Hemisphere differences in the recognition of closed and open class words

Bradley, Dianne; Garrett, Merrill F.

doi:10.1016/0028-3932(83)90082-9

Cited by 84 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…It has been argued that these two lexical classes are accessed differently and that the specialized access device for the closed class is insensitive to meaning because it is in the service of a sentence parser that is concerned solely with assigning phrase structure (Bradley & Garrett, 1983;Bradley, Garrett, & Zurif, 1980;Friederici & Schoenle, 1980;Garrett, 1978;Marin, Saffran, & Schwartz, 1976). Differential sensitivities to the present experimental manipulations would lend support to the idea that fundamentally different processing mechanisms are engaged by the two lexical classes.…”

mentioning

confidence: 47%

Influences of semantic and syntactic context on open- and closed-class words

1991

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Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded as subjects read semantically meaningful, syntactically legal but nonsensical and random word strings. The constraints imposed by formal sentence structure alone did not reduce the amplitude of the N400 component elicited by open-class words, whereas semantic constraints did. Semantic constraints also eliminated the word-frequency effect of a larger N400 for low-frequency words. Responses to closed-class words exhibited reduced N400 amplitudes in syntactic and congruent sentences, indicating that formal sentence structure placed greater restrictions on closed-class words than it did on open-class words. However, unlike the open-class results, the impact of sentence context on closed-class words was stable across word positions, suggesting that these syntactic constraints were applied only locally. A second ERP component, distinct from the N400, was elicited primarily by congruent closed-class words.Much experimental effort has been devoted to demonstrating that people are faster at identifying (or require less sensory information to identify) words that occur in an informative context than they are at identifying words that do not. In natural discourse, readers and listeners have several theoretically distinct sources of information that they may use in the transformation of a visual or acoustic signal into a meaningful representation. These include associations between individual words in long-term memory, semantic information derived from larger chunks of the ongoing discourse or real-world knowledge, syntactic restrictions provided by the grammar of the language, the overall probability of occurrence of particular words based on their frequency of usage in the reader's/listener's experience with the language, and pragmatic cues. Psycholinguistic research has attempted to describe how each source of information is used, addressing such questions as whether different cues are utilized serially or in parallel, whether they are allowed to interact or are kept distinct until a relatively late stage of processing, whether each type of information is applied to all words or only a subset, and whether or not different sources of information or vocabulary types are interpreted by distinct neural circuits.In the present experiment, we examined the impact of three potentially informative cues for the processing of A brief report of this study was presented at the 28th annual meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research, in October 1988. We are grateful to Jon Hansen for software support, to Jeff Elman. Liz Bates. Robert Proctor, and two anonymous reviewers for commenting on an earlier version of the paper, to Cathy Harris for helpful discussions, and to Steve Hillyard for making his facilities available for preparation of the manuscript.

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confidence: 47%

Influences of semantic and syntactic context on open- and closed-class words

1991

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“…This claim was initially put forward on the basis of (1) neuropsychological data showing differential impairments for the two word classes for specific patient groups (e.g., Friederici, 1983Friederici, , 1985Benson, 1979), and (2) behavioral data showing a right visual field advantage for CC compared to OC words after tachistoscopic half-field presentation (e.g., Mohr, Pulvermüller, & Zaidel, 1994;Chiarello & Nuding, 1987;Bradley & Garrett, 1983). Although these studies do suggest separate lexical representations and/ or lexical access routes for the two word classes, the claim would be much stronger if one could demonstrate differences in neuronal implementation between OC and CC words.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theta Responses Are Involved in Lexical—Semantic Retrieval during Language Processing

Bastiaansen¹,

Linden²,

Keurs

et al. 2005

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

253

245

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Abstract& Oscillatory neuronal dynamics, observed in the human electroencephalogram (EEG) during language processing, have been related to the dynamic formation of functionally coherent networks that serve the role of integrating the different sources of information needed for understanding the linguistic input. To further explore the functional role of oscillatory synchrony during language processing, we quantified event-related EEG power changes induced by the presentation of open-class (OC) words and closed-class (CC) words in a wide range of frequencies (from 1 to 30 Hz), while subjects read a short story.Word presentation induced three oscillatory components: a theta power increase (4-7 Hz), an alpha power decrease (10-12 Hz), and a beta power decrease (16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21). Whereas the alpha and beta responses showed mainly quantitative differences between the two word classes, the theta responses showed qualitative differences between OC words and CC words: A theta power increase was found over left temporal areas for OC words, but not for CC words. The left temporal theta increase may index the activation of a network involved in retrieving the lexical-semantic properties of the OC items. &

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“…Early work based on corpus analysis of speech errors (e.g., Garrett, 1982) and on reaction-time measurements of visual word processing (e.g., Bradley & Garrett, 1983;Bradley, Garrett, & Zurif, 1980) led to the claim that the two word classes are represented in separate subvocabularies and that during comprehension the closedclass words can be accessed via a dedicated access mechanism (while also sharing a general access mechanism with open-class words). In particular the ªnding that lexical decision times for open-class words were modulated by the frequency of occurrence of these words, whereas latencies for the closed-class words were unaffected by lexical frequency, was taken as strong evidence for a computational distinction (cf.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electrophysiological Signatures of Visual Lexical Processing: Open-and Closed-Class Words

Brown

Hagoort

Keurs

1999

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

145

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Abstractn This paper presents evidence of the disputed existence of an electrophysiological marker for the lexical-categorical distinction between open-and closed-class words. Event-related brain potentials were recorded from the scalp while subjects read a story. Separate waveforms were computed for open-and closed-class words. Two aspects of the waveforms could be reliably related to vocabulary class. The ªrst was an early negativity in the 230-to 350-msec epoch, with a bilateral anterior predominance. This negativity was elicited by open-and closedclass words alike, was not affected by word frequency or word length, and had an earlier peak latency for closed-class words.The second was a frontal slow negative shift in the 350-to 500-msec epoch, largest over the left side of the scalp. This late negativity was only elicited by closed-class words. Although the early negativity cannot serve as a qualitative marker of the open-and closed-class distinction, it does reºect the earliest electrophysiological manifestation of the availability of categorical information from the mental lexicon. These results suggest that the brain honors the distinction between open-and closed-class words, in relation to the different roles that they play in on-line sentence processing. s

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Hemisphere differences in the recognition of closed and open class words

Cited by 84 publications

References 9 publications

Influences of semantic and syntactic context on open- and closed-class words

Influences of semantic and syntactic context on open- and closed-class words

Theta Responses Are Involved in Lexical—Semantic Retrieval during Language Processing

Electrophysiological Signatures of Visual Lexical Processing: Open-and Closed-Class Words

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