scholarly journals The electrophysiological underpinnings of processing gender stereotypes in language

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Siyanova ◽  
F Pesciarelli ◽  
C Cacciari
Keyword(s):  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Brain Response ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Female Stereotypes ◽  
Third Person ◽  
On Line ◽  
The Brain

Despite the widely documented influence of gender stereotypes on social behaviour, little is known about the electrophysiological substrates engaged in the processing of such information when conveyed by language. Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we examined the brain response to third-person pronouns (lei "she" and lui "he") that were implicitly primed by definitional (passeggeraFEM "passenger", pensionatoMASC "pensioner"), or stereotypical antecedents (insegnante "teacher", conducente "driver"). An N400-like effect on the pronoun emerged when it was preceded by a definitionally incongruent prime (passeggeraFEM - lui; pensionatoMASC - lei), and a stereotypically incongruent prime for masculine pronouns only (insegnante - lui). In addition, a P300-like effect was found when the pronoun was preceded by definitionally incongruent primes. However, this effect was observed for female, but not male participants. Overall, these results provide further evidence for on-line effects of stereotypical gender in language comprehension. Importantly, our results also suggest a gender stereotype asymmetry in that male and female stereotypes affected the processing of pronouns differently. © 2012 Siyanova-Chanturia et al.

scholarly journals The electrophysiological underpinnings of processing gender stereotypes in language

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Siyanova ◽  
F Pesciarelli ◽  
C Cacciari
Keyword(s):  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Brain Response ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Female Stereotypes ◽  
Third Person ◽  
On Line ◽  
The Brain

Despite the widely documented influence of gender stereotypes on social behaviour, little is known about the electrophysiological substrates engaged in the processing of such information when conveyed by language. Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we examined the brain response to third-person pronouns (lei "she" and lui "he") that were implicitly primed by definitional (passeggeraFEM "passenger", pensionatoMASC "pensioner"), or stereotypical antecedents (insegnante "teacher", conducente "driver"). An N400-like effect on the pronoun emerged when it was preceded by a definitionally incongruent prime (passeggeraFEM - lui; pensionatoMASC - lei), and a stereotypically incongruent prime for masculine pronouns only (insegnante - lui). In addition, a P300-like effect was found when the pronoun was preceded by definitionally incongruent primes. However, this effect was observed for female, but not male participants. Overall, these results provide further evidence for on-line effects of stereotypical gender in language comprehension. Importantly, our results also suggest a gender stereotype asymmetry in that male and female stereotypes affected the processing of pronouns differently. © 2012 Siyanova-Chanturia et al.

scholarly journals Children Processing Music: Electric Brain Responses Reveal Musical Competence and Gender Differences

2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 683-693 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Koelsch ◽  
Tobias Grossmann ◽  
Thomas C. Gunter ◽  
Anja Hahne ◽  
Erich Schröger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Cognitive Representation ◽  
Brain Response ◽  
Tonal Music ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Music And Language ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Process Music ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Brain

Numerous studies investigated physiological correlates of the processing of musical information in adults. How these correlates develop during childhood is poorly understood. In the present study, we measured event-related electric brain potentials elicited in 5and 9-year-old children while they listened to (major–minor tonal) music. Stimuli were chord sequences, infrequently containing harmonically inappropriate chords. Our results demonstrate that the degree of (in) appropriateness of the chords modified the brain responses in both groups according to music-theoretical principles. This suggests that already 5-year-old children process music according to a well-established cognitive representation of the major–minor tonal system and according to music-syntactic regularities. Moreover, we show that, in contrast to adults, an early negative brain response was left predominant in boys, whereas it was bilateral in girls, indicating a gender difference in children processing music, and revealing that children process music with a hemispheric weighting different from that of adults. Because children process, in contrast to adults, music in the same hemispheres as they process language, results indicate that children process music and language more similarly than adults. This finding might support the notion of a common origin of music and language in the human brain, and concurs with findings that demonstrate the importance of musical features of speech for the acquisition of language.

scholarly journals The Interaction of Morphological Gender With Stereotypical Information: An Eye Tracking Study on Gender Inferences

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 111
Author(s):  
Daniela Ronca ◽  
Vincenzo Moscati
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Mental Model ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Gender Biases ◽  
On Line ◽  
Competing Models

In this paper we observe the time-course and the activation of gender stereotypes comparing the predictions of two competing models: the Minimalist (McKoon et al., 1992) and the Mental Model Hypothesis (Garnham 2001). The on-line processing of sentences containing male-biased stereotypes is experimentally investigated in Italian on epicenes nouns (i.e. nouns that do not morphologically disambiguate between male and female referents) adopting a procedure based on the Visual World paradigm.Eye-movements during sentence comprehension show that stereotypes become immediately active as soon as male-biased role nouns are encountered, as predicted by the Mental Model Hypothesis. Our results also show that when disambiguating cues based on morphological agreement are provided, the activation of stereotypes is blocked. This indicates that morphological gender is quickly processed and that it can suppress stereotypical gender biases.

