Arithmetic processing in children with dyscalculia: an event-related potential study

Introduction Dyscalculia is a specific learning disorder affecting the ability to learn certain math processes, such as arithmetic data recovery. The group of children with dyscalculia is very heterogeneous, in part due to variability in their working memory (WM) deficits. To assess the brain response to arithmetic data recovery, we applied an arithmetic verification task during an event-related potential (ERP) recording. Two effects have been reported: the N400 effect (higher negative amplitude for incongruent than for congruent condition), associated with arithmetic incongruency and caused by the arithmetic priming effect, and the LPC effect (higher positive amplitude for the incongruent compared to the congruent condition), associated with a reevaluation process and modulated by the plausibility of the presented condition. This study aimed to (a) compare arithmetic processing between children with dyscalculia and children with good academic performance (GAP) using ERPs during an addition verification task and (b) explore, among children with dyscalculia, the relationship between WM and ERP effects. Materials and Methods EEGs of 22 children with dyscalculia (DYS group) and 22 children with GAP (GAP group) were recorded during the performance of an addition verification task. ERPs synchronized with the probe stimulus were computed separately for the congruent and incongruent probes, and included only epochs with correct answers. Mixed 2-way ANOVAs for response times and correct answers were conducted. Comparisons between groups and correlation analyses using ERP amplitude data were carried out through multivariate nonparametric permutation tests. Results The GAP group obtained more correct answers than the DYS group. An arithmetic N400 effect was observed in the GAP group but not in the DYS group. Both groups displayed an LPC effect. The larger the LPC amplitude was, the higher the WM index. Two subgroups were found within the DYS group: one with an average WM index and the other with a lower than average WM index. These subgroups displayed different ERPs patterns. Discussion The results indicated that the group of children with dyscalculia was very heterogeneous and therefore failed to show a robust LPC effect. Some of these children had WM deficits. When WM deficits were considered together with dyscalculia, an atypical ERP pattern that reflected their processing difficulties emerged. Their lack of the arithmetic N400 effect suggested that the processing in this step was not useful enough to produce an answer; thus, it was necessary to reevaluate the arithmetic-calculation process (LPC) in order to deliver a correct answer. Conclusion Given that dyscalculia is a very heterogeneous deficit, studies examining dyscalculia should consider exploring deficits in WM because the whole group of children with dyscalculia seems to contain at least two subpopulations that differ in their calculation process.

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Neural dynamics of trainee teachers' emotional conflict processing: An event-related potential study

Social Behavior and Personality An International Journal ◽

10.2224/sbp.8473 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 47 (7) ◽

pp. 1-9

Author(s):

Li Jin ◽

Xu Li ◽

Jiamei Lu ◽

Nianqu Chen ◽

Lin Cheng ◽

...

Keyword(s):

School Context ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

The Body ◽

Educational Context ◽

Congruent Condition ◽

Slow Potential ◽

Emotional Conflict ◽

Trainee Teachers ◽

Related Potentials

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.

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EXPRESS: Selective adaptation in sentence comprehension: Evidence from event-related brain potentials

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology ◽

10.1177/1747021820984623 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 174702182098462

Author(s):

Masataka Yano ◽

Shugo Suwazono ◽

Hiroshi Arao ◽

Daichi Yasunaga ◽

Hiroaki Oishi

Keyword(s):

Language Processing ◽

Sentence Comprehension ◽

Processing System ◽

Selective Adaptation ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Equal Probability ◽

