems (such as “15–16‐17” versus “15–16‐18”). Two tasks were adopted: a relational integration task that required to determine whether the numerical relations were changed across numbers; a number series task that required to determine whether a hidden rule was acquired (Experiment 1) or to predict the subsequent number (Experiment 2), whose phases were divided as rule searching, rule discovery, and rule following. The event‐related potential (ERP) results of both experiments indicated that, in contrast to simple problems, hierarchical problems triggered enhanced N400 and late negative component (LNC), reflecting numerical fact retrieval, and generalizing novel hypotheses about the hidden rules by integrating adjacent numerical relations, respectively; relational integration showed similar N400 and LNC activation patterns to rule discovery (Experiment 1) or rule searching (Experiment 2). Additionally, the N400 and LNC elicited by relational integration showed strong positive correlations and even were able to predict the ones triggered by rule discovery (Experiment 1) or rule searching (Experiment 2). Therefore, the results supported the role of relational integration in numerical inductive reasoning and thereby in intelligence. In the first report to use identical numerical series to compare numerical inductive reasoning to relational integration, we observed that the N400 and LNC effects on relational integration not only exhibited similar patterns to those on rule acquisition but were also positively correlated with and able to predict rule acquisition. This supports the role of relational integration in intelligence.
An event-related-potential technique and the S1(cue)-S2(target) paradigm was developed to explore the effect of the onsite experience on tourists' formation and extension of destination brand personality. 18 potential visitors and 16 actual visitors were selected to complete the experiment, while their response time and N400 event-related-potential component was recorded. Neurocognitive results showed potential and actual tourists induced different response time and N400 latency patterns when identifying three types of destination personality words (weakly associated, original and extended personalities words), reflecting the effect of onsite experience on destination brand personality. These findings proved the reliability and validity of the event-related potential in the research of destination personality and demonstrated the vital role of onsite experience in destination personality.
Children are less fluent at verifying the answers to larger single-digit arithmetic problems compared with smaller ones. This problem size effect may reflect the structure of memory for arithmetic facts. In the current study, typically developing third to fifth graders judged the correctness of single-digit multiplication problems, presented as a sequence of three digits, that were either small (e.g., 4 3 12 vs. 4 3 16) or large (e.g., 8 7 56 vs. 8 7 64). We measured the N400, an index of access to semantic memory, along with accuracy and response time. The N400 was modulated by problem size only for correct solutions, with larger amplitude for large problems than for small problems. This suggests that only solutions that exist in memory (i.e., correct solutions) reflect a modulation of semantic access likely based on the relative frequency of encountering small versus large problems. The absence of an N400 problem size effect for incorrect solutions suggests that the behavioral problem size effects were not due to differences in initial access to memory but instead were due to a later stage of cognitive processing that was reflected in a post-N400 main effect of problem size. A second post-N400 main effect of correctness at occipital electrodes resembles the beginning of an adult-like brain response observed in prior studies. In sum, event-related brain potentials revealed different cognitive processes for correct and incorrect solutions. These results allude to a gradual transition to an adult-like brain response, from verifying multiplication problems using semantic memory to doing so using more automatic categorization.
Understanding how the numerical magnitudes of fractions are accessed is a topic of major interest in numerical cognition and mathematics education. Only a few studies have investigated fraction processing using EEG methods. In the present study, 24 adult participants completed a fraction magnitude verification task while EEGs were recorded. Similar to other arithmetic verification tasks, behavioral results show increased response times to validate mismatching magnitudes compared to matching ones. ERP results show an early frontal N270 component to mismatching trials and a late parietal P300 component during matching trials. These ERP results highlight that participants treat matching fractions as targets and suggest that additional cognitive resources are needed to process mismatching targets. These results provide evidence that fractions processing shares a similar neurocognitive process as those observed during the processing of arithmetic operations and open the door to further explore fraction processing using ERP methods.
Introduction
Dyscalculia is a specific learning disorder affecting the ability to learn certain math processes, such as arithmetic data recovery. The group of children with dyscalculia is very heterogeneous, in part due to variability in their working memory (WM) deficits. To assess the brain response to arithmetic data recovery, we applied an arithmetic verification task during an event-related potential (ERP) recording. Two effects have been reported: the N400 effect (higher negative amplitude for incongruent than for congruent condition), associated with arithmetic incongruency and caused by the arithmetic priming effect, and the LPC effect (higher positive amplitude for the incongruent compared to the congruent condition), associated with a reevaluation process and modulated by the plausibility of the presented condition. This study aimed to (a) compare arithmetic processing between children with dyscalculia and children with good academic performance (GAP) using ERPs during an addition verification task and (b) explore, among children with dyscalculia, the relationship between WM and ERP effects.
