On-line Assessment of Statistical Learning by Event-related Potentials

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 952-964 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dilshat Abla ◽  
Kentaro Katahira ◽  
Kazuo Okanoya
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Learning ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Word Segmentation ◽  
Tone Sequence ◽  
Choice Test ◽  
N400 Effect ◽  
Learning Session ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Word Onset ◽  
On Line

We investigated the neural processes involved in on-line statistical learning and word segmentation. Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants were exposed to continuous, nonlinguistic auditory sequences, the elements of which were organized into “tritone words” that were sequenced in random order, with no silent spaces between them. After listening to three 6.6-min sessions of sequences, the participants performed a behavioral choice test, in which they were instructed to indicate the most familiar tone sequence in each test trial by pressing buttons. The participants were divided into three groups (high, middle, and low learners) based on their behavioral performance. The overall mean performance was 74.4%, indicating that the tone sequence was segmented and that the participants learned the tone words statistically. Grand-averaged ERPs showed that word onset (initial tone) elicited the largest N100 and N400 in the early learning session of high learners, but in middle learners, the word-onset effect was elicited in a later session, and there was no effect in low learners. The N400 amplitudes significantly differed between the three learning sessions in the high- and middle-learner groups. The results suggest that the N400 effect indicates not only on-line word segmentation but also the degree of statistical learning. This study provides insight into the neural mechanisms underlying on-line statistical learning processes.

scholarly journals Contextual Acquisition of Concrete and Abstract Words: Behavioural and Electrophysiological Evidence

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 898
Author(s):  
Nadezhda Mkrtychian ◽  
Daria Gnedykh ◽  
Evgeny Blagovechtchenski ◽  
Diana Tsvetova ◽  
Svetlana Kostromina ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Source Analysis ◽  
Learning Session ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Word Onset ◽  
Semantic Types ◽  
Abstract Words ◽  
Wernicke’S Area ◽  
And Control ◽  
Concrete Words

Abstract and concrete words differ in their cognitive and neuronal underpinnings, but the exact mechanisms underlying these distinctions are unclear. We investigated differences between these two semantic types by analysing brain responses to newly learnt words with fully controlled psycholinguistic properties. Experimental participants learned 20 novel abstract and concrete words in the context of short stories. After the learning session, event-related potentials (ERPs) to newly learned items were recorded, and acquisition outcomes were assessed behaviourally in a range of lexical and semantic tasks. Behavioural results showed better performance on newly learnt abstract words in lexical tasks, whereas semantic assessments showed a tendency for higher accuracy for concrete words. ERPs to novel abstract and concrete concepts differed early on, ~150 ms after the word onset. Moreover, differences between novel words and control untrained pseudowords were observed earlier for concrete (~150 ms) than for abstract (~200 ms) words. Distributed source analysis indicated bilateral temporo-parietal activation underpinning newly established memory traces, suggesting a crucial role of Wernicke’s area and its right-hemispheric homologue in word acquisition. In sum, we report behavioural and neurophysiological processing differences between concrete and abstract words evident immediately after their controlled acquisition, confirming distinct neurocognitive mechanisms underpinning these types of semantics.

Speech and Span: Working Memory Capacity Impacts the Use of Animacy but Not of World Knowledge during Spoken Sentence Comprehension

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (12) ◽  
pp. 2886-2898 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroko Nakano ◽  
Clifford Saron ◽  
Tamara Y. Swaab
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
N400 Effect ◽  
Thematic Relations ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
On Line

We present results from a study demonstrating that high- and low-span listeners show qualitatively different brain responses when comprehending simple active sentences. Participants listened to naturally produced sentences in three conditions in which the plausibility of thematic relations was manipulated, for instance: The dog(1)/The poet(2)/The box(3) is biting the mailman. Event-related potentials were recorded to the first noun, the verb, and the second noun in all three conditions. In (2), the thematic relations between the words in the sentence are less expected given our world knowledge, and this resulted in an N400 effect of semantic processing difficulty to the second noun for both high- and low-span subjects. In (3), the inanimate first noun cannot be the agent of the verb. Only high-span subjects showed an effect of animacy on the sentence-initial nouns, evident from a larger anterior negative shift to inanimate than animate nouns. Furthermore, to the thematically violated verbs (3), low-span subjects showed an N400, whereas high-span subjects generated a P600. We suggest that this P600 effect to the thematically violated verb may be related to processing costs resulting from a conflict between the provisional thematic roles assigned as a function of the inanimate sentence-initial noun, and the actual (animate) agent required by the verb. We further argue that low-span subjects lag behind those with high span in their use of animacy, but not real-world knowledge in the on-line computation of thematic roles in spoken language comprehension.

scholarly journals Frequency Sensitivity of Neural Responses to English Verb Argument Structure Violations

