scholarly journals Processing Aspectual Agreement in an Inflexionless Language: An ERP Study of Mandarin Chinese

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 1236
Author(s):  
Yuxin Hao ◽  
Xun Duan ◽  
Lu Zhang

This is a study of the collocation of Chinese verbs with different lexical aspects and aspect markers. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we explored the processing of aspect violation sentences. In the experiment, we combined verbs of various lexical aspect types with the progressive aspect marker zhe, and the combination of the achievement verbs and the progressive aspect marker zhe constituted the sentence’s aspect violation. The participants needed to judge whether a sentence was correct after it was presented. Finally, we observed and analyzed the components of ERPs. The results suggest that when the collocation of aspect markers and lexical aspect is ungrammatical, the N400-like and P600 are elicited on aspect markers, while the late AN is elicited by the word after the aspect marker. P600 and N400-like show that the collocation of Chinese verbs with various lexical aspects and aspect markers involve not only syntactic processing, but also the semantic processing; and the late AN may have been due to the syntax revision and the conclusion at the end of sentences.

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-59
Author(s):  
Laleh Esfandiari ◽  
◽  
Reza Nilipour ◽  
Parviz Maftoon ◽  
Vahid Nejati ◽  
...  

Background: The P600 brain wave reflects syntactic processes in response to different first language (L1) syntactic violations, syntactic repair, structural reanalysis, and specific semantic components. Unlike semantic processing, aspects of the second language (L2) syntactic processing differ from the L1, particularly at lower levels of proficiency. At higher L2 proficiency, syntactic violations are more likely to result in P600, similar to the L1 native speakers. Objectives: This study aims to assess the effect of proficiency on L2 syntactic processing in late bilinguals and determine whether L1-like cerebral activation patterns will result. Materials & Methods: In this descriptive quantitative research, the subjects were two groups of Persian-English bilinguals (L1=Persian, L2=English; n=10 high-proficient, n=10 low-proficient; gender=female who started learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) after the age of 15 through explicit instructions. Within the violation paradigm, Event-related Potentials (ERPs) were collected from the subjects in the neurocognitive lab of Shahid Beheshti University, Iran, in 2019- 20. The experimental trials of the ERP task included violated English regular past tense verbs. ERP components were compared with those of the L1 (components closer to P600). Results: The t-value for P600 peak latency differed significantly only for the Incorrect past tense verb (ICV) condition and only in O2 (P=0.039463, t=2.2205, CI: 0.003112- 0.11249, P<0.05) between the two groups (higher in the high proficient group). Conclusion: P600 for the high-proficient group demonstrated that L2 proficiency was a more determinant factor in L1-like cortical representation of L2 than the age of acquisition and or the type of context.


Author(s):  
Karen Emmorey

Recent neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies reveal how the reading system successfully adapts when phonological codes are relatively coarse-grained due to reduced auditory input during development. New evidence suggests that the optimal end-state for the reading system may differ for deaf versus hearing adults and indicates that certain neural patterns that are maladaptive for hearing readers may be beneficial for deaf readers. This chapter focuses on deaf adults who are signers and have achieved reading success. Although the left-hemisphere-dominant reading circuit is largely similar in both deaf and hearing individuals, skilled deaf readers exhibit a more bilateral neural response to written words and sentences than their hearing peers, as measured by event-related potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging. Skilled deaf readers may also rely more on neural regions involved in semantic processing than hearing readers do. Overall, emerging evidence indicates that the neural markers for reading skill may differ for deaf and hearing adults.


2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (8) ◽  
pp. 1135-1148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annett Schirmer ◽  
Sonja A. Kotz

The present study investigated the interaction of emotional prosody and word valence during emotional comprehension in men and women. In a prosody-word interference task, participants listened to positive, neutral, and negative words that were spoken with a happy, neutral, and angry prosody. Participants were asked to rate word valence while ignoring emotional prosody, or vice versa. Congruent stimuli were responded faster and more accurately as compared to incongruent emotional stimuli. This behavioral effect was more salient for the word valence task than for the prosodic task and was comparable between men and women. The event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed a smaller N400 amplitude for congruent as compared to emotionally incongruent stimuli. This ERP effect, however, was significant only for the word valence judgment and only for female listeners. The present data suggest that the word valence judgment was more difficult and more easily influenced by task-irrelevant emotional information than the prosodic task in both men and women. Furthermore, although emotional prosody and word valence may have a similar influence on an emotional judgment in both sexes, ERPs indicate sex differences in the underlying processing. Women, but not men, show an interaction between prosody and word valence during a semantic processing stage.


