The N2pc component in ERP and the lateralization effect of language on color perception

Liu, Qiang; Li, Hong; Campos, Jennifer L.; Qi, Wang; Zhang, Ye; Qiu, Jiang; Zhang, Qinglin; Sun, Hong-Jin

doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2009.02.045

Cited by 50 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…If a lateralized category effect can be shown to occur for experimentally trained verbal categories, it will follow that the lateralized Whorf effect can occur even when the categories involved violate both universal tendencies in color naming and those of the language of the subjects. Such a finding will reinforce the behavioral evidence reviewed above, as well as the corroborating event-related potential (ERPs) and fMRI evidence (13,14,31), that color CP, lateralized to the left hemisphere and suppressible by verbal interference, is a languagedependent ("Whorfian") phenomenon.Using an intensive training method to teach subjects new linguistic terms for colors originally from the same lexical cate- To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: paulkay@berkeley.edu or tanlh@ hku.hk.…”

supporting

confidence: 73%

Newly trained lexical categories produce lateralized categorical perception of color

Zhou

Kay

et al. 2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Linguistic categories have been shown to influence perceptual discrimination, to do so preferentially in the right visual field, to fail to do so when competing demands are made on verbal memory, and to vary with the color-term boundaries of different languages. However, because there are strong commonalities across languages in the placement of color-term boundaries, the question remains open whether observed categorical perception for color can be entirely a result of learned categories or may rely to some degree on innate ones. We show here that lateralized color categorical perception can be entirely the result of learned categories. In a visual search task, reaction times to targets were faster in the right than the left visual field when the target and distractor colors, initially sharing the same linguistic term (e.g., "blue"), became between-category colors after training (i.e., when two different shades of blue had each acquired a new name). A control group, whose conditions exactly matched those of the experimental group except that no new categories were introduced, did not show this effect, establishing that the effect was not dependent on increased familiarity with either the color stimuli or the task. The present results show beyond question that lateralized categorical perception of color can reflect strictly learned color categories, even artificially learned categories that violate both universal tendencies in color naming and the categorization pattern of the language of the subject.category learning | Whorf hypothesis | nature versus nurture | linguistic relativity A long-standing "Whorfian" debate over the relation between language and thought has gained momentum in recent years with an increasing number of studies demonstrating the involvement of linguistic information in categorical perception of color (1-18).* For example, speakers of English judge colors that straddle the English category boundary between green and blue to be less similar than do speakers of Tarahumara, a UtoAztecan language of Mexico that uses a single word for these colors (1). Unlike English, Russian makes a distinction between lighter blues (goluboy) and darker blues (siniy), and Russian speakers are faster, compared with English speakers, in discriminating two colors when they fall into different categories, one goluboy and the other siniy, than when they belong to the same category (6). More recent findings provide a different perspective, suggesting that language is disproportionately engaged in the discrimination of colors presented in the right visual field (RVF) as compared with the left visual field (LVF) (5,7,8,10,11). Specifically, discrimination of colors from two different lexical categories (e.g., a green among blues) is faster than discrimination of colors from the same lexical category (e.g., one green among tokens of a different green), but only (or predominantly) when the between-category colors are presented in the RVF. [Significant color categorical perception (CP) has also been found in the LFV (7, ...

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supporting

confidence: 73%

Newly trained lexical categories produce lateralized categorical perception of color

Zhou

Kay

et al. 2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…More recently, this "Whorfian" effect in color processing has been demonstrated to be stronger for stimuli exposed in the right visual field (RVF) than in the left visual field (LVF) and to disappear in the presence of a concurrent demand on verbal memory. This finding suggests that the use of lexical information in the left hemisphere is the origin of differential visual hemifield responses to color stimuli (14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23). There has been some suggestion that the left cerebral hemispheric areas implicated in important language functions may serve as a top-down control source that modulates the activity level of the visual cortex (24)(25)(26)(27)(28), but little is known about whether this lateralized effect occurs at early, preattentive perceptual processing stages or at postperceptual decision/response phases.…”

mentioning

confidence: 90%

Electrophysiological evidence for the left-lateralized effect of language on preattentive categorical perception of color

