scholarly journals Multisensory Input Modulates P200 and L2 Sentence Comprehension: A One-Week Consolidation Phase

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nasim Boustani ◽  
Reza Pishghadam ◽  
Shaghayegh Shayesteh
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Consolidation Phase ◽  
N400 Component ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
Multisensory Input ◽  
P200 Amplitude

Multisensory input is an aid to language comprehension; however, it remains to be seen to what extent various combinations of senses may affect the P200 component and attention-related cognitive processing associated with L2 sentence comprehension along with the N400 as a later component. To this aim, we provided some multisensory input (enriched with data from three (i.e., exvolvement) and five senses (i.e., involvement)) for a list of unfamiliar words to 18 subjects. Subsequently, the words were embedded in an acceptability judgment task with 360 pragmatically correct and incorrect sentences. The task, along with the ERP recording, was conducted after a 1-week consolidation period to track any possible behavioral and electrophysiological distinctions in the retrieval of information with various sense combinations. According to the behavioral results, we found that the combination of five senses leads to more accurate and quicker responses. Based on the electrophysiological results, the combination of five senses induced a larger P200 amplitude compared to the three-sense combination. The implication is that as the sensory weight of the input increases, vocabulary retrieval is facilitated and more attention is directed to the overall comprehension of L2 sentences which leads to more accurate and quicker responses. This finding was not, however, reflected in the neural activity of the N400 component.

scholarly journals Neural evidence for the prediction of animacy features during language comprehension: Evidence from MEG and EEG Representational Similarity Analysis

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lin Wang ◽  
Edward Wlotko ◽  
Edward Alexander ◽  
Lotte Schoot ◽  
Minjae Kim ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Patterns ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Coarse Grained ◽  
Similarity Analysis ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Representational Similarity Analysis

AbstractIt has been proposed that people can generate probabilistic predictions at multiple levels of representation during language comprehension. We used Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and Electroencephalography (EEG), in combination with Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA), to seek neural evidence for the prediction of animacy features. In two studies, MEG and EEG activity was measured as human participants (both sexes) read three-sentence scenarios. Verbs in the final sentences constrained for either animate or inanimate semantic features of upcoming nouns, and the broader discourse context constrained for either a specific noun or for multiple nouns belonging to the same animacy category. We quantified the similarity between spatial patterns of brain activity following the verbs until just before the presentation of the nouns. The MEG and EEG datasets revealed converging evidence that the similarity between spatial patterns of neural activity following animate constraining verbs was greater than following inanimate constraining verbs. This effect could not be explained by lexical-semantic processing of the verbs themselves. We therefore suggest that it reflected the inherent difference in the semantic similarity structure of the predicted animate and inanimate nouns. Moreover, the effect was present regardless of whether a specific word could be predicted, providing strong evidence for the prediction of coarse-grained semantic features that goes beyond the prediction of individual words.Significance statementLanguage inputs unfold very quickly during real-time communication. By predicting ahead we can give our brains a “head-start”, so that language comprehension is faster and more efficient. While most contexts do not constrain strongly for a specific word, they do allow us to predict some upcoming information. For example, following the context, “they cautioned the…”, we can predict that the next word will be animate rather than inanimate (we can caution a person, but not an object). Here we used EEG and MEG techniques to show that the brain is able to use these contextual constraints to predict the animacy of upcoming words during sentence comprehension, and that these predictions are associated with specific spatial patterns of neural activity.

scholarly journals A new argument for co-active parses during language comprehension

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Dillon ◽  
Caroline Andrews ◽  
Caren M. Rotello ◽  
Matthew Wagers
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Ambiguity Advantage ◽  
Linguistic Input ◽  
Acceptability Judgments ◽  
Human Sentence Processing ◽  
Processing Mechanism