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jona Sassenhagen ◽  
Ryan Blything ◽  
Elena V. M. Lieven ◽  
Ben Ambridge
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Learning ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Online Processing ◽  
Verb Argument Structure ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Intransitive Verbs

How are verb-argument structure preferences acquired? Children typically receive very little negative evidence, raising the question of how they come to understand the restrictions on grammatical constructions. Statistical learning theories propose stochastic patterns in the input contain sufficient clues. For example, if a verb is very common, but never observed in transitive constructions, this would indicate that transitive usage of that verb is illegal. Ambridge et al. (2008) have shown that in offline grammaticality judgements of intransitive verbs used in transitive constructions, low-frequency verbs elicit higher acceptability ratings than high-frequency verbs, as predicted if relative frequency is a cue during statistical learning. Here, we investigate if the same pattern also emerges in on-line processing of English sentences. EEG was recorded while healthy adults listened to sentences featuring transitive uses of semantically matched verb pairs of differing frequencies. We replicate the finding of higher acceptabilities of transitive uses of low- vs. high-frequency intransitive verbs. Event-Related Potentials indicate a similar result: early electrophysiological signals distinguish between misuse of high- vs low-frequency verbs. This indicates online processing shows a similar sensitivity to frequency as off-line judgements, consistent with a parser that reflects an original acquisition of grammatical constructions via statistical cues. However, the nature of the observed neural responses was not of the expected, or an easily interpretable, form, motivating further work into neural correlates of online processing of syntactic constructions.

Event-related potentials suggest early interaction between syntax and semantics during on-line sentence comprehension

2005 ◽  
Vol 384 (3) ◽  
pp. 222-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Palolahti ◽  
Sakari Leino ◽  
Markus Jokela ◽  
Kreetta Kopra ◽  
Petri Paavilainen
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
On Line ◽  
Early Interaction

Brain Responses to World Knowledge Violations: A Comparison of Stimulus- and Fixation-triggered Event-related Potentials and Neural Oscillations

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 1017-1028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Metzner ◽  
Titus von der Malsburg ◽  
Shravan Vasishth ◽  
Frank Rösler
Keyword(s):  
Word Meaning ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Visual Presentation ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
N400 Effect ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Time Frequency ◽  
Gamma Range ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Related Potentials

Recent research has shown that brain potentials time-locked to fixations in natural reading can be similar to brain potentials recorded during rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). We attempted two replications of Hagoort, Hald, Bastiaansen, and Petersson [Hagoort, P., Hald, L., Bastiaansen, M., & Petersson, K. M. Integration of word meaning and world knowledge in language comprehension. Science, 304, 438–441, 2004] to determine whether this correspondence also holds for oscillatory brain responses. Hagoort et al. reported an N400 effect and synchronization in the theta and gamma range following world knowledge violations. Our first experiment (n = 32) used RSVP and replicated both the N400 effect in the ERPs and the power increase in the theta range in the time–frequency domain. In the second experiment (n = 49), participants read the same materials freely while their eye movements and their EEG were monitored. First fixation durations, gaze durations, and regression rates were increased, and the ERP showed an N400 effect. An analysis of time–frequency representations showed synchronization in the delta range (1–3 Hz) and desynchronization in the upper alpha range (11–13 Hz) but no theta or gamma effects. The results suggest that oscillatory EEG changes elicited by world knowledge violations are different in natural reading and RSVP. This may reflect differences in how representations are constructed and retrieved from memory in the two presentation modes.

Language context effects on interlingual homograph recognition: evidence from event-related potentials and response times in semantic priming

2001 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen R. A. de Bruijn ◽  
Ton Dijkstra ◽  
Dorothee J. Chwilla ◽  
Herbert J. Schriefers
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Priming ◽  
Context Effects ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Semantic Integration ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Priming Effects ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
On Line

Dutch–English bilinguals performed a generalized lexical decision task on triplets of items, responding with “yes” if all three items were correct Dutch and/or English words, and with “no” if one or more of the items was not a word in either language. Sometimes the second item in a triplet was an interlingual homograph whose English meaning was semantically related to the third item of the triplet (e.g., HOUSE – ANGEL – HEAVEN, where ANGEL means “sting” in Dutch). In such cases, the first item was either an exclusively English (HOUSE) or an exclusively Dutch (ZAAK) word. Semantic priming effects were found in on-line response times. Event-related potentials that were recorded simultaneously showed N400 priming effects thought to reflect semantic integration processes. The response time and N400 priming effects were not affected by the language of the first item in the triplets, providing evidence in support of a strong bottom-up role with respect to bilingual word recognition. The results are interpreted in terms of the Bilingual Interactive Activation model, a language nonselective access model assuming bottom-up priority.

scholarly journals Prosody–syntax interactions in aging: Event-related potentials reveal dissociations between on-line and off-line measures

