Semantic Processing of Pictures and Spoken Words: Evidence from Event-Related Brain Potentials

1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.E. Pratarelli
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Spoken Words

scholarly journals Phonotactic Knowledge and Lexical-Semantic Processing in One-year-olds: Brain Responses to Words and Nonsense Words in Picture Contexts

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (11) ◽  
pp. 1785-1802 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuela Friedrich ◽  
Angela D. Friederici
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Semantic Integration ◽  
Control Group ◽  
First Year ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Lexical Priming ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
One Year ◽  
First Year Of Life

During their first year of life, infants not only acquire probabilistic knowledge about the phonetic, prosodic, and phonotactic organization of their native language, but also begin to establish first lexical-semantic representations. The present study investigated the sensitivity to phonotactic regularities and its impact on semantic processing in 1-year-olds. We applied the method of event-related brain potentials to 12-and 19-month-old children and to an adult control group. While looking at pictures of known objects, subjects listened to spoken nonsense words that were phonotactically legal (pseudowords) or had phonotactically illegal word onsets (nonwords), or to real words that were either congruous or incongruous to the picture contents. In 19-month-olds and in adults, incongruous words and pseudowords, but not non-words, elicited an N400 known to reflect mechanisms of semantic integration. For congruous words, the N400 was attenuated by semantic priming. In contrast, 12-month-olds did not show an N400 difference, neither between pseudo-and nonwords nor between incongruous and congruous words. Both 1-year-old groups and adults additionally displayed a lexical priming effect for congruous words, that is, a negativity starting around 100 msec after words onset. One-year-olds, moreover, displayed a phonotactic familiarity effect, that is, a widely distributed negativity starting around 250 msec in 19-month-olds but occurring later in 12-month-olds. The results imply that both lexical priming and phonotactic familiarity already affect the processing of acoustic stimuli in children at 12 months of age. In 19-month-olds, adult-like mechanisms of semantic integration are present in response to phonotactically legal, but not to phonotactically illegal, nonsense words, indicating that children at this age treat pseudo-words, but not nonwords, as potential word candidates.

True But Not False Memories Produce a Sensory Signature in Human Lateralized Brain Potentials

2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 941-949 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Fabiani ◽  
Michael A. Stadler ◽  
Peter M. Wessels
Keyword(s):  
False Recognition ◽  
Cerebral Hemisphere ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
False Memories ◽  
Wave Activity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Differential Ability

False memories (e.g., recognition of events that did not occur) are considered behaviorally and subjectively indistinguishable from true memories. We report that brain activity differs when true and false memories are retrieved. Strongly associated lists of words were presented to one or the other cerebral hemisphere at study. This led to lateralized brain activity for these words during a centrally presented recognition test, reflecting their lateralized encoding. This activity was absent for nonstudied but strongly associated words falsely recognized as studied items. These results indicate that studied words leave sensory signatures of study experiences that are absent for false memories. In addition, hemifield effects emerged, including a slower reaction time (RT) for false recognition of nonstudied words whose associated lists were presented to the left hemifield (i.e., right hemisphere). These false recognition responses were accompanied by frontal slow wave activity, which may reflect a differential ability of the two hemispheres with respect to semantic processing.

Word Semantics Is Processed Even without Attentional Effort

2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (8) ◽  
pp. 1511-1522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristiina Relander ◽  
Pia Rämä ◽  
Teija Kujala
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Semantic Priming ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
N400 Effect ◽  
Priming Effects ◽  
Controlled Processes ◽  
Spoken Words ◽  
Laterality Effect ◽  
Word Task

We examined the attentional modulation of semantic priming and the N400 effect for spoken words. The aim was to find out how the semantics of spoken language is processed when attention is directed to another modality (passive task), to the phonetics of spoken words (phonological task), or to the semantics of spoken words (word task). Equally strong behavioral priming effects were obtained in the phonological and the word tasks. A significant N400 effect was found in all tasks. The effect was stronger in the word and the phonological tasks than in the passive task, but there was no difference in the magnitude of the effect between the phonological and the word tasks. The latency of the N400 effect did not differ between the tasks. Although the N400 effect had a centroparietal maximum in the phonological and the word tasks, it was largest at the parietal recording sites in the passive task. The effect was more pronounced at the left than right recording sites in the phonological task, but there was no laterality effect in the other tasks. The N400 effect in the passive task indicates that semantic priming occurs even when spoken words are not actively attended. However, stronger N400 effect in the phonological and the word tasks than in the passive task suggests that controlled processes modulate the N400 effect. The finding that there were no differences in the N400 effect between the phonological and the word tasks indicates that the semantics of attended spoken words is processed regardless of whether semantic processing is relevant for task performance.

scholarly journals Dissociable effects of prediction and integration during language comprehension: Evidence from a large-scale study using brain potentials

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mante S. Nieuwland ◽  
Dale J. Barr ◽  
Federica Bartolozzi ◽  
Simon Busch-Moreno ◽  
Emily Darley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Mixed Effects ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Sentence Meaning ◽  
Sentence Level ◽  
Word Predictability ◽  
Using Data

AbstractComposing sentence meaning is easier for predictable words than for unpredictable words. Are predictable words genuinely predicted, or simply more plausible and therefore easier to integrate with sentence context? We addressed this persistent and fundamental question using data from a recent, large-scale (N= 334) replication study, by investigating the effects of word predictability and sentence plausibility on the N400, the brain’s electrophysiological index of semantic processing. A spatiotemporally fine-grained mixed effects multiple regression analysis revealed overlapping effects of predictability and plausibility on the N400, albeit with distinct spatiotemporal profiles. Our results challenge the view that the predictability-dependent N400 reflects the effects ofeitherpredictionorintegration, and suggest that semantic facilitation of predictable words arises from a cascade of processes that activate and integrate word meaning with context into a sentence-level meaning.

Word, Pseudoword, and Nonword Processing: A Multitask Comparison Using Event-Related Brain Potentials

1997 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 758-775 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes C. Ziegler ◽  
Mireille Besson ◽  
Arthur M. Jacobs ◽  
Tatjana A. Nazir ◽  
Thomas H. Carr
Keyword(s):  
Target Letter ◽  
Phonological Processing ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Primary Role ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Linguistic Information ◽  
Letter Search

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to words, pseudowords, and nonwords were recorded in three different tasks. A letter search task was used in Experiment 1. Performance was affected by whether the target letter occurred in a word, a pseudoword, or a random nonword. ERP results corroborated the behavioral results, showing small but reliable ERP differences between the three stimulus types. Words and pseudowords differed from nonwords at posterior sites, whereas words differed from pseudowords and nonwords at anterior sites. Since deciding whether the target letter was present or absent co-occurred with stimulus processing in Experiment 1, a delayed letter search task was used in Experiment 2. ERPs to words and pseudowords were similar and differed from ERPs to nonwords, suggesting a primary role of orthographic and phonological processing in the delayed letter search task. To increase semantic processing, a categorization task was used in Experiment 3. Early differences between ERPs to words and pseudowords at left posterior and anterior locations suggested a rapid activation of lexico-semantic information. These findings suggest that the use of ERPs in a multiple task design makes it possible to track the time course and the activation of multiple sources of linguistic information when processing words, pseudowords, and nonwords. The task-dependent nature of the effects suggests that the language system can use multiple sources of linguistic information in flexible and adaptive ways.

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