In this study we examined ERP (event-related-potential) responses in the morphosyntactic processing of subject-verb agreements by L2 Chinese learners of English. Fifteen proficient L2 learners and fifteen native English speakers were presented with English sentences that varied in the grammaticality of the sentence with respect to subject-verb agreement.Our results indicate that late L2 learners show distinct ERP responses from native speakers in the processing of syntactic features that are absent in their L1, even when their behavioral patterns are similar to those of native speakers. The results are taken to support the proposal that language-specific experiences with L1 shape the neural structure of processing in L2.

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What is the best account to explain the objectbased attentional benefit-that is, the spread of attention within an attended object or prioritization of search across possible target locations within an attended object? Using a task in which the location of the target was known with certainty, in the present study we systematically manipulated the type (letters or bites) and the presentation time (long or short) of the target and flankers in order to test the effects of target-object integration and target presentation time on object-based attention. The results showed that an objectbased effect could appear when the target was a bite, no matter whether the target presentation time was long or short; but when the target was a letter, an object-based effect was only observed when the target presentation time was short enough. These findings provide additional evidence supporting the argument of attentional spreading in object-based attention. However, this spreading is moderated jointly by targetobject integration and the target presentation time.Keywords Object-based attention . Attentional spreading . Search prioritization . Target-object integration . Target presentation time It has been well supported that the visual system is unable to perceive an entire scene with equal degrees of detailed description in all parts. In order to perceive the complex visual world effectively, humans can select a portion in a scene for detailed processing with selective attention. A large body of literature on visual attention has emphasized the spatial nature of the attentional selection (e.g., C. W. Eriksen & Hoffman, 1972;Posner, Snyder, & Davidson, 1980). However, considerable evidence exists that attentional selection can also be based on objects that are present in the environment. The latter perspective has gained ground after several studies demonstrated that two or more features belonging to a single object are identified more quickly and more accurately than features belonging to different objects, even when the different objects are superimposed spatially (Behrmann, Zemel, & Mozer, 1998;Duncan, 1984;Egly, Driver, & Rafal, 1994;Goldsmith & Yeari, 2003;Kliegl, Wei, Dambacher, Yan, & Zhou, 2010); this is called an object-based effect or benefit. Two possible accounts have been proposed to interpret this object-based effect (Cepeda & Kramer, 1999;Chen & Cave, 2006Ho, 2011;Hollingworth, Maxcey-Richard, & Vecera, 2012;Müller & Kleinschmidt, 2003;Richard, Lee, & Vecera, 2008;Shomstein & Behrmann, 2008;Shomstein & Yantis, 2002, 2004.The first of these accounts is the attentional-spreading account (Chen & Cave, 2006Desimone & Duncan, 1995;Ho, 2011;Richard et al., 2008), which suggests that attending to an object guided by a spatial cue or task instructions involves spreading attention across the entire object; this spread of attention is limited by the contours and boundaries of the attended object (Desimone & Duncan, 1995;Moore & Fulton, 2005). Higher-level object structure feeds back into earlier visual areas, enhan...

Previous research has implied that monetary reward to target location (a reward for spatial properties) can affect object‐based attention, but no study has directly investigated the influence of monetary objects (a reward for object properties) on object‐based attention. Thus, it is unclear whether and how monetary objects can affect object‐based attention. To experimentally investigate this problem, this study adapted the well‐established two‐rectangle paradigm. In Experiment 1, either two 100‐yuan notes or two 1‐yuan notes were presented to participants. We found an object‐based effect with faster responses to targets at an uncued position on the cued object compared to those at an equidistant position on the uncued object; the effect was similar in 100‐yuan and 1‐yuan note trials. In Experiment 2, two notes (one 100‐yuan and one 1‐yuan) were simultaneously presented to participants, and cue location (100‐yuan, 1‐yuan) was manipulated. We found a greater object‐based effect when the cue appeared on the 100‐yuan note than on the 1‐yuan note. These results suggest that the rewarding property of objects can affect object‐based attention by means of altering object salience.