2010 ◽  
Vol 472 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karsten Steinhauer ◽  
Shani H. Abada ◽  
Efrat Pauker ◽  
Inbal Itzhak ◽  
Shari R. Baum
Keyword(s):  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
On Line

scholarly journals Seeing and Hearing Meaning: ERP and fMRI Evidence of Word versus Picture Integration into a Sentence Context

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 1235-1249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roel M. Willems ◽  
Aslı Özyürek ◽  
Peter Hagoort
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Semantic Information ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Semantic Integration ◽  
Sentence Context ◽  
N400 Effect ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Pictures And Words

Understanding language always occurs within a situational context and, therefore, often implies combining streams of information from different domains and modalities. One such combination is that of spoken language and visual information, which are perceived together in a variety of ways during everyday communication. Here we investigate whether and how words and pictures differ in terms of their neural correlates when they are integrated into a previously built-up sentence context. This is assessed in two experiments looking at the time course (measuring event-related potentials, ERPs) and the locus (using functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI) of this integration process. We manipulated the ease of semantic integration of word and/or picture to a previous sentence context to increase the semantic load of processing. In the ERP study, an increased semantic load led to an N400 effect which was similar for pictures and words in terms of latency and amplitude. In the fMRI study, we found overlapping activations to both picture and word integration in the left inferior frontal cortex. Specific activations for the integration of a word were observed in the left superior temporal cortex. We conclude that despite obvious differences in representational format, semantic information coming from pictures and words is integrated into a sentence context in similar ways in the brain. This study adds to the growing insight that the language system incorporates (semantic) information coming from linguistic and extralinguistic domains with the same neural time course and by recruitment of overlapping brain areas.

scholarly journals No fruits without color: Cross-modal priming and EEG reveal different roles for different features across semantic categories

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. e0234219
Author(s):  
Georgette Argiris ◽  
Raffaella I. Rumiati ◽  
Davide Crepaldi
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Fruits And Vegetables ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Semantic Category ◽  
N400 Effect ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
Natural Entities ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Orientation Feature

Category-specific impairments witnessed in patients with semantic deficits have broadly dissociated into natural and artificial kinds. However, how the category of food (more specifically, fruits and vegetables) fits into this distinction has been difficult to interpret, given a pattern of deficit that has inconsistently mapped onto either kind, despite its intuitive membership to the natural domain. The present study explores the effects of a manipulation of a visual sensory (i.e., color) or functional (i.e., orientation) feature on the consequential semantic processing of fruits and vegetables (and tools, by comparison), first at the behavioral and then at the neural level. The categorization of natural (i.e., fruits/vegetables) and artificial (i.e., utensils) entities was investigated via cross–modal priming. Reaction time analysis indicated a reduction in priming for color-modified natural entities and orientation-modified artificial entities. Standard event-related potentials (ERP) analysis was performed, in addition to linear classification. For natural entities, a N400 effect at central channel sites was observed for the color-modified condition compared relative to normal and orientation conditions, with this difference confirmed by classification analysis. Conversely, there was no significant difference between conditions for the artificial category in either analysis. These findings provide strong evidence that color is an integral property to the categorization of fruits/vegetables, thus substantiating the claim that feature-based processing guides as a function of semantic category.

scholarly journals Characteristics of N400 component elicited in patients who have migraine with aura

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Igor Petrusic ◽  
Vojislav Jovanovic ◽  
Vanja Kovic ◽  
Andrej Savic
Keyword(s):  
Migraine With Aura ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
New Method ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
N400 Effect ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
N400 Component ◽  
The Difference

Abstract Background This study aimed to examine the N400 effect and event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited from congruent and incongruent stimuli in patients who have migraines with aura (MwA). Methods A total of 33 MwA patients and 20 healthy controls (HCs) were studied. They were balanced in age (35.12 ± 8.94 vs 34.70 ± 9.59 years, p = 0.872) and sex (69.7 vs 75.0% females, p = 0.761). ERPs were measured in response to both stimuli, where pictures were preceded with an object name that either matched or mismatched with the object. Averaged amplitudes, peaks, peak latencies, difference waves and topography were compared between MwA and HCs. Results MwA patients had significantly lower averaged amplitudes at the Fz and F4 sites during incongruent stimuli, as well as reduced peaks at the C3 and Pz sites. Topography showed a more widespread N400 effect over scalp relative to HCs. The difference ERP waveforms did not differ in the N400 effect between groups, but the P600 effect was significantly stronger in the HCs group relative to the MwA group at the Pz (6.52 ± 2.57 vs. 3.50 ± 3.15, p = 0.001) and P4 (5.86 ± 2.79 vs. 3.95 ± 3.64, p = 0.040) sites. Conclusions Picture-word matching tasks could serve as a potential new method for the investigation of semantic processing in MwA patients.

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