Search results for "400"
showing 10 items of 1272 documents
The influence of scene and object orientation on the scene consistency effect
2019
Abstract Contextual regularities help us make sense of our visual environment. In scenes, semantically consistent objects are typically better recognized than inconsistent ones (e.g., a toaster vs. printer in a kitchen). What is the role of object and scene orientation in this so-called scene consistency effect? We presented consistent and inconsistent objects either upright (Experiment 1) or inverted (rotated 180°; Experiment 2) on upright, inverted, and scrambled background scenes. In Experiment 1, on upright scenes, consistent objects were recognized with higher accuracy than inconsistent ones, and we observed N300/N400 event-related potentials (ERPs) reflecting object-scene semantic pro…
Impact of cardiopulmonary resuscitation on a cannot intubate, cannot oxygenate condition: a randomised crossover simulation research study of the int…
2019
ObjectivesDuring a ‘cannot intubate, cannot oxygenate’ situation, asphyxia can lead to cardiac arrest. In this stressful situation, two complex algorithms facilitate decision-making to save a patient’s life: difficult airway management and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. However, the extent to which competition between the two algorithms causes conflicts in the execution of pivotal treatment remains unknown. Due to the rare incidence of this situation and the very low feasibility of such an evaluation in clinical reality, we decided to perform a randomised crossover simulation research study. We propose that even experienced healthcare providers delay cricothyrotomy, a lifesaving approach, d…
Lexical prediction via forward models: N400 evidence from German Sign Language
2013
Models of language processing in the human brain often emphasize the prediction of upcoming input for example in order to explain the rapidity of language understanding. However,the precise mechanisms of prediction are still poorly understood. Forward models,which draw upon the language production system to setup expectations during comprehension, provide a promising approach in this regard. Here, we present an event- related potential (ERP) study on German Sign Language (DGS) which tested the hypotheses of a forward model perspective on prediction. Sign languages involve relatively long transition phases between one sign and the next, which should be anticipated as part of a forward model-…
Variability in energy expenditure is much greater in males than females
2022
In mammals, trait variation is often reported to be greater among males than females. However, to date, mainly only morphological traits have been studied. Energy expenditure represents the metabolic costs of multiple physical, physiological, and behavioral traits. Energy expenditure could exhibit particularly high greater male variation through a cumulative effect if those traits mostly exhibit greater male variation, or a lack of greater male variation if many of them do not. Sex differences in energy expenditure variation have been little explored. We analyzed a large database on energy expenditure in adult humans (1494 males and 3108 females) to investigate whether humans have evolved s…
ERP correlates of transposed-letter similarity effects: Are consonants processed differently from vowels?
2007
Recent research has shown that pseudowords created by transposing letters are very effective for activating the lexical representation of their base words (e.g., relovution activates REVOLUTION). Furthermore, pseudoword transpositions of consonants are more similar to their corresponding base words than the transposition of vowels. We report one experiment using pseudowords created by the transposition of two consonants, two vowels, and their corresponding control conditions (i.e., the replacement of two consonants or two vowels) in a lexical decision task while Event Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The results showed a modulation of the amplitude of the N400 component as a functio…
Topicality matters: Position-specific demands on Chinese discourse processing
2011
We report an event-related potential study designed to explore the nature of context-induced topicality in Chinese discourse processing. Topic is what an utterance is about and represents the most prominent discourse element, which occurs sentence-initially in Chinese. We tested question-answer pairs consisting of topic and non-topic questions followed by different continuations (Topic-Continuity, Topic-Shift, Novel-Topic). ERPs were measured at distinct sentential positions and revealed that sentence-initially information processing is guided by topicality, which affects N400 and Late Positivity effects alike. In non-initial positions, the given-new distinction is the dominant principle, a…
Meaningful physical changes mediate lexical-semantic integration: top-down and form-based bottom-up information sources interact in the N400
2011
Models of how the human brain reconstructs an intended meaning from a linguistic input often draw upon the N400 event-related potential (ERP) component as evidence. Current accounts of the N400 emphasise either the role of contextually induced lexical preactivation of a critical word (Lau, Phillips,& Poeppel, 2008) or the ease of integration into the overall discourse context including a wide variety of influencing factors (Hagoort & van Berkum, 2007). The present ERP study challenges both types of accounts by demonstrating a contextually independent and purely form-based bottom-up influence on the N400: the N400 effect for implausible sentence-endings was attenuated when the critical sente…
Yes, you can? A speaker’s potency to act upon his words orchestrates early neural responses to message-level meaning
2013
Evidence is accruing that, in comprehending language, the human brain rapidly integrates a wealth of information sources-including the reader or hearer's knowledge about the world and even his/her current mood. However, little is known to date about how language processing in the brain is affected by the hearer's knowledge about the speaker. Here, we investigated the impact of social attributions to the speaker by measuring event-related brain potentials while participants watched videos of three speakers uttering true or false statements pertaining to politics or general knowledge: a top political decision maker (the German Federal Minister of Finance at the time of the experiment), a well…
Early use of phonological codes in deaf readers: An ERP study.
2017
Previous studies suggest that deaf readers use phonological information of words when it is explicitly demanded by the task itself. However, whether phonological encoding is automatic remains controversial. The present experiment examined whether adult congenitally deaf readers show evidence of automatic use of phonological information during visual word recognition. In an ERP masked priming lexical decision experiment, deaf participants responded to target words preceded by a pseudohomophone (koral - CORAL) or an orthographic control prime (toral - CORAL). Responses were faster for the pseudohomophone than for the orthographic control condition. The N250 and N400 amplitudes were reduced fo…
Animacy matters: ERP evidence for the multi-dimensionality of topic-worthiness in Chinese
2013
Abstract An event-related potential (ERP) study was conducted to investigate how animacy interacts with givenness during topic processing. Both animacy and givenness have been considered as within-discourse factors that contribute to an element׳s potential to form an optimal topic (i.e., topic-worthiness). ERPs were recorded while participants read question–answer pairs, of which the target sentence induced either a continuation or an alternation of a previously introduced topic (i.e., given vs. new). Depending on the context, a potential topic further differed in its animacy from the preceding one (i.e., animate vs. inanimate). The data revealed a robust givenness effect with an N400 reduc…