Search results for "N400"

Positional influences on information packaging: Insights from topological fields in German

2012

Abstract We present three event-related potential studies that investigated the contribution of givenness and position-induced topicality (what a sentence is about) to information processing. The studies compared two types of referential expressions (given and inferred noun phrases (NPs)) in distinct sentential positions. The data revealed position-specific effects, reflected by an interaction of topicality and givenness: inferred NPs registered a more pronounced Late Positivity than given NPs in the canonical sentence-medial position, but not sentence-initially (Experiment 1). Additionally, there was a stable effect of givenness across positions, reflected by an N400 for inferred over give…

Electrophysiology Reveals the Neural Dynamics of Naturalistic Auditory Language Processing: Event-Related Potentials Reflect Continuous Model Updates.

2016

The recent trend away from ANOVA-based analyses places experimental investigations into the neurobiology of cognition in more naturalistic and ecologically valid designs within reach. Using mixed-effects models for epoch-based regression, we demonstrate the feasibility of examining event-related potentials (ERPs), and in particular the N400, to study the neural dynamics of human auditory language processing in a naturalistic setting. Despite the large variability between trials during naturalistic stimulation, we replicated previous findings from the literature: the effects of frequency, animacy, word order and find previously unexplored interaction effects. This suggests a new perspective …

Semantic anomaly detection in school-aged children during natural sentence reading : A study of fixation-related brain potentials

2018

In this study, we investigated the effects of context-related semantic anomalies on the fixation-related brain potentials of 12–13-year-old Finnish children in grade 6 during sentence reading. The detection of such anomalies is typically reflected in the N400 event-related potential. We also examined whether the representation invoked by the sentence context extends to the orthographic representation level by replacing the final words of the sentence with an anomalous word neighbour of a plausible word. The eye-movement results show that the anomalous word neighbours of plausible words cause similar first-fixation and gaze duration reactions, as do other anomalous words. Similarly, we obser…

Electrical brain activity and facial electromyography responses to irony in dysphoric and non-dysphoric participants

2020

We studied irony comprehension and emotional reactions to irony in dysphoric and control participants. Electroencephalography (EEG) and facial electromyography (EMG) were measured when spoken conversations were presented with pictures that provided either congruent (non-ironic) or incongruent (ironic) contexts. In a separate session, participants evaluated the congruency and valence of the stimuli. While both groups rated ironic stimuli funnier than non-ironic stimuli, the control group rated all the stimuli funnier than the dysphoric group. N400-like activity, P600, and EMG activity indicating smiling were larger after the ironic stimuli than the non-ironic stimuli for both groups. Further…

ERP correlates of letter identity and letter position are modulated by lexical frequency

2013

The encoding of letter position is a key aspect in all recently proposed models of visual-word recognition. We analyzed the impact of lexical frequency on letter position assignment by examining the temporal dynamics of lexical activation induced by pseudowords extracted from words of different frequencies. For each word (e.g., BRIDGE), we created two pseudowords: A transposed-letter (TL: BRIGDE) and a replaced-letter pseudoword (RL: BRITGE). ERPs were recorded while participants read words and pseudowords in two tasks: Semantic categorization (Experiment 1) and lexical decision (Experiment 2). For high-frequency stimuli, similar ERPs were obtained for words and TL-pseudowords, but the N400…

The impact of visual cues during visual word recognition in deaf readers: An ERP study

2021

Abstract Although evidence is still scarce, recent research suggests key differences in how deaf and hearing readers use visual information during visual word recognition. Here we compared the time course of lexical access in deaf and hearing readers of similar reading ability. We also investigated whether one visual property of words, the outline-shape, modulates visual word recognition differently in both groups. We recorded the EEG signal of twenty deaf and twenty hearing readers while they performed a lexical decision task. In addition to the effect of lexicality, we assessed the impact of outline-shape by contrasting responses to pseudowords with an outline-shape that was consistent (e…

Abnormal functioning of the left temporal lobe in language-impaired children

2014

Specific language impairment is associated with enduring problems in language-related functions. We followed the spatiotemporal course of cortical activation in SLI using magnetoencephalography. In the experiment, children with normal and impaired language development heard spoken real words and pseudowords presented only once or two times in a row. In typically developing children, the activation in the bilateral superior temporal cortices was attenuated to the second presentation of the same word. In SLI children, this repetition effect was nearly nonexistent in the left hemisphere. Furthermore, the activation was equally strong to words and pseudowords in SLI children whereas in the typi…

Word Processing in Scene Context : An Event-Related Potential Study in Young Children

2017

Semantic priming has been demonstrated in object or word contexts in toddlers. However, less is known about semantic priming in scene context. In this study, 24-month-olds with high and low vocabulary skills were presented with visual scenes (e.g., kitchen) followed by semantically consistent (e.g., spoon) or inconsistent (e.g., bed) spoken words. Inconsistent scene-word pairs evoked a larger N400 component over the frontal areas. Low-producers presented a larger N400 over the right while high-producers over the left frontal areas. Our results suggest that contextual information facilitates word processing in young children. Additionally, children with different linguistic skills activate d…

Cross-linguistic variation in the neurophysiological response to semantic processing: Evidence from anomalies at the borderline of awareness

2014

The N400 event-related brain potential (ERP) has played a major role in the examination of how the human brain processes meaning. For current theories of the N400, classes of semantic inconsistencies which do not elicit N400 effects have proven particularly influential. Semantic anomalies that are difficult to detect are a case in point ("borderline anomalies", e.g. "After an air crash, where should the survivors be buried?"), engendering a late positive ERP response but no N400 effect in English (Sanford, Leuthold, Bohan, & Sanford, 2011). In three auditory ERP experiments, we demonstrate that this result is subject to cross-linguistic variation. In a German version of Sanford and colleagu…

2014

The role of literal meaning during the construction of meaning that goes beyond pure literal composition was investigated by combining cross-modal masked priming and ERPs. This experimental design was chosen to compare two conflicting theoretical positions on this topic. The indirect access account claims that literal aspects are processed first, and additional meaning components are computed only if no satisfactory interpretation is reached. In contrast, the direct access approach argues that figurative aspects can be accessed immediately. We presented metaphors (These lawyers are hyenas, Experiment 1a & 1b) and producer-for-product metonymies (The boy read Boll, Experiment 2a & 2b) with a…