Materials and Methods
EEGs of 22 children with dyscalculia (DYS group) and 22 children with GAP (GAP group) were recorded during the performance of an addition verification task. ERPs synchronized with the probe stimulus were computed separately for the congruent and incongruent probes, and included only epochs with correct answers. Mixed 2-way ANOVAs for response times and correct answers were conducted. Comparisons between groups and correlation analyses using ERP amplitude data were carried out through multivariate nonparametric permutation tests.
Results
The GAP group obtained more correct answers than the DYS group. An arithmetic N400 effect was observed in the GAP group but not in the DYS group. Both groups displayed an LPC effect. The larger the LPC amplitude was, the higher the WM index. Two subgroups were found within the DYS group: one with an average WM index and the other with a lower than average WM index. These subgroups displayed different ERPs patterns.
Discussion
The results indicated that the group of children with dyscalculia was very heterogeneous and therefore failed to show a robust LPC effect. Some of these children had WM deficits. When WM deficits were considered together with dyscalculia, an atypical ERP pattern that reflected their processing difficulties emerged. Their lack of the arithmetic N400 effect suggested that the processing in this step was not useful enough to produce an answer; thus, it was necessary to reevaluate the arithmetic-calculation process (LPC) in order to deliver a correct answer.
Conclusion
Given that dyscalculia is a very heterogeneous deficit, studies examining dyscalculia should consider exploring deficits in WM because the whole group of children with dyscalculia seems to contain at least two subpopulations that differ in their calculation process.
Our ability to calculate implies more than the sole retrieval of the correct solution. Essential processes for simple calculation are related to the spreading of activation through arithmetic memory networks. There is behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for these mechanisms. Their brain location is, however, still uncertain. Here, we measured magnetoencephalographic brain activity during the verification of simple multiplication problems. Following the operands, the solutions to verify could be preactivated correct solutions, preactivated table-related incorrect solutions, or unrelated incorrect solutions. Brain source estimation, based on these event-related fields, revealed 3 main brain networks involved in simple calculation: 1) bilateral inferior frontal areas mainly activated in response to correct, matching solutions; 2) a left-lateralized frontoparietal network activated in response to incorrect table-related solutions; and (3) a strikingly similar frontoparietal network in the opposite hemisphere activated in response to unrelated solutions. Directional functional connectivity analyses revealed a bidirectional causal loop between left parietal and frontal areas for table-related solutions, with frontal areas explaining the resolution of arithmetic competition behaviorally. Hence, this study isolated at least 3 neurofunctional networks orchestrated between hemispheres during calculation.
The objective of this thesis is the study of bilingual mathematics within the scientific field of Numerical Cognition. The approach to how bilingual people represent and access magnitude is currently a matter of growing interest that responds to the need to understand the role that language plays in the early acquisition of mathematics. This importance is usually reflected in the context of education, where learning arithmetic and bilingualism come together naturally. Given the importance in our society of both, math competence and early learning of a second language, research from a Cognitive Neuroscience perspective is necessary to better understand the bilingual brain.
Hemispheric asymmetries in arithmetic have been hypothesized based on neuropsychological, developmental, and neuroimaging work. However, it has been challenging to separate asymmetries related to arithmetic specifically, from those associated general cognitive or linguistic processes. Here we attempt to experimentally isolate the processing of numerical meaning in arithmetic problems from language and memory retrieval by employing novel non-symbolic addition problems, where participants estimated the sum of two dot arrays and judged whether a probe dot array was the correct sum of the first two arrays. Furthermore, we experimentally manipulated which hemisphere receive the probe array first using a visual half-field paradigm while recording event-related potentials (ERP). We find that neural sensitivity to numerical meaning in arithmetic arises under left but not right visual field presentation during early and middle portions of the late positive complex (LPC, 400-800 ms). Furthermore, we find that subsequent accuracy for judgements of whether the probe is the correct sum is better under right visual field presentation than left, suggesting a left hemisphere advantage for integrating information for categorization or decision making related to arithmetic. Finally, neural signatures of operational momentum, or differential sensitivity to whether the probe was greater or less than the sum, occurred at a later portion of the LPC (800-1000 ms) and regardless of visual field of presentation, suggesting a temporal and functional dissociation between magnitude and ordinal processing in arithmetic. Together these results provide novel evidence for differences in timing and hemispheric lateralization for several cognitive processes involved in arithmetic thinking.