N400 Effect ◽

Mixed Effect ◽

Processing Cost ◽

Low Probability

The present study conducted two event-related potential experiments to investigate whether readers adapt their expectations to morphosyntactically (Experiment 1) or semantically (Experiment 2) anomalous sentences when they are repeatedly exposed to them. To address this issue, we manipulated the probability of morphosyntactically/semantically grammatical and anomalous sentence occurrence through experiments. For the low probability block, anomalous sentences were presented less frequently than grammatical sentences (with a ratio of 1 to 4), while they were presented as frequently as grammatical sentences in the equal probability block. Experiment 1 revealed a smaller P600 effect for morphosyntactic violations in the equal probability block than in the low probability block. Linear mixed-effect models were used to examine how the size of the P600 effect changed as the experiment went along. The results showed that the smaller P600 effect of the equal probability block resulted from an amplitude’s decline in morphosyntactically violated sentences over the course of the experiment, suggesting an adaptation to morphosyntactic violations. In Experiment 2, semantically anomalous sentences elicited a larger N400 effect than their semantically natural counterparts regardless of probability manipulation. No evidence was found in favor of adaptation to semantic violations in that the processing cost of semantic violations did not decrease over the course of the experiment. Therefore, the present study demonstrated a dynamic aspect of language-processing system. We will discuss why the language-processing system shows a selective adaptation to morphosyntactic violations.

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When Heuristics Clash with Parsing Routines: ERP Evidence for Conflict Monitoring in Sentence Perception

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.2006.18.7.1181 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 18 (7) ◽

pp. 1181-1197 ◽

Cited By ~ 129

Author(s):

Marieke van Herten ◽

Dorothee J. Chwilla ◽

Herman H. J. Kolk

Keyword(s):

Event Related Potential ◽

Anterior Cingulate ◽

Syntactic Analysis ◽

Conflict Monitoring ◽

N400 Effect ◽

Word Meanings ◽

Late Positivity ◽

Error Related Negativity ◽

Monitoring Process ◽

Outcome Monitoring

Monitoring refers to a process of quality control designed to optimize behavioral outcome. Monitoring for action errors manifests itself in an error-related negativity in event-related potential (ERP) studies and in an increase in activity of the anterior cingulate in functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. Here we report evidence for a monitoring process in perception, in particular, language perception, manifesting itself in a late positivity in the ERP. This late positivity, the P600, appears to be triggered by a conflict between two interpretations, one delivered by the standard syntactic algorithm and one by a plausibility heuristic which combines individual word meanings in the most plausible way. To resolve this conflict, we propose that the brain reanalyzes the memory trace of the perceptual input to check for the possibility of a processing error. Thus, as in Experiment 1, when the reader is presented with semantically anomalous sentences such as, “The fox that shot the poacher…,” full syntactic analysis indicates a semantic anomaly, whereas the word-based heuristic leads to a plausible interpretation, that of a poacher shooting a fox. That readers actually pursue such a word-based analysis is indicated by the fact that the usual ERP index of semantic anomaly, the so-called N400 effect, was absent in this case. A P600 effect appeared instead. In Experiment 2, we found that even when the word-based heuristic indicated that only part of the sentence was plausible (e.g., “…that the elephants pruned the trees”), a P600 effect was observed and the N400 effect of semantic anomaly was absent. It thus seems that the plausibility of part of the sentence (e.g., that of pruning trees) was sufficient to create a conflict with the implausible meaning of the sentence as a whole, giving rise to a monitoring response.

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Are all code-switches processed the same? Examining semantic v. language unexpectancy

10.31234/osf.io/k9wpn ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Jorge Valdés Kroff ◽

Patricia Roman ◽

Paola E. Dussias

Keyword(s):

Semantic Processing ◽

Time Window ◽

Time Windows ◽

Target Population ◽

Code Switching ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

N400 Effect ◽

Online Processing ◽

Sentence Level ◽

Main Effect

Prior studies using the event-related potential (ERP) technique show that integrating sentential code-switches in online processing lead to a broadly distributed late positivity component while processing semantically unexpected continuations instead lead to the emergence of an N400 effect. While the N400 is generally assumed to index lexico-semantic processing, the LPC has two different interpretations. One account suggests that it reflects the processing of an improbable or unexpected event while an alternative account proposes sentence-level reanalysis. To investigate the relative costs of semantic to language-based unexpectancies (i.e., code-switches), the current study tests 24 Spanish-English bilinguals in an ERP reading study. Semantically constrained Spanish frames either varied in their semantic expectancy (high vs low expectancy) and/or their language continuation (same language vs code-switch) while participants’ electrophysiological responses were recorded. The Spanish-to-English switch direction provides a more naturalistic test for integration costs to code-switching as it better approximates the code-switching practices of the target population. Analyses across three time windows show a main effect for semantic expectancy in the N400 time window and a main effect for code-switching in the LPC time window. Additional analyses based on the self-reported code-switching experience of the participants suggested an early positivity linked to less experience with code-switching. The results suggest that not all code-switches lead to similar integration costs and that prior experience with code-switching is an important additional factor that modulates online processing.

