Search results for "P600"
showing 10 items of 13 documents
Think globally: Cross-linguistic variation in electrophysiological activity during sentence comprehension
2011
This paper demonstrates systematic cross-linguistic differences in the electrophysiological correlates of conflicts between form and meaning (“semantic reversal anomalies”). These engender P600 effects in English and Dutch (e.g. Kolk et al., 2003 ; Kuperberg et al., 2003), but a biphasic N400 – late positivity pattern in German (Schlesewsky and Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, 2009), and monophasic N400 effects in Turkish (Experiment 1) and Mandarin Chinese (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 revealed that, in Icelandic, semantic reversal anomalies show the English pattern with verbs requiring a position-based identification of argument roles, but the German pattern with verbs requiring a case-based identi…
The neural mechanisms of word order processing revisited: electrophysiological evidence from Japanese.
2008
We present two ERP studies on the processing of word order variations in Japanese, a language that is suited to shedding further light on the implications of word order freedom for neurocognitive approaches to sentence comprehension. Experiment 1 used auditory presentation and revealed that initial accusative objects elicit increased processing costs in comparison to initial subjects (in the form of a transient negativity) only when followed by a prosodic boundary. A similar effect was observed using visual presentation in Experiment 2, however only for accusative but not for dative objects. These results support a relational account of word order processing, in which the costs of comprehen…
The P600-as-P3 hypothesis revisited: single-trial analyses reveal that the late EEG positivity following linguistically deviant material is reaction …
2014
The P600, a late positive ERP component following linguistically deviant stimuli, is commonly seen as indexing structural, high-level processes, e.g. of linguistic (re)analysis. It has also been identified with the P3 (P600-as-P3 hypothesis), which is thought to reflect a systemic neuromodulator release facilitating behavioural shifts and is usually response time aligned. We investigated single-trial alignment of the P600 to response, a critical prediction of the P600-as-P3 hypothesis. Participants heard sentences containing morphosyntactic and semantic violations and responded via a button press. The elicited P600 was perfectly response aligned, while an N400 following semantic deviations …
Event-related potential (ERP) responses to violations of inflectional and derivational rules of Finnish
2007
Event-related potentials (ERP) were used to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of inflectional and derivational morphology. The participants were presented with visual sentences containing critical words in which either inflectional, derivational or both rules (combined violation) of Finnish were violated. Inflectional anomalies violated a number agreement of a noun with a previous auxiliary word. Derivational violations included a word-internal selectional restriction violation, i.e., a root and suffix category violation. Combined violations contained both a number and a category violation. The phonemic length of the critical words was controlled. Inflectional violations elici…
Conflicts in language processing: A new perspective on the N400-P600 distinction
2011
Conflicts in language processing often correlate with late positive event-related brain potentials (ERPs), particularly when they are induced by inconsistencies between different information types (e.g. syntactic and thematic/plausibility information). However, under certain circumstances, similar sentence-level interpretation conflicts (inanimate subjects) engender negativity effects (N400s) instead. The present ERP study was designed to shed light on this inconsistency. In previous studies showing monophasic positivities (P600s), the conflict was irresolvable and induced via a verb. whereas N400s were elicited by resolvable, argument-induced conflicts. Here, we therefore examined irresolv…
Regular rhythmic primes boost P600 in grammatical error processing in dyslexic adults and matched controls
2020
International audience; Regular musical rhythms orient attention over time and facilitate processing. Previous research has shown that regular rhythmic stimulation benefits subsequent syntax processing in children with dyslexia and specific language impairment. The present EEG study examined the influence of a rhythmic musical prime on the P600 late evoked-potential, associated with grammatical error detection for dyslexic adults and matched controls. Participants listened to regular or irregular rhythmic prime sequences followed by grammatically correct and incorrect sentences. They were required to perform grammaticality judgments for each auditorily presented sentence while EEG was recor…
An alternative perspective on “semantic P600” effects in language comprehension
2008
Abstract The literature on the electrophysiology of language comprehension has recently seen a very prominent discussion of “semantic P600” effects, which have been observed, for example, in sentences involving an implausible thematic role assignment to an argument that would be a highly plausible filler for a different thematic role of the same verb. These findings have sparked a discussion about underlying properties of the language comprehension architecture, as they have generally been viewed as a challenge to established models of language processing and specifically to the notion that syntax precedes semantics in the comprehension process. In this paper, we review the literature on se…
Agreement or no agreement. ERP correlates of verb agreement violation in German Sign Language
2018
Previous studies on agreement violation in sign languages report neurophysiological responses similar to those observed for spoken languages. In contrast, the two current event-related potential studies (ERP) on agreement violations in German Sign Language sentences present results that allow for an alternative explanation. In experiment A, we investigated the processing of agreement verbs ending in an unspecified location different to the location associated with the referent. Incorrect agreement verbs engendered a posterior positivity effect (220–570 ms post nonmanual cues) and a left anterior effect (300–600 ms post the subsequent sign onset). In experiment B, we investigated a violation…
Domain-general neural correlates of dependency formation: Using complex tones to simulate language
2015
There is an ongoing debate whether the P600 event-related potential component following syntactic anomalies reflects syntactic processes per se, or if it is an instance of the P300, a domain-general ERP component associated with attention and cognitive reorientation. A direct comparison of both components is challenging because of the huge discrepancy in experimental designs and stimulus choice between language and ‘classic’ P300 experiments. In the present study, we develop a new approach to mimic the interplay of sequential position as well as categorical and relational information in natural language syntax (word category and agreement) in a non-linguistic target detection paradigm using…
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…