An event-related potential study of the concreteness effect between Chinese nouns and verbs

Semantic processing of highly repeated concepts presented in single-word trials: Electrophysiological and behavioral correlates

“…This difference was mirrored by the results of dipole source analysis which revealed a left parahippocampal generator in the first experiment and a right parahippocampal source in the second. This variation in lateralization is representative of the ERP literature in which right lateralization (Kounios and Holcomb, 1994;Holcomb et al, 1999), left lateralization (Zhang et al, 2006;Tolentino and Tokowicz, 2009) or no lateralization (West and Holcomb, 2000;Nittono et al, 2002;Swaab et al, 2002;Kanske and Kotz, 2007;Tsai et al, 2009) have been described. These various findings are also reminiscent of the findings of fMRI studies.…”

“…We chose to test this hypothesis for the effect of concreteness, as this effect is one of the best known correlates of the organization of conceptual knowledge. It is well described by behavioral (Paivio, 1991;Schwanenflugel, 1991) and ERP studies (Kounios and Holcomb, 1994;Holcomb et al, 1999;West and Holcomb, 2000;Zhang et al, 2006;Kanske and Kotz, 2007;Tolentino and Tokowicz, 2009;Tsai et al, 2009) and the demonstration of its resistance to repetition would complement findings obtained for the effects of semantic congruity and category.…”

“…Similar to some of these studies 1 , this effect was also greater over anterior than posterior lateral sites (Kounios and Holcomb, 1994;Holcomb et al, 1999;Swaab et al, 2002), and slightly right lateralized (Kounios and Holcomb, 1994; see also Holcomb et al, 1999 for a similar trend). Other findings include a left lateralization of the effect (Zhang et al, 2006;Tolentino and Tokowicz, 2009) or no lateralization (West and Holcomb, 2000;Nittono et al, 2002;Swaab et al, 2002;Kanske and Kotz, 2007;Tsai et al, 2009). Variations in the lateralization of concreteness effects will be further considered in the general discussion.…”

Seriality of semantic and phonological processes during overt speech in Mandarin as revealed by event-related brain potentials

“…Previous studies have shown that in tasks such as lexical decision, highly imageable or concrete words are processed more quickly than less imageable or abstract words (Tsai et al, 2009;West & Holcomb, 2000;Zhang, Guo, Ding, & Wang, 2006). To investigate the possibility of differences among the experimental conditions in our Materials, a rating task on imageability and concreteness was carried out by fourteen native Mandarin speakers (4 males, age from 24 to 30 years old) who did not take part in the main experiment.…”

Using magnetoencephalography to investigate processing of negative polarity items in Mandarin Chinese

“…For example, concreteness and lexical ambiguity of words have been shown to modulate the amplitude of the N400. Words with concrete meanings elicit larger N400 than words with abstract meanings (Lee & Federmeier, 2008;Tsai et al, 2009;Zhang, Guo, Ding, & Wang, 2006). Words with many related senses are associated with an earlier M350 peak than words with few related senses (Beretta, Fiorentino, & Poeppel, 2005).…”