scholarly journals Lexical processing deficits in children with developmental language disorder: An event-related potentials study

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 459-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergey A. Kornilov ◽  
James S. Magnuson ◽  
Natalia Rakhlin ◽  
Nicole Landi ◽  
Elena L. Grigorenko

AbstractLexical processing deficits in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have been postulated to arise as sequelae of their grammatical deficits (either directly or via compensatory mechanisms) and vice versa. We examined event-related potential indices of lexical processing in children with DLD (n= 23) and their typically developing peers (n= 16) using a picture–word matching paradigm. We found that children with DLD showed markedly reduced N400 amplitudes in response both to auditorily presented words that had initial phonological overlap with the name of the pictured object and to words that were not semantically or phonologically related to the pictured object. Moreover, this reduction was related to behavioral indices of phonological and lexical but not grammatical development. We also found that children with DLD showed a depressed phonological mapping negativity component in the early time window, suggesting deficits in phonological processing or early lexical access. The results are partially consistent with the overactivation account of lexical processing deficits in DLD and point to the relative functional independence of lexical/phonological and grammatical deficits in DLD, supporting a multidimensional view of the disorder. The results also, although indirectly, support the neuroplasticity account of DLD, according to which language impairment affects brain development and shapes the specific patterns of brain responses to language stimuli.

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 1355-1370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Lüdtke ◽  
Claudia K. Friedrich ◽  
Mónica De Filippis ◽  
Barbara Kaup

In a sentence–picture verification paradigm, participants were presented in a rapid-serial-visual-presentation paradigm with affirmative or negative sentences (e.g., “In the front of the tower there is a/no ghost”) followed by a matching or mismatching picture. Response latencies and event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured during reading and verification. An enhanced negative shift in the ERPs for the subject noun (i.e., “ghost”) in negative, compared to affirmative sentences, was found during reading. We relate this ERP deflection to enhanced processing demands required by the negative particle no. Although this effect suggests a direct impact of negation on language processing, results for picture processing reveal that negation is not immediately integrated into sentence meaning. When the delay of picture presentation was short (250 msec), verification latencies and ERPs evoked by the picture showed a priming effect independent of whether the sentence contained a negation. Unprimed pictures (foreground object not mentioned in the sentence) led to longer latencies and higher N400 amplitudes than primed pictures (foreground object mentioned in the sentence). Main effects of negation showed up only in a late positive-going ERP effect. In contrast, when the delay was long (1500 msec), we observed main effects of truth value and negation in addition to the priming effect already in the N400 time window, that is, negation is fully integrated into sentence meaning only at a later point in the comprehension process. When negation has not yet been integrated, verification decisions appear to be modulated by additional time-consuming reanalysis processes.


2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (10) ◽  
pp. 1696-1711 ◽  
Author(s):  
Korinna Eckstein ◽  
Angela D. Friederici

Psycholinguistic theories assume an interaction between prosody and syntax during language processing. Based on studies using mostly off-line methods, it is unclear whether an interaction occurs at later or initial processing stages. Using event-related potentials, the present study provides neurophysiological evidence for a prosody and syntax interaction in initial processing. The sentence material contained mere prosodic and syntactic as well as combined prosodic-syntactic violations. For the syntax violation, the critical word appeared after a preposition. The suffix of the critical word either indicated a noun fulfilling the syntactic requirements of the preceding preposition or a verb causing a word category violation. For the prosodic manipulation, congruent critical words were normally intonated (signaling sentence continuation) while prosodically incongruent critical words signaled sentence end. For the mere prosodic incongruity, a broadly distributed negativity was observed at the critical word-stem (300–500 msec aligned to word onset). In response to a mere syntactic error, a left temporal negativity was elicited in an early time window (200–400 msec aligned to suffix onset), taken to reflect initial phrase structure building processes. In contrast, in response to the combined prosodic-syntactic violation, an early temporal negativity showed up bilaterally at the suffix in the same time window. Our interpretation is that the process of initial structure building as reflected in the early left anterior negativity recruits additional right hemispheric neural resources when the critical word contains both syntactic and prosodic violations. This suggests the immediate influence of phrasal prosody during the initial parsing stage in speech processing.


