Concreteness effects in semantic processing: ERP evidence supporting dual-coding theory.

Kounios, John; Holcomb, Phillip J.

doi:10.1037/0278-7393.20.4.804

Cited by 300 publications

(328 citation statements)

References 41 publications

(94 reference statements)

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“…Although we carefully controlled our items for lexical properties such as length and class-specific word frequency, we did not control for all higher-level properties of the words (indeed, such control may not be possible). Concreteness, in particular, has been associated with effects that are in some ways similar to the pattern we observe in the present study, with more concrete words eliciting greater negativity (extending over frontal electrode sites) in the N400 time window (250-500 ms) and beyond (Kounios and Holcomb, 1994;Holcomb et al, 1999;West and Holcomb, 2000). This effect is most evident in imagery tasks and therefore has been interpreted as reflecting activation in a mental imagery subsystem, an information lookup system, or in working memory (West and Holcomb, 2000).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

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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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

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

Lee

Federmeier

2006

Brain Research

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“…Alternatively, this effect also resembles ERP word concreteness effects: greater negativity frontally for concrete than abstract words between 300 and 500 ms [23,39,54]. Imageability/concreteness ERP effects have been reported to have a frontal focus [47].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Processing semantic anomalies in two languages: an electrophysiological exploration in both languages of Spanish–English bilinguals

Moreno

Kutas

2005

Cognitive Brain Research

150

122

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The latency of the brain response to semantic anomalies (N400 effect) has been found to be longer in a bilingual's second language (L2) than in their first language (L1) and/or to that seen in monolinguals. This has been explained in terms of late exposure to L2, although age of exposure and language proficiency are often highly correlated. We thus examined the relative contributions of these factors not only in L2 but also in L1 in a group of Spanish-English bilinguals for whom age of exposure and language proficiency were not highly correlated by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to semantically congruous/incongruous words completing written sentences. We also divided our bilinguals into a Spanish-dominant subset who had late exposure and reduced vocabulary proficiency [as measured by Boston Naming Test (BNT) and Verbal Fluency Scores] in L2 (English) relative to L1 (Spanish) and an English-dominant group who had early exposure to both their languages although greater proficiency in English than in Spanish. In both groups, the N400 effect was significantly later in the nondominant than the dominant language. Although this slowing could be due to late exposure to English in the Spanish-dominant group, late exposure cannot explain the slowing in Spanish in the English-dominant group. Overall, we found that vocabulary proficiency and age of exposure are both important in determining the timing of semantic integration effects during written sentence processing-with vocabulary proficiency predicting the timing of semantic analysis in L1 and both age of exposure and language proficiency, although highly correlated, making additional small but uncorrelated contributions to the speed of semantic analysis/ integration in L2. D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Theme: Neural basis of behavior Topic: Cognition

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“…Analyses of scalp distribution focused on evaluating antero-posterior differences across subject groups by determining whether there were electrode site (x 7) by group (e.g., x 3) interactions at midline, inner lateral and outer lateral locations. In looking at interactions between scalp electrode site and other variables (e.g., age group), the data were first normalized using a z score technique (Kounios and Holcomb, 1994) similar to the method recommended by McCarthy and Wood (1985) to avoid problems associated with interpreting site by factor interactions using ANOVA. Analyses that yielded significant interactions between subject group, stimulus type, or electrode site resulted in planned contrasts between the levels of the variable.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compensatory neural activity distinguishes different patterns of normal cognitive aging

et al. 2008

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Most cognitive neuroscientific research exploring the nature of age-associated compensatory mechanisms has compared old adults (high vs. average performers) to young adults (not split by performance), leaving ambiguous whether findings are truly age-related or reflect differences between high and average performers throughout the lifespan. Here, we examined differences in neural activity (as measured by ERPs) that were generated by high vs. average performing old, middle-age, and young adults while processing novel and target events to investigate the following three questions: 1) Are differences between cognitively high and average performing subjects in the allocation of processing resources (as indexed by P3 amplitude) specific to old subjects, or found throughout the adult lifespan? 2) Are differences between cognitively high and average performing subjects in speed of processing (as indexed by target P3 latency) of similar magnitude throughout the adult lifespan? 3) Where along the information processing stream does the compensatory neural activity attributed to cognitively high performing old subjects begin to take place? Our results suggest that high performing old adults successfully manage the task by a compensatory neural mechanism associated with the modulation of controlled processing and the allocation of more resources, whereas high performing younger subjects execute the task more efficiently with fewer resources. Differences between cognitively high and average performers in processing speed increase with age. Middle-age seems to be a critical stage in which substantial differences in neural activity between high and average performers emerge. These findings provide strong evidence for different patterns of agerelated changes in the processing of salient environmental stimuli, with cognitive status serving as a key mediating variable.

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Concreteness effects in semantic processing: ERP evidence supporting dual-coding theory.

Cited by 300 publications

References 41 publications

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

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

Processing semantic anomalies in two languages: an electrophysiological exploration in both languages of Spanish–English bilinguals

Compensatory neural activity distinguishes different patterns of normal cognitive aging

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