Xu²,

Kay³

et al. 2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Previous studies have shown that the effect of language on categorical perception of color is stronger when stimuli are presented in the right visual field than in the left. To examine whether this lateralized effect occurs preattentively at an early stage of processing, we monitored the visual mismatch negativity, which is a component of the event-related potential of the brain to an unfamiliar stimulus among a temporally presented series of stimuli. In the oddball paradigm we used, the deviant stimuli were unrelated to the explicit task. A significant interaction between color-pair type (within-category vs. between-category) and visual field (left vs. right) was found. The amplitude of the visual mismatch negativity component evoked by the within-category deviant was significantly smaller than that evoked by the between-category deviant when displayed in the right visual field, but no such difference was observed for the left visual field. This result constitutes electroencephalographic evidence that the lateralized Whorf effect per se occurs out of awareness and at an early stage of processing.lateralization | Whorfian B ehavioral, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging studies have shown that early processing of color stimuli can be affected by the categories encoded in the language of the observer (1-13). More recently, this "Whorfian" effect in color processing has been demonstrated to be stronger for stimuli exposed in the right visual field (RVF) than in the left visual field (LVF) and to disappear in the presence of a concurrent demand on verbal memory. This finding suggests that the use of lexical information in the left hemisphere is the origin of differential visual hemifield responses to color stimuli (14-23). There has been some suggestion that the left cerebral hemispheric areas implicated in important language functions may serve as a top-down control source that modulates the activity level of the visual cortex (24-28), but little is known about whether this lateralized effect occurs at early, preattentive perceptual processing stages or at postperceptual decision/response phases. Visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) is widely held to reflect the brain's early and automatic change in event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to a novel stimulus (29)(30)(31). In the present study, the vMMN component is observed in order to assess the lateralized Whorfian response to task-irrelevant changes in color stimuli. There have been several related studies in this area, however. Thierry and associates (25,26) showed in nonlateralized studies with task-irrelevant responses that Greek speakers' vMMN components, starting around 100 ms poststimulus, peaking around 200 ms, and maximal over parietooccipital scalp areas, show sensitivity to the basic lexical distinction in the Greek language between light and dark blue, whereas English speakers show no such effect. Further ERP studies have confirmed early Whorfian effects in nonlateralized paradigms (27,28). [Fonteneau and Davidoff (12) were the first to show a n...

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“…In order to clarify what stages of color processing are affected by color categories, a number of studies have employed the event-related potential (ERP) technique [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. This technique uses electrodes to measure electrical activity from the scalp elicited in response to sensory, cognitive, or motor events.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Color categories only affect post-perceptual processes when same- and different-category colors are equally discriminable

Witzel

Forder

et al. 2014

J. Opt. Soc. Am. A

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Prior claims that color categories affect color perception are confounded by inequalities in the color space used to equate same-and different-category colors. Here, we equate same-and different-category colors in the number of just-noticeable differences, and measure event-related potentials (ERPs) to these colors on a visual oddball task to establish if color categories affect perceptual or post-perceptual stages of processing. Category effects were found from 200 ms after color presentation, only in ERP components that reflect post-perceptual processes (e.g., N2, P3). The findings suggest that color categories affect post-perceptual processing, but do not affect the perceptual representation of color.

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The N2pc component in ERP and the lateralization effect of language on color perception

Cited by 50 publications

References 23 publications

Newly trained lexical categories produce lateralized categorical perception of color

Newly trained lexical categories produce lateralized categorical perception of color

Electrophysiological evidence for the left-lateralized effect of language on preattentive categorical perception of color

Color categories only affect post-perceptual processes when same- and different-category colors are equally discriminable

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