Brain potentials elicited by words: word length and frequency predict the latency of an early negativity

Osterhout, Lee; Bersick, Michael; McKinnon, Richard N.

doi:10.1016/s0301-0511(97)05250-2

Cited by 103 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…This raises the question of whether the determiner-noun combination in (5a) independently elicits a negativity, in comparison to preposition-determiner-noun combinations. Some studies have reported that closed class words elicit different ERPs than open class words (Neville, Mills, & Lawson, 1992;Pulvermuller, Lutzenberger, & Birbaumer, 1995), although other studies have reported no differences across classes (Münte et al, 2001;Osterhout, Bersick, & McKinnon, 1997). Irrespectively, both articles and the prepositions in the current stimuli are closed class or functional categories, and we have no evidence that these lexical differences should yield independent ERP differences.…”

Section: Designcontrasting

confidence: 69%

Brain responses to filled gaps

et al. 2007

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An unresolved issue in the study of sentence comprehension is whether the process of gap-filling is mediated by the construction of empty categories (traces), or whether the parser relates fillers directly to the associated verb's argument structure. We conducted an event-related potentials (ERP) study that used the violation paradigm to examine the time course and spatial distribution of brain responses to ungrammatically filled gaps. The results indicate that the earliest brain response to the violation is an early left anterior negativity (eLAN). This ERP indexes an early phase of pure syntactic structure building, temporally preceding ERPs that reflect semantic integration and argument structure satisfaction. The finding is interpreted as evidence that gap-filling is mediated by structurally predicted empty categories, rather than directly by argument structure operations.

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Section: Designcontrasting

confidence: 69%

Brain responses to filled gaps

et al. 2007

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“…However, this issue is discussed controversially. Results of other studies revealed that differences between word classes do not reflect qualitatively separate processing mechanisms, but rather are a function of word frequency or of frequency and length (e.g., King & Kutas, 1998;Münte, Wieringa, Weyerts, Szentkuti, Matzke, & Johannes, 2001;Osterhout, Bersick, & McKinnon, 1997).…”

Section: Present Studymentioning

confidence: 91%

Frequency and predictability effects on event-related potentials during reading

et al. 2006

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Effects of frequency, predictability, and position of words on event-related potentials were assessed during word-by-word sentence reading in 48 subjects in an early and in a late time window corresponding to P200 and N400. Repeated-measures multiple regression analyses revealed a P200-effect in the high-frequency range; also the P200 was larger on words at the beginning and end of sentences than on words in the middle of sentences (i.e., a quadratic effect of word position). Predictability strongly affected the N400 component; the effect was stronger for low than for high-frequency words. The P200 frequency effect indicates that high-frequency words are lexically accessed very fast, independent of context information. Effects on the N400 suggest that predictability strongly moderates the late access especially of low-frequency words. Thus, contextual facilitation on the N400 appears to reflect both lexical and post-lexical stages of word recognition, questioning a strict classification into lexical and post-lexical processes.

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“…Word class dissociations were observed only for the patient, with more activation in Broca's area, left middle temporal cortex, and left superior parietal cortex for object naming than action naming, and more activation in left inferior parietal lobe for action naming than object naming. Osterhout et al (1997) also found no word class differences in healthy young adults' event-related potential (ERP) responses to English nouns and verbs read in passages. In contrast, Brown et al (1999), using a similar paradigm in Dutch, found a word class effect between 250 and 550 ms post-stimulus-onset, with more negativity to verbs than to nouns over all electrodes, with the difference larger over the back of the head.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

To mind the mind: An event-related potential study of word class and semantic ambiguity

Lee

Federmeier

2006

Brain Research

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The goal of this study was to jointly examine the effects of word class, word class ambiguity, and semantic ambiguity on the brain response to words in syntactically specified contexts. Four types of words were used: (1) word class ambiguous words with a high degree of semantic ambiguity (e.g., 'duck'); (2) word class ambiguous words with little or no semantic ambiguity (e.g., 'vote'); (3) word class unambiguous nouns (e.g., 'sofa'); and (4) word class unambiguous verbs (e.g., 'eat'). These words were embedded in minimal phrases that explicitly specified their word class: "the" for nouns (and ambiguous words used as nouns) and "to" for verbs (and ambiguous words used as verbs). Our results replicate the basic word class effects found in prior work (Federmeier, K.D., Segal, J.B., Lombrozo, T., Kutas, M., 2000. Brain responses to nouns, verbs and class ambiguous words in context. Brain, 123 (12), 2552-2566), including an enhanced N400 (250-450ms) to nouns compared with verbs and an enhanced frontal positivity (300-700 ms) to unambiguous verbs in relation to unambiguous nouns. A sustained frontal negativity (250-900 ms) that was previously linked to word class ambiguity also appeared in this study but was specific to word class ambiguous items that also had a high level of semantic ambiguity; word class ambiguous items without semantic ambiguity, in contrast, were more positive than class unambiguous words in the early part of this time window (250-500 ms). Thus, this frontal negative effect seems to be driven by the need to resolve the semantic ambiguity that is sometimes associated with different grammatical uses of a word class ambiguous homograph rather than by the class ambiguity per se.

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Brain potentials elicited by words: word length and frequency predict the latency of an early negativity

Cited by 103 publications

References 26 publications

Brain responses to filled gaps

Brain responses to filled gaps

Frequency and predictability effects on event-related potentials during reading

To mind the mind: An event-related potential study of word class and semantic ambiguity

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