2002 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 228-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yael Henkin ◽  
Liat Kishon-Rabin ◽  
Natan Gadoth ◽  
Hillel Pratt

1990 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Risto Näätänen

AbstractThis article examines the role of attention and automaticity in auditory processing as revealed by event-related potential (ERP) research. An ERP component called the mismatch negativity, generated by the brain's automatic response to changes in repetitive auditory input, reveals that physical features of auditory stimuli are fully processed whether or not they are attended. It also suggests that there exist precise neuronal representations of the physical features of recent auditory stimuli, perhaps the traces underlying acoustic sensory (“echoic”) memory. A mechanism of passive attention switching in response to changes in repetitive input is also implicated.Conscious perception of discrete acoustic stimuli might be mediated by some of the mechanisms underlying another ERP component (NI), one sensitive to stimulus onset and offset. Frequent passive attentional shifts might accountforthe effect cognitive psychologists describe as “the breakthrough of the unattended” (Broadbent 1982), that is, that even unattended stimuli may be semantically processed, without assuming automatic semantic processing or late selection in selective attention.The processing negativity supports the early-selection theory and may arise from a mechanism for selectively attending to stimuli defined by certain features. This stimulus selection occurs in the form ofa matching process in which each input is compared with the “attentional trace,” a voluntarily maintained representation of the task-relevant features of the stimulus to be attended. The attentional mechanism described might underlie the stimulus-set mode of attention proposed by Broadbent. Finally, a model of automatic and attentional processing in audition is proposed that is based mainly on the aforementioned ERP components and some other physiological measures.


2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Angwin ◽  
Nadeeka N.W. Dissanayaka ◽  
Alison Moorcroft ◽  
Katie L. McMahon ◽  
Peter A. Silburn ◽  
...  

AbstractObjectives: Cognitive-linguistic impairments in Parkinson’s disease (PD) have been well documented; however, few studies have explored the neurophysiological underpinnings of semantic deficits in PD. This study investigated semantic function in PD using event-related potentials. Methods: Eighteen people with PD and 18 healthy controls performed a semantic judgement task on written word pairs that were either congruent or incongruent. Results: The mean amplitude of the N400 for new incongruent word pairs was similar for both groups, however the onset latency was delayed in the PD group. Further analysis of the data revealed that both groups demonstrated attenuation of the N400 for repeated incongruent trials, as well as attenuation of the P600 component for repeated congruent trials. Conclusions: The presence of N400 congruity and N400 repetition effects in the PD group suggests that semantic processing is generally intact, but with a slower time course as evidenced by the delayed N400. Additional research will be required to determine whether N400 and P600 repetition effects are sensitive to further cognitive decline in PD. (JINS, 2017, 23, 78–89)


Author(s):  
Guoying Lu ◽  
Guanhua Hou

Objective The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of semantic congruence and incongruence on sign identification by using event-related potentials (ERPs). Background Sign systems have crucial roles in public spaces and traffic facilities. Poorly designed signs can easily confuse pedestrians and drivers and reduce the efficiency of public activities and urban administration. Method Thirty-one participants completed a sign identification experiment independently in a laboratory setting. Experimental materials were selected from GB/T 10001, a Chinese national recommendation standard that is officially named Public Information Graphical Symbols for Use on Signs. All ERP data were processed using MATLAB 13b, and behavioral data were analyzed using Stata 14. Results N170, P200, N300, and N400 components were induced during semantic processing. Statistical analysis revealed that semantic congruence has a main effect on N300 in the frontal region and has a main effect on N400 at FZ in the frontal region, CPZ in the parietal-central region, and PZ in the parietal region. Amplitudes of N300 induced by picture–word matching were considerably different between the two experimental conditions at electrodes FZ and FCZ. Amplitudes of N400 were significantly larger in the incongruent condition than in the congruent condition. Conclusion The study demonstrated that N300 and N400 are promising indicators for measuring semantic congruence in future sign design. Application Our findings provide ERP indicators for measuring the semantic congruence of sign design, which can be easily applied to improve the efficiency of sign design and sign comprehension.


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