The Effect of Training-Induced Visual Imageability on Electrophysiological Correlates of Novel Word Processing

Abstract

The concreteness effect (CE) describes a processing advantage for concrete over abstract words. Electrophysiologically, the CE manifests in higher N400 and N700 amplitudes for concrete words. The contribution of the stimulus-inherent imageability to the electrophysiological correlates of the CE is not yet fully unraveled. This EEG study focused on the role of imageability irrespective of concreteness by examining the effects of training-induced visual imageability on the processing of novel words. In two training sessions, 21 healthy participants learned to associate novel words with pictures of novel objects as well as electron-microscopical structures and were additionally familiarized with novel words without any picture association. During a post-training EEG session, participants categorized trained novel words with or without picture association, together with real concrete and abstract words. Novel words associated with novel object pictures during the training elicited a higher N700 than familiarized novel words without picture-association. Crucially, this training-induced N700 effect resembled the CE found for real words. However, a CE on the N400 was found for real words, but no effect of imageability in novel words. The results suggest that the N400 CE for real words depends on the integration of multiple semantic features, while mere visual imageability might contribute to the CE in the N700 time window.

When a sunny day gives you butterflies: an electrophysiological investigation of concreteness and context effects in semantic word processing

“…The expected pronounced electrophysiological concreteness effect in the N400 and N700 time range is in line with previous findings showing higher negative amplitudes for concrete than abstract words in both time windows (Barber et al, 2013;Bechtold et al, 2018a;Gullick et al, 2013;Holcomb et al, 1999;Kounios & Holcomb, 1994;West & Holcomb, 2000). In these studies, the N400 concreteness effect has been interpreted to reflect a stronger involvement of semantic activation or integration processes driven by the relatively richer (multimodal sensorimotor) information for concrete than abstract words.…”

“…A higher N700 amplitude reflects (top-down) retrieval of information (Adorni & Proverbio, 2012) or imagery processes when the task demands it (Gullick, Mitra, & Coch, 2013). The N700 concreteness effect possibly reflects the taskdependent strategic retrieval of visual information at a later stage of semantic processing driven by concrete words' higher imageability and tasks eliciting imagery processes (Barber et al, 2013;Bechtold et al, 2018a;West & Holcomb, 2000).…”

Corroborating behavioral evidence for the interplay of representational richness and semantic control in semantic word processing

“…Furthermore, although concreteness and imageability ratings of the probes used in Experiment 2 were highly correlated ( r = 0.971, p > 0.001), it is important not to consider these variables as fully interchangeable. Previous research showed that concreteness and imageability can lead to at least partially dissociated electrophysiological processes 9 , 15 , 54 , even though they tap into the same mechanisms of enriching concrete word representations with sensory experience.…”

Time course of brain activity during the processing of motor- and vision-related abstract concepts: flexibility and task dependency

“…In contrast to abstract concepts, concrete concepts elicited more negative scalp potentials between 300 and 500 ms after target onset (Adorni & Proverbio, 2012 ; Barber, Otten, Kousta, & Vigliocco, 2013 ). This so-called N400 concreteness effect, which has been interpreted to reflect greater integration of multimodal information for concrete than abstract concepts (Barber et al, 2013 ), has been observed across a broad variety of tasks and stimuli (Bechtold, Ghio, & Bellebaum, 2018 ), even though differential ERPs of earlier (P1—N1; Wirth et al, 2008 ) and later (N700; West & Holcomb, 2000 ) latencies have also been found (Adorni & Proverbio, 2012 ). However, as already indicated above, contrasting abstract concepts as an undifferentiated conceptual category with concrete concepts is questionable when taking into account the heterogeneity of abstract concepts.…”

“…Furthermore, the later emergence of ERP effects in abstract than in concrete concepts has been interpreted to reflect mental imagery instead of lexico-semantic processes (Adorni & Proverbio, 2012 ; Barber et al, 2013 ; Bechtold et al, 2018 ; Borghi et al, 2017 ). As outlined above, it has been argued that late effects, presumably indexing post-conceptual imagery processes (Machery, 2007 ), do not preclude the existence of amodal conceptual representations, which are accessed earlier.…”