2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 1114-1129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. Woollams ◽  
Jason R. Taylor ◽  
Frini Karayanidis ◽  
Richard N. Henson

The relationship between recognition memory and repetition priming remains unclear. Priming is believed to reflect increased processing fluency for previously studied items relative to new items. Manipulations that affect fluency can also affect the likelihood that participants will judge items as studied in recognition tasks. This attribution of fluency to memory has been related to the familiarity process, as distinct from the recollection process, that is assumed by dual-process models of recognition memory. To investigate the time courses and neural sources of fluency, familiarity, and recollection, we conducted an event-related potential (ERP) study of recognition memory using masked priming of test cues and a remember/know paradigm. During the recognition test, studied and unstudied words were preceded by a brief, masked word that was either the same or different. Participants decided quickly whether each item had been studied (“old” or “new”), and for items called old, indicated whether they “remembered” (R) the encoding event, or simply “knew” (K) the item had been studied. Masked priming increased the proportion of K, but not R, judgments. Priming also decreased response times for hits but not correct rejections (CRs). Four distinct ERP effects were found. A medial-frontal FN400 (300–500 msec) was associated with familiarity (R, K Hits > CRs) and a centro-parietal late positivity (500–800 msec) with recollection (R Hits > K Hits, CRs). A long-term repetition effect was found for studied items judged “new” (Misses > CRs) in the same time window as the FN400, but with a posterior distribution. Finally, a centrally distributed masked priming effect was visible between 150 and 250 msec and continued into the 300–500 msec time window, where it was topographically dissociable from the FN400. These results suggest that multiple neural signals are associated with repetition and potentially contribute to recognition memory.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina Saavedra ◽  
Rodrigo Salas ◽  
Laurent Bougrain

Based on similarity measures in the wavelet domain under a multichannel EEG setting, two new methods are developed for single-trial event-related potential (ERP) detection. The first method, named “multichannel EEG thresholding by similarity” (METS), simultaneously denoises all of the information recorded by the channels. The second approach, named “semblance-based ERP window selection” (SEWS), presents two versions to automatically localize the ERP in time for each subject to reduce the time window to be analysed by removing useless features. We empirically show that when these methods are used independently, they are suitable for ERP denoising and feature extraction. Meanwhile, the combination of both methods obtains better results compared to using them independently. The denoising algorithm was compared with classic thresholding methods based on wavelets and was found to obtain better results, which shows its suitability for ERP processing. The combination of the two algorithms for denoising the signals and selecting the time window has been compared to xDAWN, which is an efficient algorithm to enhance ERPs. We conclude that our wavelet-based semblance method performs better than xDAWN for single-trial detection in the presence of artifacts or noise.


2017 ◽  
Vol 74 (7) ◽  
pp. 1101-1110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaclyn H Ford ◽  
Elizabeth A Kensinger

Abstract Objectives Although research has identified age-by-emotion interactions in memory performance and in neural recruitment during retrieval, it remains unclear which retrieval processes are affected. The temporal resolution of event-related potentials (ERPs) provides a way to examine different component processes that operate during retrieval. Methods In the present study, younger and older adults encoded neutral and emotional images paired with neutral titles. ERPs were assessed during a recognition memory task in which participants viewed neutral titles and indicated whether each had been presented during encoding. Results An age-related posterior-to-anterior shift began in a time window typically associated with recollection-related processes (500–800 ms) while an age-by-emotion interaction occurred only during a later measurement window (800–1,200 ms). Discussion These findings suggest an effect of age on mechanisms supporting retrieval of episodic content, prior to post-retrieval processing. The potential relations to different types of detail retrieval are discussed. Further, the later age-by-emotion interactions suggest that age influences the effect of emotion on post-retrieval processes, specifically.


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (7) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Li Jin ◽  
Xu Li ◽  
Jiamei Lu ◽  
Nianqu Chen ◽  
Lin Cheng ◽  
...  