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Semantic Processing in Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease: A Systematic Review of the N400 Differences

Brain Sciences ◽

10.3390/brainsci10110770 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (11) ◽

pp. 770

Author(s):

Marilyne Joyal ◽

Charles Groleau ◽

Clara Bouchard ◽

Maximiliano A. Wilson ◽

Shirley Fecteau

Keyword(s):

Systematic Review ◽

Alzheimer’S Disease ◽

Alzheimer's Disease ◽

Semantic Processing ◽

Healthy Aging ◽

Semantic Knowledge ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

N400 Effect ◽

Pathological Aging ◽

Healthy Elderly

Semantic deficits are common in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). These deficits notably impact the ability to understand words. In healthy aging, semantic knowledge increases but semantic processing (i.e., the ability to use this knowledge) may be impaired. This systematic review aimed to investigate semantic processing in healthy aging and AD through behavioral responses and the N400 brain event-related potential. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses suggested an overall decrease in accuracy and increase in response times in healthy elderly as compared to young adults, as well as in individuals with AD as compared to age-matched controls. The influence of semantic association, as measured by N400 effect amplitudes, appears smaller in healthy aging and even more so in AD patients. Thus, semantic processing differences may occur in both healthy and pathological aging. The establishment of norms of healthy aging for these outcomes that vary between normal and pathological aging could eventually help early detection of AD.

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Notational Constraints and Number Processing: A Reappraisal of the Gonzalez and Kolers (1982) Study

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A ◽

10.1080/02724989208250623 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 45 (3) ◽

pp. 451-478 ◽

Cited By ~ 20

Author(s):

Marie-Pascale Noël ◽

Xavier Seron

Keyword(s):

Alternative Interpretation ◽

Number Processing ◽

Presentation Format ◽

Structure Effect ◽

Complex Structures ◽

Verification Task ◽

Translation Model ◽

Cognitive Operations ◽

Calculation Process ◽

Reported Data

In a verification task of simple additions composed of Arabic or Roman numerals, Gonzalez and Kolers (1982) reported data that were interpreted as supporting the idea that cognitive operations are not independent of the symbols that instigate them. We propose an alternative interpretation of these results and argue that the effects reported may have been produced by a peculiarity of the Roman code for which the encoding time would not be constant for all numerals. We hypothesize that three different “structures” can be distinguished in the Roman code, and that the time necessary to encode a numeral would vary according to its structure, with the analogical (numerals I, II, and HI) and the symbolic (V, X) structures being processed faster than the complex structures (IV, VI, VII, VIII, IX, XI,…). This structure effect is tested in two experiments: a verification of transcoded forms and a parity judgement. Data repeatedly showed support for this hypothesis. Moreover, a verification task for additions showed that the presentation format of the addends played a role in the encoding stage but did not interact with variables relative to the size of the addition problems. These data could thus sustain the hypothesis of a “translation model”, according to which numerals would be translated into a specific code to which the calculation process would be applied.

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Determinants of Response Times in the Semantic Verification Task

Journal of Memory and Language ◽

10.1006/jmla.1994.1038 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 33 (6) ◽

pp. 796-823 ◽

Cited By ~ 39

Author(s):

S. Larochelle ◽

H. Pineau

Keyword(s):

Response Times ◽

Verification Task

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Spoken Sentence Comprehension in Aphasia: Event-related Potential Evidence for a Lexical Integration Deficit

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.1997.9.1.39 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 39-66 ◽

Cited By ~ 97

Author(s):

Tamara Swaab ◽

Colin Brown ◽

Peter Hagoort

Keyword(s):

Sentence Comprehension ◽

Right Hemisphere ◽

Sentence Context ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Oddball Paradigm ◽