One perennially important question for theories of sentence comprehension is whether the human sentence processing mechanism is parallel (i.e. it simultaneously represents multiple syntactic analyses of linguistic input) or serial (i.e. it constructs only a single analysis at a time). Despite its centrality, this question has proven difficult to address for both theoretical and methodological reasons (Gibson & Pearlmutter, 2000; Lewis, 2000). In the present study, we reassess this question from a novel perspective. We investigated the well-known ambiguity advantage effect (Traxler, Pickering & Clifton, 1998) in a speeded acceptability judgment task. We adopted a Signal Detection Theoretic approach to these data, with the goal of determining whether speeded judgment responses were conditioned on one or multiple syntactic analyses. To link these results to incremental parsing models, we developed formal models to quantitatively evaluate how serial and parallel parsing models should impact perceived sentence acceptability in our task. Our results suggest that speeded acceptability judgments are jointly conditioned on multiple parses of the input, a finding that is overall more consistent with parallel parsing models than serial models. Our study thus provides a new, psychophysical argument for co-active parses during language comprehension.

scholarly journals Auditory Language Comprehension in Children with Developmental Dyslexia: Evidence from Event-related Brain Potentials

2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (10) ◽  
pp. 1676-1695 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Sabisch ◽  
A. Hahne ◽  
E. Glass ◽  
W. von Suchodoletz ◽  
A. D. Friederici
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Dyslexia ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Semantic Integration ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
N400 Component ◽  
Anterior Negativity ◽  
Bilateral Distribution ◽  
Underlying Processes

In the present study, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were used to compare auditory sentence comprehension in 16 children with developmental dyslexia (age 9–12 years) and unimpaired controls matched on age, sex, and nonverbal intelligence. Passive sentences were presented, which were either correct or contained a syntactic violation (phrase structure) or a semantic violation (selectional restriction). In an overall sentence correctness judgment task, both control and dyslexic children performed well. In the ERPs, control children and dyslexic children demonstrated a similar N400 component for the semantic violation. For the syntactic violation, control children demonstrated a combined pattern, consisting of an early starting bilaterally distributed anterior negativity and a late centro-parietal positivity (P600). Dyslexic children showed a different pattern that is characterized by a delayed left lateralized anterior negativity, followed by a P600. These data indicate that dyslexic children do not differ from unimpaired controls with respect to semantic integration processes (N400) or controlled processes of syntactic reanalyses (P600) during auditory sentence comprehension. However, early and presumably highly automatic processes of phrase structure building reflected in the anterior negativity are delayed in dyslexic children. Moreover, the differences in hemispheric distribution of the syntactic negativity indicate different underlying processes in dyslexic children and controls. The bilateral distribution in controls suggests an involvement of right hemispherically established prosodic processes in addition to the left hemispherically localized syntactic processes, supporting the view that prosodic information may be used to facilitate syntactic processing during normal comprehension. The left hemispheric distribution observed for dyslexic children, in contrast, suggests that these children do not rely on information about the prosodic contour during auditory sentence comprehension as much as controls do. This finding points toward a phonological impairment in dyslexic children that might hamper the development of syntactic processes.

The Opposition of Surprisal and Semantic Similarity in the Prediction of Language Processing: Evidence from Eye-tracking Data

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kun Sun
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Semantic Similarity ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Reading Time ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Tracking Data ◽  
Dynamic Approach

Expectations or predictions about upcoming content play an important role during language comprehension and processing. One important aspect of recent studies of language comprehension and processing concerns the estimation of the upcoming words in a sentence or discourse. Many studies have used eye-tracking data to explore computational and cognitive models for contextual word predictions and word processing. Eye-tracking data has previously been widely explored with a view to investigating the factors that influence word prediction. However, these studies are problematic on several levels, including the stimuli, corpora, statistical tools they applied. Although various computational models have been proposed for simulating contextual word predictions, past studies usually preferred to use a single computational model. The disadvantage of this is that it often cannot give an adequate account of cognitive processing in language comprehension. To avoid these problems, this study draws upon a massive natural and coherent discourse as stimuli in collecting the data on reading time. This study trains two state-of-art computational models (surprisal and semantic (dis)similarity from word vectors by linear discriminative learning (LDL)), measuring knowledge of both the syntagmatic and paradigmatic structure of language. We develop a `dynamic approach' to compute semantic (dis)similarity. It is the first time that these two computational models have been merged. Models are evaluated using advanced statistical methods. Meanwhile, in order to test the efficiency of our approach, one recently developed cosine method of computing semantic (dis)similarity based on word vectors data adopted is used to compare with our `dynamic' approach. The two computational and fixed-effect statistical models can be used to cross-verify the findings, thus ensuring that the result is reliable. All results support that surprisal and semantic similarity are opposed in the prediction of the reading time of words although both can make good predictions. Additionally, our `dynamic' approach performs better than the popular cosine method. The findings of this study are therefore of significance with regard to acquiring a better understanding how humans process words in a real-world context and how they make predictions in language cognition and processing.