Aim of this study was to investigate the association between finger and number representation in a task in which students had to perform arithmetic calculations and decide whether the provided solution was correct or incorrect, while a pair of task-irrelevant hands gesturally expressed the same or a different number. In particular we aimed at investigating whether irrelevant finger-counting might interfere with arithmetic computing, thus showing the existence of a strict neural association between the two processes. 20 volunteers took part to the investigation and EEG/ERPs were recorded from 128 scalp sites. P300 amplitude was greater to correct than incorrect solutions. Accuracy was higher when there was no conflict between the two sets of information A numerical error-related negativity (nERN) was elicited by incorrect solutions, and also by correct solutions when the finger-counting was incongruent. Source analysis applied to the incongruent minus congruent difference showed that when finger-counting was incorrect nERN mostly derived from medial and superior prefrontal cortex activity (supporting action monitoring and suppression). Conversely, when finger-counting indicated the correct solution brain activation included occipital areas, somatosensory regions and visuomotor mirror areas, inferior and superior temporal cortex, reflecting attentional orienting toward the hands. In both cases, the left angular gyrus (BA39) was found active during conjoined digit/number processing, suggesting a strict neural association between finger and digit processing. The present findings help explaining why a lesion in the left parietal cortex may simultaneously lead to finger apraxia and acalculia (Gertsmann syndrome).
The effect of arithmetic problem size is widespread in behavior (e.g., slower responses to 8 × 7 than 2 × 2). Here, we measure event related potentials (ERPs) to determine how the problem size effect unfolds under different conditions. Adults judged the correctness of simple multiplication problems (2 × 4 = 8 versus 9) that varied in size and operand number format (written digits versus spoken number words). The P300, an ERP component associated with stimulus categorization, was measured from solution onset. P300 amplitude was greatest for small and correct solutions, as expected for easily categorized stimuli. Large incorrect solutions elicited a disproportionately reduced P300, an interaction not measurable in verification behavior. Additionally, ERP measures revealed effects of operand format preceding, but not following, solution onset. The significance of these findings for theories of mathematical cognition are addressed.
Embodied theories assign experience a crucial role in shaping conceptual representations. Supporting evidence comes mostly from studies on concrete concepts, where e.g., motor expertise facilitated action concept processing. This study examined experience-dependent effects on abstract concept processing. We asked participants with high and low mathematical expertise to perform a lexical decision task on mathematical and nonmathematical abstract words, while acquiring event-related potentials. Analyses revealed an interaction of expertise and word type on the amplitude of a fronto-central N400 and a centro-parietal late positive component (LPC). For mathematical words, we found a trend for a lower N400 and a significantly higher LPC amplitude in experts compared to nonexperts. No differences between groups were found for nonmathematical words. The results suggest that expertise affects the processing stages of semantic integration and memory retrieval specifically for expertise-related concepts. This study supports the generalization of experience-dependent conceptual processing mechanisms to the abstract domain.
Arithmetic problems share many surface‐level features with typical sentences. They assert information about the world, and readers can evaluate this information for sensibility by consulting their memories as the statement unfolds. When people encounter the solution to the problem 3 × 4, the brain elicits a robust ERP effect as a function of answer expectancy (12 being the expected completion; 15 being unexpected). Initially, this was labeled an N400 effect, implying that semantic memory had been accessed. Subsequent work suggested instead that the effect was driven by a target P300 to the correct solutions. The current study manipulates operand format to differentially promote access to language‐based semantic representations of arithmetic. Operands were presented either as spoken number words or as sequential Arabic numerals. The critical solution was always an Arabic numeral. In Experiment 1, the correctness of solutions preceded by spoken operands modulated N400 amplitude, whereas solutions preceded by Arabic numerals elicited a P300 for correct problems. In Experiment 2, using only spoken operands, the delay between the second operand and the Arabic numeral solution was manipulated to determine if additional processing time would result in a P300. With a longer delay, an earlier N400 and no distinct P300 were observed. In brief, highly familiar digit operands promoted target detection, whereas spoken numbers promoted semantic level processing—even when solution format itself was held constant. This provides evidence that the brain can process arithmetic fact information at different levels of representational meaningfulness as a function of symbolic format.