We investigated emotional conflict in an educational context with an emotional body–word Stroop paradigm, examining whether the N450 (a late fronto-central phasic negative event-related potential signature) and slow potential (SP) effects could be evoked in trainee teachers. The N450 effect is characterized by topography and negative polarity of an incongruent minus congruent difference potential, and the SP effect has positive polarity (incongruent minus congruent difference potential). Positive and negative body language examples were obtained from pupils in an actual school context, and emotional words were selected. Compound stimuli were presented, each comprising a congruent or incongruent word displayed across a body image. Event-related potentials were recorded while participants judged body expression valence. Reaction times were longer and accuracies were lower for the incongruent compared to the congruent condition. The N450 component amplitude in the incongruent condition was more negative than in the congruent condition. Results showed a behavioral interference effect and an N450 effect for trainee teachers in this context, thus indicating that the body–word task was efficient in assessing emotional conflict in an educational context, and trainee teachers' perception of body expressions of students could be influenced by emotional signals. The findings further the understanding of emotional conflict in an educational context.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 835
Author(s):  
Alexander Rokos ◽  
Richard Mah ◽  
Rober Boshra ◽  
Amabilis Harrison ◽  
Tsee Leng Choy ◽  
...  

A consistent limitation when designing event-related potential paradigms and interpreting results is a lack of consideration of the multivariate factors that affect their elicitation and detection in behaviorally unresponsive individuals. This paper provides a retrospective commentary on three factors that influence the presence and morphology of long-latency event-related potentials—the P3b and N400. We analyze event-related potentials derived from electroencephalographic (EEG) data collected from small groups of healthy youth and healthy elderly to illustrate the effect of paradigm strength and subject age; we analyze ERPs collected from an individual with severe traumatic brain injury to illustrate the effect of stimulus presentation speed. Based on these critical factors, we support that: (1) the strongest paradigms should be used to elicit event-related potentials in unresponsive populations; (2) interpretation of event-related potential results should account for participant age; and (3) speed of stimulus presentation should be slower in unresponsive individuals. The application of these practices when eliciting and recording event-related potentials in unresponsive individuals will help to minimize result interpretation ambiguity, increase confidence in conclusions, and advance the understanding of the relationship between long-latency event-related potentials and states of consciousness.


Sexual Abuse ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 107906322110242
Author(s):  
Anastasios Ziogas ◽  
Benedikt Habermeyer ◽  
Wolfram Kawohl ◽  
Elmar Habermeyer ◽  
Andreas Mokros

A promising line of research on forensic assessment of paraphilic sexual interest focuses on behavioral measures of visual attention using sexual stimuli as distractors. The present study combined event-related potentials (ERPs) with behavioral measures to investigate whether detection of a hidden sexual preference can be improved with ERPs. Normal variants of sexual orientation were used for a proof-of-concept investigation. Accordingly, 40 heterosexual and 40 gay men participated in the study. Within each group, half of the participants were instructed to hide their sexual orientation. The results showed that a match between sexual orientation and stimulus delays responses and influences ERP before motor responses. Late ERP components showed higher potential in differentiating hidden sexual preferences than motor responses, thereby showing how ERPs can be used in combination with reaction time measures to potentially facilitate the detection of hidden sexual preferences.


Author(s):  
Luodi Yu ◽  
Jiajing Zeng ◽  
Suiping Wang ◽  
Yang Zhang

Purpose This study aimed to examine whether abstract knowledge of word-level linguistic prosody is independent of or integrated with phonetic knowledge. Method Event-related potential (ERP) responses were measured from 18 adult listeners while they listened to native and nonnative word-level prosody in speech and in nonspeech. The prosodic phonology (speech) conditions included disyllabic pseudowords spoken in Chinese and in English matched for syllabic structure, duration, and intensity. The prosodic acoustic (nonspeech) conditions were hummed versions of the speech stimuli, which eliminated the phonetic content while preserving the acoustic prosodic features. Results We observed language-specific effects on the ERP that native stimuli elicited larger late negative response (LNR) amplitude than nonnative stimuli in the prosodic phonology conditions. However, no such effect was observed in the phoneme-free prosodic acoustic control conditions. Conclusions The results support the integration view that word-level linguistic prosody likely relies on the phonetic content where the acoustic cues embedded in. It remains to be examined whether the LNR may serve as a neural signature for language-specific processing of prosodic phonology beyond auditory processing of the critical acoustic cues at the suprasyllabic level.


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