scholarly journals Eye-tracking and ERPs in multi-word expression research: A state-of-the-art review of the method and findings

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Siyanova
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
Word Level ◽  
On Line ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Linguistic Phenomenon

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the mechanisms that underlie on-line processing (comprehension and production) of units above the word level, known as multi-word expressions (MWEs). MWEs are a heterogeneous family of expressions that vary greatly in their linguistic properties but are perceived as highly conventional by native speakers. Extensive behavioural research has demonstrated that, due to their frequency and predictability, MWEs are processed differently from novel strings of language. At the very least, MWEs have been shown to be processed faster than matched control phrases. However, behavioural measures are limited in what they can tell us about MWE processing in the brain above and beyond the speed of processing. The present paper argues in favour of two powerful psycho-and neurolinguistic techniques-eye-tracking and event-related brain potentials (ERPs)-and presents a case for why these techniques are particularly suited for the investigation of phrasal frequency and predictive linguistic mechanisms. A number of studies that have drawn on these methods in their exploration of MWEs are reviewed, with a particular emphasis on the unique role of the method and its ability to tap into the underlying mechanisms implicated in MWE processing. It is argued that the two techniques complement, rather than duplicate each other, providing an ever richer account of the (psycho)linguistic phenomenon that MWEs are. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.

scholarly journals Electrophysiological Signatures of Visual Lexical Processing: Open-and Closed-Class Words

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin M. Brown ◽  
Peter Hagoort ◽  
Mariken ter Keurs
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Word Length ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Closed Class ◽  
Categorical Information ◽  
On Line ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Class Distinction

n This paper presents evidence of the disputed existence of an electrophysiological marker for the lexical-categorical distinction between open-and closed-class words. Event-related brain potentials were recorded from the scalp while subjects read a story. Separate waveforms were computed for open-and closed-class words. Two aspects of the waveforms could be reliably related to vocabulary class. The first was an early negativity in the 230-to 350-msec epoch, with a bilateral anterior predominance. This negativity was elicited by open-and closed-class words alike, was not affected by word frequency or word length, and had an earlier peak latency for closed-class words. The second was a frontal slow negative shift in the 350-to 500-msec epoch, largest over the left side of the scalp. This late negativity was only elicited by closed-class words. Although the early negativity cannot serve as a qualitative marker of the open-and closed-class distinction, it does reflect the earliest electrophysiological manifestation of the availability of categorical information from the mental lexicon. These results suggest that the brain honors the distinction between open-and closed-class words, in relation to the different roles that they play in on-line sentence processing.

On the Language Specificity of the Brain Response to Syntactic Anomalies: Is the Syntactic Positive Shift a Member of the P300 Family?

1996 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 507-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Osterhout ◽  
Richard McKinnon ◽  
Michael Bersick ◽  
Vicka Corey
Keyword(s):  
Brain Response ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Positive Shift ◽  
Scalp Distribution ◽  
Temporal Course ◽  
Grammatical Rule ◽  
Subject Noun ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Brain ◽  
And Task

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 13 scalp electrodes while subjects read sentences, some of which contained either a verb that disagreed in number with the subject noun (syntactic anomaly) or a word in uppercase letters (physical anomaly). Uppercase words elicited the P300 complex of positivities, whereas agreement violations elicited a late positive shift with an onset around 500 msec and a duration of several hundred msec. These effects differed in their morphology, temporal course, amplitude, and scalp distribution. Furthermore, manipulations of the probability-of-occurrence and task relevance of the anomalies had robust effects on the response to uppercase words, but not on the response to agreement violations. Finally, these anomalies had additive effects when agreement-violating uppercase (doubly anomalous) words were presented. These results are taken to be an initial indication that the positive shift elicited by agreement violations is distinct from the P300 response to unexpected, task-relevant anomalies that do not involve the violation of a grammatical rule.

scholarly journals ReSync: Correcting the trial-to-trial asynchrony of event-related brain potentials to improve neural response representation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guang Ouyang
Keyword(s):  
Brain Research ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Eeg Signals ◽  
Brain Response ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Simple Method ◽  
Timing Errors ◽  
Latency Jitter ◽  
Technical Details ◽  
The Brain