Humans share with a variety of animal species the spontaneous ability to detect the numerical correspondence between limited quantities of visual objects and discrete auditory events. Here, we explored how such mental representation is generated in the visual modality by monitoring a parieto‐occipital ERP component, N2pc, whose amplitude covaries with the number of visual targets in explicit enumeration. Participants listened to an auditory sequence of one to three tones followed by a visual search display containing one to three targets. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to respond based on the numerical correspondence between tones and visual targets. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to ignore the tones and detect a target presence in the search display. The results of Experiment 1 showed an N2pc amplitude increase determined by the number of visual targets followed by a centroparietal ERP component modulated by the numerical correspondence between tones and visual targets. The results of Experiment 2 did not show an N2pc amplitude increase as a function of the number of visual targets. However, the numerical correspondence between tones and visual targets influenced N2pc amplitude. By comparing a subset of amplitude/latency parameters between Experiment 1 and 2, the present results suggest N2pc reflects two modes for representing the number of visual targets. One mode, susceptible to subjective control, relies on visual target segregation for exact target individuation, whereas a different mode, likely enabling spontaneous cross‐modal matching, relies on the extraction of rough information about number of targets from visual input.
Fractions processing is a topic of major interest both in numerical cognition and mathematics education. The literature on the processing of common fractions has focused on whether fractions are compared by their magnitude or through their components. Only a few neuroimaging studies have looked at this question. The N400 component, traditionally seen in linguistic semantic congruency event-related-potential (ERPs) experimental designs, has been adapted to study arithmetic processing. Observing the N400, allows the study of how different arithmetic components affect overall processing. In this study, an N400 paradigm is used to investigate semantic congruency during a fraction magnitude comparison task (Match/Mismatch) in 24 adults. Behavioral results reveal interference by shared components across the compared fractions. EEG analysis results show an N400-like difference wave between Match and Mismatch conditions. Shared components modulate the latency of this N400 effect. These results show the N400 as a viable method for studying fractions.
In this study, we evaluated whether the naming of Arabic digits required access to semantic information. Participants named pictures and Arabic digits blocked by category or intermixed with exemplars of other categories while behavioural and electrophysiological measures were gathered. Pictures were named slower and Arabic digits faster in the blocked context relative to the mixed context. Around 350–450 ms after the presentation of pictures and Arabic digits, brain waves were more positive in anterior regions and more negative in posterior regions when the blocked context was compared with the mixed context. The pattern of electrophysiological results suggests that pictures and Arabic digits are both processed semantically and they are subject to repetition effects during the naming task.
Arithmetic expressions, like verbal sentences, incrementally lead readers to anticipate potential appropriate completions. Existing work in the language domain has helped us understand how the two hemispheres differently participate in and contribute to the cognitive process of sentence reading, but comparatively little work has been done with mathematical equation processing. In this study, we address this gap by examining the ERP response to provided answers to simple multiplication problems, which varied both in levels of correctness (given an equation context) and in visual field of presentation (joint attention in central presentation, or biased processing to the left or right hemisphere through contralateral visual field presentation). When answers were presented to any of the visual fields (hemispheres), there was an effect of correctness prior to the traditional N400 timewindow, which we interpret as a P300 in response to a detected target item (the correct answer). In addition to this response, equation answers also elicited a late positive complex (LPC) for incorrect answers. Notably, this LPC effect was most prominent in the left visual field (right hemisphere), and it was also sensitive to the confusability of the wrong answer - incorrect answers that were closely related to the correct answer elicited a smaller LPC. This suggests a special, prolonged role for the right hemisphere during answer evaluation.
„Was Hänschen nicht lernt, lernt Hans nimmermehr“ und „Zum Lernen ist es nie zu spät“ – das sind die beiden Volksweisheiten, die man immer wieder hört, wenn es um Lernen und Gedächtnis geht. Im Alltag lassen sich Belege für beide Positionen beobachten: So haben die meisten von uns erfahren, dass das Lernen einer Fremdsprache in der Schule oder später nicht mehr genauso gut gelingt wie das Erlernen der Muttersprache. Andererseits ist es uns eine Selbstverständlichkeit, dass wir auch als Erwachsene noch Neues erlernen können, sei es im Beruf oder in der Freizeit.