scholarly journals Reward-Related Suppression of Neural Activity in Macaque Visual Area V4

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (9) ◽  
pp. 4871-4881 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharine A Shapcott ◽  
Joscha T Schmiedt ◽  
Kleopatra Kouroupaki ◽  
Ricardo Kienitz ◽  
Andreea Lazar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Neural Activity ◽  
Correct Choice ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Visual Area ◽  
Perceptual Judgment ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Area V4 ◽  
Differential Reward ◽  
Visual Area V4 ◽  
The Brain

Abstract In order for organisms to survive, they need to detect rewarding stimuli, for example, food or a mate, in a complex environment with many competing stimuli. These rewarding stimuli should be detected even if they are nonsalient or irrelevant to the current goal. The value-driven theory of attentional selection proposes that this detection takes place through reward-associated stimuli automatically engaging attentional mechanisms. But how this is achieved in the brain is not very well understood. Here, we investigate the effect of differential reward on the multiunit activity in visual area V4 of monkeys performing a perceptual judgment task. Surprisingly, instead of finding reward-related increases in neural responses to the perceptual target, we observed a large suppression at the onset of the reward indicating cues. Therefore, while previous research showed that reward increases neural activity, here we report a decrease. More suppression was caused by cues associated with higher reward than with lower reward, although neither cue was informative about the perceptually correct choice. This finding of reward-associated neural suppression further highlights normalization as a general cortical mechanism and is consistent with predictions of the value-driven attention theory.

Language and the Aging Brain: Patterns of Neural Compensation Revealed by Functional Brain Imaging

2006 ◽  
Vol 96 (6) ◽  
pp. 2830-2839 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Wingfield ◽  
Murray Grossman
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Functional Brain Imaging ◽  
Sensory Function ◽  
Component Model ◽  
Aging Brain ◽  
Two Component ◽  
General Slowing

Human aging brings with it declines in sensory function, both in vision and in hearing, as well as a general slowing in a variety of perceptual and cognitive operations. Yet in spite of these declines, language comprehension typically remains well preserved in normal aging. We review data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to describe a two-component model of sentence comprehension: a core sentence-processing area located in the perisylvian region of the left cerebral hemisphere and an associated network of brain regions that support the working memory and other resources needed for comprehension of long or syntactically complex sentences. We use this two-component model to describe the nature of compensatory recruitment of novel brain regions observed when healthy older adults show the same success at comprehending sentences as their younger adult counterparts. We suggest that this plasticity in neural recruitment contributes to the stability of language comprehension in the aging brain.

The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Text Comprehension ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
First Language ◽  
Grammatical Encoding ◽  
Current State

This handbook reviews the current state of the art in the field of psycholinguistics. Part I deals with language comprehension at the sublexical, lexical, and sentence and discourse levels. It explores concepts of speech representation and the search for universal speech segmentation mechanisms against a background of linguistic diversity and compares first language with second language segmentation. It also discusses visual word recognition, lexico-semantics, the different forms of lexical ambiguity, sentence comprehension, text comprehension, and language in deaf populations. Part II focuses on language production, with chapters covering topics such as word production and related processes based on evidence from aphasia, the major debates surrounding grammatical encoding. Part III considers various aspects of interaction and communication, including the role of gesture in language processing, approaches to the study of perspective-taking, and the interrelationships between language comprehension, emotion, and sociality. Part IV is concerned with language development and evolution, focusing on topics ranging from the development of prosodic phonology, the neurobiology of artificial grammar learning, and developmental dyslexia. The book concludes with Part V, which looks at methodological advances in psycholinguistic research, such as the use of intracranial electrophysiology in the area of language processing.

scholarly journals Dynamics of Parietal Neural Activity during Spatial Cognitive Processing

Neuron ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (6) ◽  
pp. 885-891 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Crowe ◽  
Bruno B. Averbeck ◽  
Matthew V. Chafee ◽  
Apostolos P. Georgopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Neural Activity
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document