Electrophysiological evidence for task effects on semantic priming in auditory word processing

Bentin, Shlomo; Kutas, Marta; Hillyard, Steven A.

doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.1993.tb01729.x

Cited by 171 publications

(117 citation statements)

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“…In the latter case, the past participle is presumably less constrained by the preceding context, so that more effort is required in order to activate the lexical item (Holcomb, 1993). This interpretation is consistent with a large number of studies in which it has been shown that the N400 is associated with the difficulty in integrating a lexical element in a semantically constraining sentence context (Bentin, Kutas, & Hillyard, 1993;Bentin, McCarthy, & Wood, 1985;Friederici et al, 1993;Kutas & Hillyard, 1984;Rosler, Friederici, Piitz, & Hahne, 1993). The results also indicate that the fast comprehenders used the semantically constraining information at this point in the sentence.…”

Section: Individual Differencessupporting

confidence: 71%

Processing relative clauses varying on syntactic and semantic dimensions: An analysis with event-related potentials

et al. 1995

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Event-related potentials were used to study how parsing of German relative clauses is influenced by semantic information, Subjects read well-formed sentences containing either a subject or an object relative clause and answered questions concerning the thematic roles expressed in those sentences. Half of the sentences contained past participles that on grounds of semantic plausibility biased either a subject or an object relative reading; the other half contained past participles that provided no semantic information favoring either reading. The past participle elicited an N400 component, larger in amplitude for neutral than for semantically biased verbs, but this occurred only in the case of subject relative clauses. More specific effects were obtained only for a subgroup of subjects, when these were grouped into fast and slow comprehenders on the basis of their questionanswering reaction times. Fast comprehenders showed larger N400 amplitudes for neutral than for semantically biased past participles in general and larger N400s for the latter when there was a bias for an object relative reading as opposed to a subject relative reading. Syntactic ambiguity resolution, indicated by an auxiliary in sentence final position, was associated in this subgroup with a positive component (P345), larger in amplitude for auxiliaries indicating an object relative reading than for those indicating a subject relative reading. The latter component was independent of semantically biasing information given by a preceding past participle. Implications of these findings for models of language comprehension are considered.Most of the models of language comprehension assume that in forming a representation of a linguistic input the reader or listener exploits grammatical as well as pragmatic knowledge. Although there is general agreement that language comprehension involves the integration of information from lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic sources, there is an ongoing debate with respect to the nature and the timing ofthe mental processes involved in language comprehension (e.g., Flores d' Arcais, 1990;Frazier, 1987a). One major issue in psycholinguistic research is the stage of processing at which syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic information are made available This work was supported by grants from the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Fr 519/12-2). We wish to thank Erdmut Pfeifer for his support in software production for the present experiment. We are grateful to Lee Osterhout and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier draft ofthis article and to Douglas Saddy for fruitful discussions. Requests for reprints can be sent to A. Mecklinger,

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Section: Individual Differencessupporting

confidence: 71%

Processing relative clauses varying on syntactic and semantic dimensions: An analysis with event-related potentials

et al. 1995

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“…Among these, we focused our analyses in the temporal windows encompassing three components known to be associated with orthographic, phonological, and semantic analyses of words. Most previous reports had suggested the effects of attention on language are limited to processing taking place late in time, around 400 msec, centered in the N400 component Bentin et al, 1993Bentin et al, , 1995Holcomb, 1988), or in the 300 msec range, when tasks stressed phonological processing (Proverbio, Vecchi, & Zani, 2004;Bentin et al, 1999). Earlier stages related to orthographic processing had mostly been considered to take place in a common manner, irrespective of task demands (Maurer, Brandeis, & McCandliss, 2005;Bentin et al, 1999;Allison, McCarthy, Nobre, Puce, & Belger, 1994).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other studies have manipulated the depth of word processing by means of task demands. For example, it has been shown that the amount of semantic priming, as indexed by the N400 effect (i.e., the difference in amplitude for related vs. unrelated semantic pairs) is significantly reduced when counting words compared to memorizing them (Bentin, Kutas, & Hillyard, 1993; see also Bentin Kutas, & Hillyard, 1995;Holcomb, 1988). The attentional blink also affects the brain correlates of word processing (Sergent, Baillet, & Dehaene, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The N400, thought to reflect the integration of information within a semantic context, seems to be the language-related component most sensitive to attentional manipulations (e.g., Kiefer & Brendel, 2006;Luck et al, 1996;Bentin et al, 1993;Holcomb, 1988). In some other cases, tasks stressing phonological analyses modulate electrodes at left temporoparietal regions during the so-called N350 component (Bentin, Mouchetant-Rostaing, Giard, Echallier, & Pernier, 1999).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Attention Modulates Initial Stages of Visual Word Processing

Ruz

Nobre²

2008

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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Abstract& Selective attention has the potential to enhance the initial processing of objects, their spatial locations, or their constituent features. The present study shows that this capacity to modulate initial stages of processing also applies to linguistic attributes. A cueing paradigm focused attention at different levels of word representations on a trial-by-trial basis to study the time course of attentional modulation on visual word processing by means of a high-density electrophysiology recording system. Attention to different linguistic attributes modulated components related to semantic, phonological, and orthographic stages of word processing. Crucially, the N200, associated with initial stages of orthographic decoding, was enhanced by attention to the letter pattern of words. These results suggest that top-down attention has the capacity to enhance initial perceptual stages of visual word processing and support the flexibility of attention in modulating different levels of information processing depending on task goals. &

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“…In particular, two ERP components appear sensitive to differing aspects of spoken word recognition: the N400, a component traditionally associated with semantic processing of spoken or written words (Bentin et al, 1993;Kutas and Hillyard, 1980), and an earlier occurring negativity, the Phonological Mapping Negativity (PMN), 1 which has been previously linked to phonological processes (Connolly et al, 1992(Connolly et al, , 1990. Though the N400 is typically associated with semantic analysis, there is a sizable literature showing that the N400 is also modulated by phonological factors (Dumay et al, 2001;Praamstra and Stegeman, 1993;Praamstra et al, 1994;Radeau et al, 1998;Rugg, 1984a,b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electrophysiological markers of pre-lexical speech processing: Evidence for bottom–up and top–down effects on spoken word processing

Newman

Connolly

2009

Biological Psychology

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Page 1 AbstractThe present study was designed to investigate the electrophysiological consequences of a mismatch between initial phoneme expectations and the actual spoken input. Participants were presented with a word/nonword prompt with the instruction to delete the initial sound (e.g., snap without the /s/; snoth without the /s/) and determine the resulting segment. Following the prompt, an aurally presented response that matched/mismatched expectations (e.g., nap/tap; noth/toth) was presented. The Phonological Mapping Negativity (PMN), a response associated with phonological processing, was largest to mismatching responses, and was not dependent on the lexical status of response items. An N400-like response was also largest to mismatching responses; however, in contrast to the PMN, the N400-like response differentiated mismatching words from mismatching nonwords. These findings highlight a functional dissociation between the PMN and N400, and establish the PMN as a neural marker representing the goodness-of-fit between initial phoneme expectations and the actual spoken input.

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Electrophysiological evidence for task effects on semantic priming in auditory word processing

Cited by 171 publications

References 46 publications

Processing relative clauses varying on syntactic and semantic dimensions: An analysis with event-related potentials

Processing relative clauses varying on syntactic and semantic dimensions: An analysis with event-related potentials

Attention Modulates Initial Stages of Visual Word Processing

Electrophysiological markers of pre-lexical speech processing: Evidence for bottom–up and top–down effects on spoken word processing

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