Beobachtungen im Alltag bieten Anhaltspunkte für die eine oder andere Sichtweise, aber noch keine hinreichende Grundlage, um zwischen den einander widersprechenden Aussagen zur Lernfähigkeit des Menschen entscheiden zu können. Dazu benötigt man wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen, mit denen man die Grenzen der Lernfähigkeit und das Ausmaß der Veränderbarkeit des Nervensystems in verschiedenen Entwicklungsabschnitten genauer eingrenzen kann. Die Kognitiven Neurowissenschaften [1, 2] und die Kognitiven Entwicklungsneurowissenschaften [3] haben in den letzten Jahren mit vielfältigen Methoden und Untersuchungsansätzen die Lernfähigkeit und die Biologie der neuronalen Plastizität erforscht. Aus den Ergebnissen lassen sich verbindliche Antworten zu den eingangs gegenübergestellten Aussagen ableiten. Das vorliegende Kapitel gibt eine kurze Übersicht über diese Forschungsansätze.
This study aimed at exploring the time course of processes underlying the associative confusion effect. We also evaluated the consequences of selecting arithmetic facts to resolve addition problems. We gathered electrophysiological evidence when participants performed a verification task. Simple addition problems were presented in blocks of two trials and participants decided whether they were correct or not. The N400-like component was considered an index of semantic access (i.e., the retrieval of arithmetic facts), and the P200 component was used to determine the difficulty associated with encoding after the answer to an addition problem. When an addition problem was incorrect but the result presented to the participant was that of multiplying the operands (e.g., 2 + 4 = 8), N400-like amplitude was reduced relative to an unrelated condition (e.g., 2 + 4 = 10). This finding suggested that the coactivation of addition and multiplication facts took place. Furthermore, the P200 amplitude was more positive when participants answered to addition problems whose result was that of multiplying the operands of the previous trial (e.g., 2 + 6 = 8). This suggests that irrelevant results were inhibited and it was difficult to encode them later.
A model of P300 amplitude is proposed that reduces the many hypothetical constructs invoked to explain variations in P300 amplitude to three dimensions: 1) Subjective Probahility, 2) Stimulus Meaning, and 3) Information Transmission. Evidence is presented to support the assertion that variables on the subjective prwbability and stimulus meaning dimensions have independent and additive contributions to overall P300 amplitude. The amplitude contributions of both of these dimensions, however, are modulated by a multiplicative relation with the proportion of transmitted stimulus information. Within each dimension, the fundamental experimental variables and their interrelations are specified. An example is presented to show how, by using an additive factors method, the respective amplitude effects of the probability and stimulus meaning dimensions can be separated. Supporting data are presented to show that the proposed model provides a reasonable and testable framework in which to conceptualize P300 results. DESCRIPTORS: Event-related potentials, P300. The prospect of having an electrophysio logical index of cognitive operations has led many re- searchers to explore the nature of the P300 com- ponent of the event-related brain potential (ERP). Since its discovery by Sutton and his colleagues (Sutton, Braren, Zubin, & John, 1965; Sutton, Tuet- ing, Zubin, & John, 1967), studies have demon- strated that P300 amplitude and latency can be used as indices of the nature and timing of a subject's cognitive response to a stimulus.' As a result of
Collected response time (RT) and error data on multiplication problems up to 9 × 9 from 86 Ss in Grades 2–5 and from 60 undergraduate and graduate students. Results show that most errors involved correct products to other problems and that a developmental trend emerged in which the specific errors made by children mirrored adult errors by Grade 5. The error patterns indicate that an associative network evolves in which problem operands become linked to specific sets of candidate answers. Retrieval is governed by a process that activates candidates, and accessibility of correct answers is impeded by competing associations: At all skill levels, both problem-error rates and product-error rates (i.e., how often a problem's correct product occurs as an incorrect response to other problems) contributed to predicting correct problem RT in multiple regression analyses. These interference variables yielded higher correlations than did structural variables (e.g., the numerical size of problem operands), the latter having provided the basis for previous models of arithmetic memory. A network-interference account is proposed that explains the slow course of acquisition and differential problem difficulty in terms of interference by false associations. (French abstract) (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Evaluated 40 undergraduates' performance on a simple mental multiplication task and the adequacy of several different models of mental addition as extended to multiplication. Exps I and II revealed that the performance of multiplication resembles simple mental addition, showing similar effects of problem size and of split (the numerical difference between a stated and correct answer). Exp III included a special manipulation of "confusion products," incorrect answers that were multiples of one of the problem's digits. Consistent with the assumption of interrelated network storage, confusion products slowed RT significantly, even when the problem was presented 600 msec in advance of the answer. Results are discussed in terms of a network-retrieval approach to mental arithmetic, the commonalities between addition and multiplication, and rule- vs retrieval-based performance. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Notes that to understand the endogenous components of the event-related potential (ERP), data about the components' antecedent conditions to form hypotheses about the information-processing function of the underlying brain activity must be used. These hypotheses generate testable predictions about the consequences of the component. The application of this approach to the analysis of the P300 component is reviewed. Certain factors suggest that P300 is a manifestation of activity occurring whenever one's model of the environment must be revised. Tests of 3 predictions based on this "context updating" model are reviewed. Open peer commentary follows. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Three explanations of adults’ mental addition performance, a counting-based model, a direct-access model with a backup counting
