Is the LAN effect in morphosyntactic processing an ERP artifact?

Caffarra, Sendy; Mendoza, Martha; Davidson, Doug

doi:10.1101/218594

Cited by 5 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“… 4 We note that the LAN is not consistently observed across studies examining morphosyntactic violations (e.g., Wicha et al, 2004; Alemán Bañón et al, 2012). Recent reports have questioned whether this effect even exists (Tanner, 2015), although others disagree (Molinaro et al, 2015; Caffarra et al, 2017b). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting Masculine and Feminine Grammatical Gender in Spanish: Linguistic, Psycholinguistic, and Neurolinguistic Evidence

Beatty-Martínez

Dussias

2019

Front. Psychol.

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Research on grammatical gender processing has generally assumed that grammatical gender can be treated as a uniform construct, resulting in a body of literature in which different gender classes are collapsed into single analysis. The present work reviews linguistic, psycholinguistic, and neurolinguistic research on grammatical gender from different methodologies and across different profiles of Spanish speakers. Specifically, we examine distributional asymmetries between masculine and feminine grammatical gender, the resulting biases in gender assignment, and the consequences of these assignment strategies on gender expectancy and processing. We discuss the implications of the findings for the design of future gender processing studies and, more broadly, for our understanding of the potential differences in the processing reflexes of grammatical gender classes within and across languages.

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confidence: 99%

Revisiting Masculine and Feminine Grammatical Gender in Spanish: Linguistic, Psycholinguistic, and Neurolinguistic Evidence

Beatty-Martínez

Dussias

2019

Front. Psychol.

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“…Indeed, there is much to be gained by considering subject‐ and item‐related variability in grammatical gender processing, and fortunately there is a growing trend in this direction (e.g., Caffarra et al, 2019; Tanner, 2019). The current study provides an important contribution to this work: Although the use of individual difference analyses offers an opportunity for a more nuanced view of brain potentials, they may nonetheless involve the same risks as those observed with grand averages in the absence of well‐defined envelope of language variation and a well‐honed understanding of how the implications of such variation affect language processing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An important implication is that systematic individual differences may give rise to nonrepresentative grand average ERPs. In particular, some studies have claimed that biphasic responses such as the LAN‐P600 pattern are a spurious result of grand averaging individuals showing negativity‐ and positivity‐dominant brain responses (Osterhout, 1997; Tanner & van Hell, 2014; c.f., Caffarra et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At this point, it is important to note that the reliable identification of the LAN effect has been called into question (Caffarra et al, 2019; Molinaro et al, 2015; Tanner, 2015), as there have been a number of studies on grammatical gender processing in which this effect is not evident (e.g., Alemán Bañón et al, 2012; Alemán Bañón & Rothman, 2016; Barber & Carreiras, 2005; Guajardo & Wicha, 2014; Martín‐Loeches et al, 2006; Wicha et al, 2004). This is especially true within the second language processing literature, where the biphasic LAN‐P600 pattern is upheld as the benchmark of native‐like linguistic representation, and any deviations from the target are treated as reflecting constraints associated with incomplete acquisition or deficient processing in bilingual speakers (Alemán Bañón et al, 2014, 2017; Gillon Dowens et al, 2010, 2011; see DeLuca et al, 2019; Dussias et al, 2019; McLaughlin et al, 2010, for further discussion).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Brain potentials reveal differential processing of masculine and feminine grammatical gender in native Spanish speakers

et al. 2020

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Studies of Spanish grammatical gender have shown that native speakers exploit gender cues in determiners to facilitate speech processing and are sensitive to gender mismatches. However, past research has not considered attested distributional asymmetries between masculine and feminine gender, collapsing performance on trials with one or the other gender into a single analysis. We use event‐related potentials to investigate whether masculine and feminine grammatical gender elicit qualitatively different brain responses. Forty monolingual Spanish speakers read sentences that were well‐formed or contained determiner‐noun gender violations. Half of the nouns were masculine and the other half were feminine. Consistent with previous research, brain responses varied along a continuum between LAN‐ and P600‐dominant effects for both gender categories. However, results showed that individuals’ ERP response dominance (LAN/P600) systematically differed across the two genders: participants who showed a LAN‐dominant response to masculine‐noun violations were more likely to show a P600 effect in response to feminine‐noun violations. Correlations with individual difference measures further revealed that responses to masculine‐noun violations were modulated by performance on the AX‐CPT, a measure of cognitive control, whereas responses to feminine‐noun violations were modulated by lexical knowledge, as indexed by verbal fluency. Together, the results demonstrate that even when processing features of language that belong to the same “natural class,” native speakers can exhibit patterns of brain activity attuned to distributional patterns of language use. The inherent variability in native speaker processing is, therefore, an important factor when explaining purported deviations from the “native norm” reported in other types of populations.

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“…The largest body of evidence on agreement mechanisms comes from research using ERPs, most often assessing morphosyntactic agreement during written phrase or sentence comprehension in healthy individuals (Molinaro, Barber, & Carreiras, 2011). Studies investigated Romance languages such as Spanish (Barber & Carreiras, 2005;Caffarra & Barber, 2015;Caffarra, Janssen, & Barber, 2014;Caffarra, Mendoza, & Davidson, 2019), Italian (Angrilli et al, 2002;Caffarra, Siyanova-Chanturia, Pesciarelli, Vespignani, & Cacciari, 2015;De Vincenzi et al, 2003;Molinaro, Vespignani, & Job, 2008;Molinaro, Vespignani, Zamparelli, &Job, 2011), andFrench (Frenck-Mestre, Osterhout, McLaughlin, &Foucart, 2008). This body of evidence capitalized on the different roles of the two components that are associated with the processing of agreement violations.…”

Section: Electrophysiological Studies On Agreementmentioning

confidence: 99%