Final Word ◽

N400 Effect ◽

Lexical Information ◽

Preceding Sentence ◽

Comprehension Deficit

In this study the N400 component of the event-related potential was used to investigate spoken sentence understanding in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics. The aim of the study was to determine whether spoken sentence comprehension problems in these patients might result from a deficit in the on-line integration of lexical information. Subjects listened to sentences spoken at a normal rate. In half of these sentences, the meaning of the final word of the sentence matched the semantic specifications of the preceding sentence context. In the other half of the sentences, the sentence-final word was anomalous with respect to the preceding sentence context. The N400 was measured to the sentence-final words in both conditions. The results for the aphasic patients (n = 14) were analyzed according to the severity of their comprehension deficit and compared to a group of 12 neurologically unimpaired age-matched controls, as well as a group of 6 nonaphasic patients with a lesion in the right hemisphere. The nonaphasic brain damaged patients and the aphasic patients with a light comprehension deficit (high comprehenders, n = 7) showed an N400 effect that was comparable to that of the neurologically unimpaired subjects. In the aphasic patients with a moderate to severe comprehension deficit (low comprehenders, n = 7), a reduction and delay of the N400 effect was obtained. In addition, the P300 component was measured in a classical oddball paradigm, in which subjects were asked to count infrequent low tones in a random series of high and low tones. No correlation was found between the occurrence of N400 and P300 effects, indicating that changes in the N400 results were related to the patients' language deficit. Overall, the pattern of results was compatible with the idea that aphasic patients with moderate to severe comprehension problems are impaired in the integration of lexical information into a higher order representation of the preceding sentence context.

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The Neural Integration of Speaker and Message

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.2008.20054 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 20 (4) ◽

pp. 580-591 ◽

Cited By ~ 202

Author(s):

Jos J. A. Van Berkum ◽

Danielle van den Brink ◽

Cathelijne M. J. Y. Tesink ◽

Miriam Kos ◽

Peter Hagoort

Keyword(s):

Spoken Word ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Local Context ◽

Male Voice ◽

Brain Response ◽

Social Stereotypes ◽

Brain Responses ◽

Neural Integration ◽

The Social ◽

Communicative Context

When do listeners take into account who the speaker is? We asked people to listen to utterances whose content sometimes did not match inferences based on the identity of the speaker (e.g., “If only I looked like Britney Spears” in a male voice, or “I have a large tattoo on my back” spoken with an upper-class accent). Event-related brain responses revealed that the speaker's identity is taken into account as early as 200–300 msec after the beginning of a spoken word, and is processed by the same early interpretation mechanism that constructs sentence meaning based on just the words. This finding is difficult to reconcile with standard “Gricean” models of sentence interpretation in which comprehenders initially compute a local, context-independent meaning for the sentence (“semantics”) before working out what it really means given the wider communicative context and the particular speaker (“pragmatics”). Because the observed brain response hinges on voice-based and usually stereotype-dependent inferences about the speaker, it also shows that listeners rapidly classify speakers on the basis of their voices and bring the associated social stereotypes to bear on what is being said. According to our event-related potential results, language comprehension takes very rapid account of the social context, and the construction of meaning based on language alone cannot be separated from the social aspects of language use. The linguistic brain relates the message to the speaker immediately.

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A single-boundary accumulator model of response times in an addition verification task

10.31234/osf.io/dz932 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Thomas J. Faulkenberry

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Processes ◽

Response Times ◽

Mental Arithmetic ◽

Additive Models ◽

Verification Task ◽

Accumulator Model ◽

Competing Models ◽

Format Effects ◽

Single Boundary ◽

Rt Distributions

Current theories of mathematical cognition offer competing accounts of the interplay between encoding and calculation in mental arithmetic. Additive models propose that manipulations of problem format do not interact with the cognitive processes used in calculation. Alternatively, interactive models suppose that format manipulations have a direct effect on calculation processes. In the present study, we tested these competing models by fitting participants’ RT distributions in an arithmetic verification task with a single- boundary accumulator model (the shifted Wald distribution). We found that in addition to providing a more complete description of RT distributions, the accumulator model afforded a potentially more sensitive test of format effects. Specifically, we found that format affected drift rate, which implies that problem format has a direct impact on calculation processes. These data give further support for an interactive model of mental arithmetic.

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