procedure, and a network retrieval model, were tested. Whereas important predictions of the two counting models were not upheld,
reaction times (RTs) to simple addition problems were consistent with the network retrieval model. RT both increased with
problem size and was progressively attenuated to false stimuli as the split (numerical difference between the false and correct
sums increased. For large problems, the extreme level of split (13) yielded an RT advantage for false over true problems,
suggestive of a global evaluation process operating in parallel with retrieval. RTs to the more complex addition problems
in Experiment 2 exhibited a similar pattern of significance and, in regression analyses, demonstrated that complex addition
(e.g., 14+12=26) involves retrieval of the simple addition components (4+2=6). The network retrieval/decision model is discussed
in terms of its fit to the present data, and predictions concerning priming facilitation and inhibition are specified. The
similarities between mental arithmetic results and the areas of semantic memory and mental comparisons indicate both the usefulness
of the network approach to mental arithmetic and the usefulness of mental arithmetic to cognitive psychology.
The area of cognitive arithmetic is concerned with the mental representation of number and arithmetic, and the processes and procedures that access and use this knowledge. In this article, I provide a tutorial review of the area, first discussing the four basic empirical effects that characterize the evidence on cognitive arithmetic: the effects of problem size or difficulty, errors, relatedness, and strategies of processing. I then review three current models of simple arithmetic processing and the empirical reports that support or challenge their explanations. The third section of the review discusses the relationship between basic fact retrieval and a rule-based component or system, and considers current evidence and proposals on the overall architecture of the cognitive arithmetic system. The review concludes with a final set of speculations about the all-pervasive problem difficulty effect, still a central puzzle in the field.
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.
Through scalp measurements of the electrical activity of the brain (event-related potentials, or ERPs) recorded while subjects verified the truth of sentences relating exemplars and categories (e.g., ALL DOGS ARE ANIMALS), inferences were made about aspects of semantic processing that were not directly reflected by overt responses. In particular, it is suggested that a negative ERP component that peaks about 400 ms after the onset of the sentence predicate (i.e., N400) is sensitive to structural aspects of semantic memory. The amplitude of this component was modulated by the relatedness of the subject and predicate terms, as well as the hierarchical level of both these terms, but was not sensitive to the truth value of a sentence.
We define a process as autonomous if it can begin without intention, and if it can run on to completion without intention. We develop empirical criteria for determining whether a process can begin without intention, for determining whether it begins in the same way without intention as it does with intention, and for determining whether it can run on to completion without intention once it begins. We apply these criteria to assess the autonomy of the processes underlying simple mental arithmetic--the addition and multiplication of single digits--and find evidence that simple arithmetic may be only partially autonomous: It can begin without intention, but does not begin in the same way without intention as with intention and does not run on to completion without intention. This conclusion suggests there may be a continuum of autonomy, ranging from completely autonomous to completely nonautonomous.
The P300 component of the event-related brain potential was used in conjunction with reaction time to identify the locus of interference on the Stroop color-word test. Whereas response time varied with the congruence between the stimulus word and the color in which it was printed, the duration of stimulus processing, as indexed by P300 latency, remained constant. The results indicate that response competition is the primary source of Stroop interference.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
Abstract The N400 is an endogenous event-related brain potential (ERP) that is sensitive to semantic processes during language comprehension. The general question we address in this paper is which aspects of the comprehension process are manifest in the N400. The focus is on the sensitivity of the N400 to the automatic process of lexical access, or to the controlled process of lexical integration. The former process is the reflex-like and effortless behavior of computing a form representation of the linguistic signal, and of mapping this representation onto corresponding entries in the mental lexicon. The latter process concerns the integration of a spoken or written word into a higher-order meaning representation of the context within which it occurs. ERPs and reaction times (RTs) were acquired to target words preceded by semantically related and unrelated prime words. The semantic relationship between a prime and its target has been shown to modulate the amplitude of the N400 to the target. This modulation can arise from lexical access processes, reflecting the automatic spread of activation between words related in meaning in the mental lexicon. Alternatively, the N400 effect can arise from lexical integration processes, reflecting the relative ease of meaning integration between the prime and the target. To assess the impact of automatic lexical access processes on the N400, we compared the effect of masked and unmasked presentations of a prime on the N400 to a following target. Masking prevents perceptual identification, and as such it is claimed to rule out effects from controlled processes. It therefore enables a stringent test of the possible impact of automatic lexical access processes on the N400. The RT study showed a significant semantic priming effect under both unmasked and masked presentations of the prime. The result for masked priming reflects the effect of automatic spreading of activation during the lexical access process. The ERP study showed a significant N400 effect for the unmasked presentation condition, but no such effect for the masked presentation condition. This indicates that the N400 is not a manifestation of lexical access processes, but reflects aspects of semantic integration processes.
