The source of the n400: facilitation of lexical access vs post-lexical integration difficulty. A repetition-priming ERP study on sentence processing
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1
Jagiellonian University, Psychophysiology Lab, Poland
Despite the very high popularity of the N400 component, there are opposing theories concerning which processes it indexes. The main point of contention is whether the underlying processes rely on lexical access being already done (conceptual integration difficulty), or the N400 reflects the ease of word recognition and lexical access. This study aims at resolving this controversy. Participants are visually presented with short stories. These stories have a direct object noun in the story-final sentence, which in half of trials is semantically congruent with preceding story, while in the other half is incongruent. We cross this factor with repetition priming: in half of the items, just before the story-final sentence, participants are told that a specific word will show up in the following sentence; this word is always the direct object noun. The two classes of theories give opposing predictions concerning the amplitude of the N400 at the direct object noun position for primed incongruent words. Integration theory predicts N400 for all incongruent words, independent of priming, i.e. sizeable N400 for primed incongruent words. Pre-lexical theories assume that the N400 amplitude will index word’s prior activation level, i.e. should be reduced for all already activated words (be it via supporting context, or priming), and thus no N400 for primed incongruent words. Only unprimed incongruent words led to a pronounced N400. Primed incongruent words led to a positivity, relative to congruent words. A control experiment revealed this positivity is due to expectation. It is concluded that the N400 is fully explained in terms of word recogniton/lexical access, but these processes must be responsible for integration at the same time.
Keywords:
EEG,
Language
Conference:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Poster Sessions: Neural Bases of Language
Citation:
Szewczyk
J
(2011). The source of the n400: facilitation of lexical access vs post-lexical integration difficulty. A repetition-priming ERP study on sentence processing.
Conference Abstract:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00275
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Received:
22 Nov 2011;
Published Online:
28 Nov 2011.
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Correspondence:
Dr. Jakub Szewczyk, Jagiellonian University, Psychophysiology Lab, Krakow, Poland, jakub.szewczyk@gmail.com