The precise time course of lexical activation: MEG measurements of the effects of frequency, probability, and density in lexical decision

Stockall, Linnaea; Stringfellow, Andrew; Marantz, Alec

doi:10.1016/s0093-934x(03)00422-x

Cited by 40 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Visual inspection of the magnetic field maps in the individual grandaverages revealed a pattern of responses familiar from previous MEG language studies (Embick, et al, 2001;Helenius et al, 1998Pylkkänen, et al, 2001Pylkkänen, et al, , 2002Pylkkänen, et al, , 2004Stockall, Stringfellow & Marantz, 2004). Sample data are depicted in Fig.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 52%

The Representation of Polysemy: MEG Evidence

Pylkkänen

Llinás

Murphy

2006

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

156

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Most words in natural language are polysemous; i.e., they can be used in more than one way. For example, paper can be used to refer to a substance made out of wood pulp or to a daily publication printed on that substance. Even though virtually every sentence contains polysemy, there is little agreement as to how polysemy is represented in the mental lexicon. Do different uses of polysemous words involve access to a single representation or do our minds store distinct representations for each different sense? Here we investigated priming between senses with a combination of behavioral and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) measures in order to test whether different senses of the same word involve identity or mere formal and semantic similarity. Our results show that polysemy effects are clearly distinct from similarity effects bilaterally. In the left hemisphere, sense-relatedness elicited shorter latencies of the M350 source, which has been hypothesized to index lexical activation. Concurrent activity in the right hemisphere, on the other hand, peaked later for sense-related than for unrelated target stimuli, suggesting competition between related senses. The obtained pattern of results supports models in which the representation of polysemy involves both representational identity and difference: Related senses connect to same abstract lexical representation, but are distinctly listed within that representation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 52%

The Representation of Polysemy: MEG Evidence

Pylkkänen

Llinás

Murphy

2006

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

156

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“…Only a few visual studies previously investigated neural correlates of phonotactic probability (Pylkkänen et al, 2002;Stockall et al, 2004). These studies used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure brain activity during performance of visual lexical decision tasks and found modulations of event-related responses between 200 and 400 ms after stimulus onset.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auditory cortical tuning to statistical regularities in phonology

Bonte

Mitterer

Zellagui

et al. 2005

Clinical Neurophysiology

124

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Objective: Ample behavioral evidence suggests that distributional properties of the language environment influence the processing of speech. Yet, how these characteristics are reflected in neural processes remains largely unknown. The present ERP study investigates neurophysiological correlates of phonotactic probability: the distributional frequency of phoneme combinations. Methods: We employed an ERP measure indicative of experience-dependent auditory memory traces, the mismatch negativity (MMN). We presented pairs of non-words that differed by the degree of phonotactic probability in a modified passive oddball design that minimizes the contribution of acoustic processes. Results: In Experiment 1 the non-word with high phonotactic probability (notsel) elicited a significantly enhanced MMN as compared to the non-word with low phonotactic probability (notkel). In Experiment 2 this finding was replicated with a non-word pair with a smaller acoustic difference (notsel-notfel). An MMN enhancement was not observed in a third acoustic control experiment with stimuli having comparable phonotactic probability (so-fo). Conclusions: Our data suggest that auditory cortical responses to phoneme clusters are modulated by statistical regularities of phoneme combinations. Significance: This study indicates that the language environment is relevant in shaping the neural processing of speech. Furthermore, it provides a potentially useful design for investigating implicit phonological processing in children with anomalous language functions like dyslexia.

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“…Activation around 100-200 ms stimulus post-onset, originating from occipotemporal regions, has been shown to be sensitive to visual word form properties, such as letter-string length and perceptibility (Pammer et al 2004; the type I and II responses reported in Tarkiainen et al 1999;Cornelissen et al 2003). Similarly, bilateral occipitotemporal components peaking around 130 ms (M130) and 170 ms (M170) have been observed in a number of MEG visual lexical decision studies, but typically do not systematically vary on properties thought to affect lexical access, such as word frequency, semantic properties, and priming (Stockall et al 2004;cf. Assadollahi and Pulvermüller 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Assadollahi and Pulvermüller 2003). A subsequent component, the M250 has been argued to be sensitive to phonotactic probability (Stockall et al 2004), and the M350 has been shown to be sensitive to lexical frequency (Embick et al 2001), phonotactic probability (Pylkkänen et al 2002), morphological family size (Pylkkänen et al 2004) and the number of polysemes and homophones associated with a given lexical entry (Beretta et al 2005). As a consequence, the time window of 100-350 ms provides the temporal boundary conditions within which we are looking for a systematic response modulation of the MEG temporal signal associated with stages of lexical access.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Masked repetition priming using magnetoencephalography

2008

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Masked priming is used in psycholinguistic studies to assess questions about lexical access and representation. We present two masked priming experiments using MEG. If the MEG signal elicited by words reflects specific aspects of lexical retrieval, then one expects to identify specific neural correlates of retrieval that are sensitive to priming. To date, the electrophysiological evidence has been equivocal. We report findings from two experiments. Both employed identity priming, where the prime and target are the same lexical item but differ in case (NEWS-news). The first experiment used only forward masking, while the prime in the second experiment was both preceded and followed by a mask (backward masking). In both studies, we find a significant behavioral effect of priming. Using MEG, we identified a component peaking approximately 225 ms post-onset of the target, whose latency was sensitive to repetition. These findings support the notion that properties of the MEG response index specific lexical processes and demonstrate that masked priming can be effectively combined with MEG to investigate the nature of lexical processing.

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The precise time course of lexical activation: MEG measurements of the effects of frequency, probability, and density in lexical decision

Cited by 40 publications

References 15 publications

The Representation of Polysemy: MEG Evidence

The Representation of Polysemy: MEG Evidence

Auditory cortical tuning to statistical regularities in phonology

Masked repetition priming using magnetoencephalography

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