Long-latency components of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) recorded from subjects reading meaningful text are sensitive to semantic relationships among the major lexical items of sentences. In particular, the N400 components are enlarged to words that are semantically unrelated to or incongruous with the context provided by preceding items in a sentence. The present experiment was aimed at finding out whether this inverse relationship between N400 amplitude and semantic association would extend to situations where words were presented in isolated pairs, using a design that dissociated changes in N400 from confounding ERP waves elicited by active decision making. KRP's were recorded to 320 word pairs presented to eleven subjects. Each pair of words was followed by a letter, and subjects made a differential response according to whether or not the letter had been present in either of the words. After the ERP recording session, subjects rated the degree of semantic association between the words in each pair. ERP averages were formed on the basis of the subjects' ratings and on the basis of normative, a priori categories. For both types of averages the N400 amplitude was found to be a sensitive index of semantic association, even though the association was incidental to the subject's assigned task. These findings suggest the utility of the N400 measure in studies of semantic priming and as a probe of the automaticity of contextual influences in language processing.
This chapter presents pervasive influence of sentence-level context. The sentence-level context effects are seen in the same experimental tasks that yield associative context and frequency effects, the question arises as to which, if any, of these effects originates in the lexicon. This leads to the more general question concerning the constituents of a “lexical entry”: abstract orthographic and/or phonemic information only, the syntactic category of the word, and some basic semantic information. The process that yields frequency effects for words presented in isolation is neither mandatory nor immune to sentence-level context. The influence of sentence-level context can be as powerful and act as early as that of a single lexically associated word, and sentence context can be used to pick out the appropriate core meaning of an ambiguous word without first passing through an early stage of indiscriminate semantic activation.
development of systematic errors in children's performance that reflect the functional dimensions of organization (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Two experiments explored the effects of stimulus degradation on behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures of semantic priming. The primary goal was to help elucidate the psychological processes that underlie the N400 component. In both experiments, subjects made speeded lexical decisions to words and pseudowords preceded by either semantically related or unrelated prime words. In one block of trials, the target stimuli were intact, and in a second block they were degraded by removing a random 33% of the elements making up each letter of the target (Experiment 1) or by overlaying a matrix of dots on the target (Experiment 2). In both experiments, subjects responded faster and more accurately to related targets than to unrelated targets (behavioral semantic priming effect), and this priming effect was greater when the target was degraded. However, although the N400 component was larger for unrelated than related targets (ERP semantic priming effect), there was no evidence that this difference was larger in the degraded block of either experiment. These results indicate that the behavioral and ERP measures reported here appear to be tapping into different components of the process(es) involved in semantic priming. The implication of the results for the linguistic processes underlying the N400 are discussed.
Analysis of variance (ANOVA) interactions involving electrode location are often used to assess the statistical significance of differences between event-related potential (ERP) scalp distributions for different experimental conditions, subject groups, or ERP components. However, there is a fundamental incompatibility between the additive model upon which ANOVAs are based and the multiplicative effect on ERP voltages produced by differences in source strength. Using potential distributions generated by dipole sources in spherical volume conductor models, we demonstrate that highly significant interactions involving electrode location can be obtained between scalp distributions with identical shapes generated by the same source. Therefore, such interactions cannot be used as unambiguous indications of shape differences between distributions and hence of differences in source configuration. This ambiguity can be circumvented by scaling the data to eliminate overall amplitude differences between experimental conditions before an ANOVA is performed. Such analyses retain sensitivity to genuine differences in distributional shape, but do not confuse amplitude and shape differences.
