The effects of physical and semantic incongruites on auditory event-related potentials

McCallum, W.C.; Farmer, Simon F.; Pocock, P.V.

doi:10.1016/0168-5597(84)90006-6

Cited by 208 publications

(97 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…First, one might argue that the shape effect (i.e., the difference between the Shape and the Unrelated condition) occurred relatively late (between 500 and 700 ms after critical word onset) and therefore does not reflect the 'typical' N400 component. The effect observed in the present study indeed occurred somewhat later than previously reported semantic category effects in the auditory modality (Federmeier, McLennan, De Ochoa, & Kutas, 2002), though time windows after 500 ms are very common in N400 studies using auditory stimuli (e.g., Holcomb & Anderson, 1993;Holcomb & Neville, 1991;McCallum et al, 1984;Perrin & García-Larrea, 2003). In our study, the shape effect may have arisen relatively late because many of the critical words were polysyllabic, or because shape information might not receive the same degree of priority as semantic category information in facilitating the processing of unexpected words.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 37%

“…All of these clusters were widely distributed across the scalp, consistent with an N400. However, there was a frontal emphasis which is slightly atypical, though the N400 tends to be more frontally distributed during listening than during reading (McCallum et al, 1984) as well as for concrete words compared to abstract words (Kounios & Holcomb, 1994). The more frontal distribution might also be due to offsets of the ERPs of the preceding word or to overlap with the contingent negative variation.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Mean voltage measures were taken in two predefined time windows: 300-500 ms (Federmeier & Kutas, 1999;van den Brink, Brown, & Hagoort, 2006) and 500-700 ms after word onset (McCallum, Farmer, & Pocock, 1984). Besides having been used in previous studies, the 500-700 ms time window was based on the knowledge that the N400 can be longer in duration with auditory presentation compared to visual presentation (for discussion, see Kutas & van Petten, 1994).…”

Section: Eeg Recording and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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The contents of predictions in sentence comprehension: Activation of the shape of objects before they are referred to

et al. 2013

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When comprehending concrete words, listeners and readers can activate specific visual information such as the shape of the words’ referents. In two experiments we examined whether such information can be activated in an anticipatory fashion. In Experiment 1, listeners’ eye movements were tracked while they were listening to sentences that were predictive of a specific critical word (e.g., “moon” in “In 1969 Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon”). 500 ms before the acoustic onset of the critical word, participants were shown four-object displays featuring three unrelated distractor objects and a critical object, which was either the target object (e.g., moon), an object with a similar shape (e.g., tomato), or an unrelated control object (e.g., rice). In a time window before shape information from the spoken target word could be retrieved, participants already tended to fixate both the target and the shape competitors more often than they fixated the control objects, indicating that they had anticipatorily activated the shape of the upcoming word's referent. This was confirmed in Experiment 2, which was an ERP experiment without picture displays. Participants listened to the same lead-in sentences as in Experiment 1. The sentence-final words corresponded to the predictable target, the shape competitor, or the unrelated control object (yielding, for instance, “In 1969 Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon/tomato/rice”). N400 amplitude in response to the final words was significantly attenuated in the shape-related compared to the unrelated condition. Taken together, these results suggest that listeners can activate perceptual attributes of objects before they are referred to in an utterance

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 37%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Eeg Recording and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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The contents of predictions in sentence comprehension: Activation of the shape of objects before they are referred to

et al. 2013

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“…Such positivities have been observed in numerous prior studies, which vary widely in stimulus type and task demands (for reviews, see Donchin & Coles, 1988;Johnson, 1986;Picton, 1992). In general, they are associated with the processing of an unexpected or improbable task-relevant event (e.g., Donchin, 1981;McCallum, Farmer, & Pocock, 1984). Such events need not be linguistic in nature, although some types of unexpected language events (e.g., certain types of grammatical violations) also elicit similar late positivities (e.g., Coulson, King, & Kutas, 1998;Münte et al, 1998).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Switching Languages, Switching Palabras (Words): An Electrophysiological Study of Code Switching

2002

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Switching languages has often been associated with a processing cost. In this study, the authors used event-related potentials to compare switches between two languages with withinlanguage lexical switches as bilinguals read for comprehension. Stimuli included English sentences and idioms ending either with the expected English words, their Spanish translations (code switches), or English synonyms (lexical switches). As expected, lexical switches specifically enhanced the N400 response in both context types. Code switches, by contrast, elicited an increased negativity over left fronto-central sites in the regular nonidiomatic sentences (250-450 ms) and a large posterior positivity (450-850 ms) in both context types. In addition, both lexical and code switches elicited a late frontal positivity (650-850 ms) relative to expected completions, especially in idioms. Analysis of the individual response patterns showed correlations with vocabulary skills in English and in Spanish. Overall, the electrophysiological data suggest that for some speakers in some contexts, the processing of a code switch may actually be less costly than the processing of an unexpected within-language item. © 2002 Elsevier Science (USA)

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“…In young adults, N400-like responses can be recorded not only to written words but also to semantic violations within spoken sentences (e.g., McCallum et al, 1984) and to visually presented signs in American Sign Language (Kutas, Nevlle, & Holcomb, 1987). There are, however, some differences in the specific characteristics of the visual and the auditory N400s (for comparison see Holcomb & Neville, 1991).…”

Section: N400 and Integration As We "Know" Itmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do the waves begin to waver? ERP studies of language processing in the elderly

King

Kutas

1995

Age Differences in Word and Language Processing

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Until recently, relatively little research had been done on language processing in the elderly except as an adjunct to the study of aphasia. While language processes have usually been thought to be fairly impervious to aging, it is now clear that some changes do occur. Moreover, many of these changes often seem to be directly linked to changes in the efficacy of other cognitive operations affected by aging, particularly the active suppression of irrelevant information and the management of working memory (WM). One way to study these changes is to record event-related brain potentials (ERPs) from the scalp in response to individual words either in isolation or in sentences. In this chapter, we review what is currently known about the electrophysiology of visual language processing in the elderly, and what ERPs may tell us about age-related changes in the neural substrates of reading. ERP STUDIES OF LANGUAGE PROCESSING IN THE ELDERLYMuch more research has been focused on the development of language abilities from infancy through early adulthood than on changes in language processing over the next forty to fifty years. Notable exceptions are the investigations of individuals with gross disturbances in language caused by certain strokes or dementing illnesses and their age-matched controls. But a variety of subtle changes do occur within the normal aging brain that can have noticeable effects on language processing. In this chapter, we review some of our results from studies of language processing in presumably normal, healthy, elderly individuals employing event-related brain potentials (ERPs). ERPs provide us with a brain imaging technique that is well-suited for mapping processes at the psychological and linguistic level onto the relevant neural physiology. They are especially useful for our purposes because they provide a potentially continuous measure of on-going brain activity which is sensitive to many of the same variables that influence language processing. Further, ERPs give us a useful measure that does not require

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The effects of physical and semantic incongruites on auditory event-related potentials

Cited by 208 publications

References 29 publications

The contents of predictions in sentence comprehension: Activation of the shape of objects before they are referred to

The contents of predictions in sentence comprehension: Activation of the shape of objects before they are referred to

Switching Languages, Switching Palabras (Words): An Electrophysiological Study of Code Switching

Do the waves begin to waver? ERP studies of language processing in the elderly

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