Semantic Processing in Children and Adults: Incongruity and the N400

Benau, Erik M.; Morris, Jeffrey B.; Couperus, Jane W.

doi:10.1007/s10936-011-9167-1

Cited by 22 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Previous studies on unimodal (auditory) semantic integration in children aged between 5-18 years have shown an N400 effect in response to words or pictures that mismatch the preceding context in linguistic priming tasks (e.g. Benau et al, 2011;Holcomb et al, 1992;Pijnacker et al, 2017). Our finding goes beyond unimodal integration by showing that semantic integration does not only occur during information processing of the auditory modality, but is also apparent when information is communicated simultaneously through different modalities.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 54%

Evidence for children’s online integration of simultaneous information from speech and iconic gestures: an ERP study

Sekiné

Schoechl

Mulder

et al. 2020

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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Children perceive iconic gestures, along with speech they hear. Previous studies have shown that children integrate information from both modalities. Yet it is not known whether children can integrate both types of information simultaneously as soon as they are available (as adults do) or whether they initially process them separately and integrate them later. Using electrophysiological measures, we examined the online neurocognitive processing of gesturespeech integration in 6-to 7-year-old children. We focused on the N400 event-related potential component which is modulated by semantic integration load. Children watched video clips of matching or mismatching gesture-speech combinations, which varied the semantic integration load. The ERPs showed that the amplitude of the N400 was larger in the mismatching condition than in the matching condition. This finding provides the first neural evidence that by the ages of 6 or 7, children integrate multimodal semantic information in an online fashion comparable to that of adults. ARTICLE HISTORY

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 54%

Evidence for children’s online integration of simultaneous information from speech and iconic gestures: an ERP study

Sekiné

Schoechl

Mulder

et al. 2020

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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“…There were three categories of expressions: literal ("catapulter des pierres" ["catapult rocks"]), novel metaphorical ("catapulter des paroles" ["catapult speech"]) and meaningless (i.e., sentences for which it would be very hard to find a meaning, such as "adopter un nuage" ["adopt a cloud"]). If there is a spreading activation gradient based on the congruence between the verb and the patient (Benau, Morris, & Couperus, 2011), and if richer concepts are activated faster (Kounios et al, 2009), individuals who have larger semantic networks should be quicker at finding a meaning for literal expressions since they should have more features associated with each concept (i.e., greater semantic richness) and more patients considered as congruent with each verb (which increases the probability that the patient of the expression will belong to the set of patients preactivated by the automatic spreading activation).…”

Section: Aims and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of implicit learning abilities in metaphor understanding

Drouillet

Stefaniak

Declercq

et al. 2018

Consciousness and Cognition

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Although the use of metaphors is a central component of language, the processes that sustain their comprehension have yet to be specified. Work in the fields of both metaphors and implicit learning suggests that implicit learning abilities facilitate the comprehension of metaphors. However, to date, no study has directly explored the relationships between the understanding of metaphors and so-called implicit learning tasks. We used a meaning decision task comparing literal, metaphorical and meaningless expressions to assess metaphor understanding and a probabilistic serial reaction time task for assessing implicit learning. Our results show that implicit learning positively predicts the time gap between responses to literal and metaphorical expressions and negatively predicts the difference between metaphorical and meaningless expressions. Thus, when confronted with novel metaphors, participants with higher implicit learning abilities are better able to identify that the expressions have some meaning. These results are interpreted in the context of metaphor understanding and psycholinguistic theories.

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“…Developmentally, both children and adults demonstrate a larger N400 for semantic errors and a larger P600 for grammatical errors compared to correct sentences. In contrast to adults though, children generally display a later, larger N400 response and smaller, later P600 response (Benau, Morris, & Couperus, ; Friederici, ; Friedrich & Friederici, ; Hahne et al, ; Männel & Friederici, ; Schneider et al, ). These ERP differences indicate that, when language capabilities are taxed, children demonstrate subtle processing differences compared to adults, suggesting that typically developing children may engage different skills or strategies than adults during language comprehension (Holland et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developmental differences in the neural correlates supporting semantics and syntax during sentence processing

Schneider

Maguire

2019

Developmental Science

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School‐aged and adolescent children continue to demonstrate improvements in how they integrate and comprehend real‐time, auditory language over this developmental time period, which can have important implications for academic and social success. To better understand developmental changes in the neural processes engaged during language comprehension in this age group, we use electroencephalography to investigate how 8–9 year old, 12–13 year olds, and adults process semantics and syntax in naturally paced, auditory sentences. Participants listened to semantically and syntactically correct and incorrect sentences and were asked to complete an acceptability judgment task. When processing a semantic error, developmental differences were observed in theta, but not the N400, suggesting that the N400 may be too gross a measure to identify more subtle aspects of semantic development that occur in the school years. For the syntactic task, errors resulted in a larger P600 and greater beta decrease than correct sentences, but the amplitude and location of the P600 and amplitude of beta decreases differed as a function of age, suggesting specialization of syntactic skills is ongoing through adolescence. The current findings shed new light on the development of the neural oscillations supporting language comprehension and suggest that the neural substrates underlying semantic processing reach adult‐like levels at a younger age than those underlying syntactic processing.

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Semantic Processing in Children and Adults: Incongruity and the N400

Cited by 22 publications

References 38 publications

Evidence for children’s online integration of simultaneous information from speech and iconic gestures: an ERP study

Evidence for children’s online integration of simultaneous information from speech and iconic gestures: an ERP study

Role of implicit learning abilities in metaphor understanding

Developmental differences in the neural correlates supporting semantics and syntax during sentence processing

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