A new paradigm to study the functional significance of 'P300' is presented. Its advantages are: The precise definition and manipulation of cognitive operations which are triggered by the very same events as used for ERP extraction; and a systematic control over the probability of events known to affect endogenous event-related potential components (probabilities of single events, event categories, and event sequences). By employing the paradigm in two experiments with visual stimuli, three subcomponents of 'P300' were identified: P3a; P3b; and positive Slow Wave (pSW). Experimental manipulations revealed that P3b is related to the information processing resources required to alter a perceptual set and pSW to the resources required when abstract information permanently stored in memory must be retrieved. The data further revealed that the same-different disparity in response latency for matching letters has at least two ERP correlates: A difference in P3b latency; and a difference in the amplitude of a negative recess between P3a and P3b.
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.
This paper presents a model describing the temporal and neurotopological structure of syntactic processes during comprehension. It postulates three distinct phases of language comprehension, two of which are primarily syntactic in nature. During the first phase the parser assigns the initial syntactic structure on the basis of word category information. These early structural processes are assumed to be subserved by the anterior parts of the left hemisphere, as event-related brain potentials show this area to be maximally activated when phrase structure violations are processed and as circumscribed lesions in this area lead to an impairment of the on-line structural assignment. During the second phase lexical-semantic and verb-argument structure information is processed. This phase is neurophysiologically manifest in a negative component in the event-related brain potential around 400 ms after stimulus onset which is distributed over the left and right temporo-parietal areas when lexical-semantic information is processed and over left anterior areas when verb-argument structure information is processed. During the third phase the parser tries to map the initial syntactic structure onto the available lexical-semantic and verb-argument structure information. In case of an unsuccessful match between the two types of information reanalyses may become necessary. These processes of structural reanalysis are correlated with a centroparietally distributed late positive component in the event-related brain potential.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Semantic priming effects (behavioral and electrophysiological) were compared in the visual and auditory modalities across three stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs; 0, 200, and 800 ms). When both prime and target were presented in the visual modality (the prime just to the left of a fixation point and the target to the right), there were N400 priming effects present across the three SOAs. However, the N400 in the 0-ms SOA condition extended longer in time (800 vs. 500 ms) than in the other SOAs. When both the prime and target were presented in the auditory modality (the prime to the right ear and the target to the left), the largest priming effects were found for the 800-ms SOA. Moreover, there was a relatively early priming effect present in the 0- and 800-ms SOA conditions but not in the 200-ms condition. The results are discussed in terms of modality differences in the time course of word comprehension processes.
When subjects read an semantically unexpected word, the brain electrical activity shows a negative deflection at about 400 msec in comparison with the response to an expected word. In order to study the brain systems related to this effect we mapped it with a dense (64-channel) electrode array and two reference-independent measures, one estimating the average potential gradients and the other radial current density. With these measures, the event-related brain potential (ERP) begins at about 70 msec with the P1, reflecting bilateral current sources over occipitoparietal areas. A strongly left-lateralized N1 then follows, peaking at about 180 msec, accompanied by an anterior positivity, the P2. A separate posterior positive pattern then emerges that seems to repeat the topography of the P1. Next, at about 350 msec, the ERP for the congruous word develops a P300 or LPC, characterized by a diffuse positivity over the superior surface of the head and several negativities over inferior regions. This superior source/inferior sink pattern of the LPC is greater over the left hemisphere. In contrast, the ERP for the incongruous word in this interval displays the N400 as a period in which topographic features are absent. At about 400 msec the ERP for the incongruous word begins to develop an LPC, which then remains relatively symmetric over the two hemispheres.
We investigated if incongruent solutions of simple multiplication problems would elicit similar event-related brain potentials as inappropriate words in sentences. In Experiment I, 12 subjects verified the appropriateness of solutions of multiplication problems or of final words in short sentences. Both incongruent solutions and incongruent words evoked a phasic negative shift between 300 and 500 ms having a similar topography. In Experiment II, we tested with another sample of 13 subjects if the amplitude of this arithmetic N400 effect was affected differently by different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA = 200 and 500 ms) and by errors that were either table-related or table-unrelated to the preceding operands. Again, incorrect solutions elicited an arithmetic N400 effect whose amplitude depended on both the relatedness of the solution and the SOA. The ascending part of the N400 effect was always larger for unrelated than for related errors independently of the SOA, whereas the maximum of the N400 effect was larger for unrelated errors in case of a long SOA only. This pattern of effects was similar to that observed with semantic material varying lexical associations. These results suggest that arithmetic incongruencies are handled by the system in a manner functionally similar to that of semantic incongruencies.
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