For various reasons, the brain response activities in EEG signals are not perfectly synchronized from trial to trial with respect to event markers – a problem commonly referred to as ERP latency jitter. EEG experimental technologies have been greatly advanced to reduce technical timing errors so as to reduce the jitter. However, there are intrinsic sources of jitter that are difficult, if not impossible, to remove. The problem becomes more complicated when facing multiple sub-components with different jitter. The jitter issue renders trial-averaged ERP inaccurate at best and misleading at worst. Effectively correcting the jitter has profound significance in brain research. I present a simple method and easy-to-use toolbox ReSync for correcting ERP jitters based on signal processing theories and techniques. ReSync can be used to correct multiple overlapping ERP sub-components with different degrees of jitter without affecting each other (including the static one). The theories, principles, technical details, and limitations of ReSync were presented in this paper, along with a series of simulation and real data examples for evaluating and validating the method.

scholarly journals Gender stereotypes across the ages: On-line processing in school-age children, young and older adults

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Siyanova ◽  
Paul Warren ◽  
F Pesciarelli ◽  
C Cacciari
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Social Care ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Real Time Processing ◽  
Kinship Term ◽  
On Line ◽  
Care Worker

© 2015 Siyanova-Chanturia, Warren, Pesciarelli and Cacciari. Most research to date on implicit gender stereotyping has been conducted with one age group - young adults. The mechanisms that underlie the on-line processing of stereotypical information in other age groups have received very little attention. This is the first study to investigate real time processing of gender stereotypes at different age levels. We investigated the activation of gender stereotypes in Italian in four groups of participants: third- and fifth-graders, young and older adults. Participants heard a noun that was stereotypically associated with masculine (preside "headmaster") or feminine roles (badante "social care worker"), followed by a male (padre "father") or female kinship term (madre "mother"). The task was to decide if the two words - the role noun and the kinship term - could describe the same person. Across all age groups, participants were significantly faster to respond, and significantly more likely to press 'yes,' when the gender of the target was congruent with the stereotypical gender use of the preceding prime. These findings suggest that information about the stereotypical gender associated with a role noun is incorporated into the mental representation of this word and is activated as soon as the word is heard. In addition, our results show differences between male and female participants of the various age groups, and between male- and female-oriented stereotypes, pointing to important gender asymmetries.

scholarly journals Gender stereotypes across the ages: On-line processing in school-age children, young and older adults

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Siyanova ◽  
Paul Warren ◽  
F Pesciarelli ◽  
C Cacciari
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Social Care ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Real Time Processing ◽  
Kinship Term ◽  
On Line ◽  
Care Worker

© 2015 Siyanova-Chanturia, Warren, Pesciarelli and Cacciari. Most research to date on implicit gender stereotyping has been conducted with one age group - young adults. The mechanisms that underlie the on-line processing of stereotypical information in other age groups have received very little attention. This is the first study to investigate real time processing of gender stereotypes at different age levels. We investigated the activation of gender stereotypes in Italian in four groups of participants: third- and fifth-graders, young and older adults. Participants heard a noun that was stereotypically associated with masculine (preside "headmaster") or feminine roles (badante "social care worker"), followed by a male (padre "father") or female kinship term (madre "mother"). The task was to decide if the two words - the role noun and the kinship term - could describe the same person. Across all age groups, participants were significantly faster to respond, and significantly more likely to press 'yes,' when the gender of the target was congruent with the stereotypical gender use of the preceding prime. These findings suggest that information about the stereotypical gender associated with a role noun is incorporated into the mental representation of this word and is activated as soon as the word is heard. In addition, our results show differences between male and female participants of the various age groups, and between male- and female-oriented stereotypes, pointing to important gender asymmetries.

scholarly journals Eye-tracking and ERPs in multi-word expression research: A state-of-the-art review of the method and findings

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Siyanova
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
Word Level ◽  
On Line ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Linguistic Phenomenon

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the mechanisms that underlie on-line processing (comprehension and production) of units above the word level, known as multi-word expressions (MWEs). MWEs are a heterogeneous family of expressions that vary greatly in their linguistic properties but are perceived as highly conventional by native speakers. Extensive behavioural research has demonstrated that, due to their frequency and predictability, MWEs are processed differently from novel strings of language. At the very least, MWEs have been shown to be processed faster than matched control phrases. However, behavioural measures are limited in what they can tell us about MWE processing in the brain above and beyond the speed of processing. The present paper argues in favour of two powerful psycho-and neurolinguistic techniques-eye-tracking and event-related brain potentials (ERPs)-and presents a case for why these techniques are particularly suited for the investigation of phrasal frequency and predictive linguistic mechanisms. A number of studies that have drawn on these methods in their exploration of MWEs are reviewed, with a particular emphasis on the unique role of the method and its ability to tap into the underlying mechanisms implicated in MWE processing. It is argued that the two techniques complement, rather than duplicate each other, providing an ever richer account of the (psycho)linguistic phenomenon that MWEs are. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document