To highlight relevant information in dialogues, both wh-question context and pitch accent in answers can be used, such that focused information gains more attention and is processed more elaborately. To evaluate the relative influence of context and pitch accent on the depth of semantic processing, we measured event-related potentials (ERPs) to auditorily presented wh-question-answer pairs. A semantically incongruent word in the answer occurred either in focus or in non-focus position as determined by the context, and this word was either accented or unaccented.Semantic incongruency elicited different N400 effects in different conditions. The largest N400 effect was found when the question-marked focus was accented, while the other three conditions elicited smaller N400 effects. The results suggest that context and accentuation interact. Thus accented focused words were processed more deeply compared to conditions where focus and accentuation mismatched, or when the new information had no marking. In addition, there seems to be sex differences in the depth of semantic processing. For males, a significant N400 effect was observed only when the question-marked focus was accented, reduced N400 effects were found in the other dialogues. In contrast, females produced similar N400 effects in all the conditions. These results suggest that regardless of external cues, females tend to engage in more elaborate semantic processing compared to males.
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Accumulating evidence suggests that spoken word production requires different amounts of top-down control depending on the prevailing circumstances. For example, during Stroop-like tasks, the interference in response time (RT) is typically larger following congruent trials than following incongruent trials. This effect is called the Gratton effect, and has been taken to reflect top-down control adjustments based on the previous trial type. Such control adjustments have been studied extensively in Stroop and Eriksen flanker tasks (mostly using manual responses), but not in the picture–word interference (PWI) task, which is a workhorse of language production research. In one of the few studies of the Gratton effect in PWI, Van Maanen and Van Rijn (2010) examined the effect in picture naming RTs during dual-task performance. Based on PWI effect differences between dual-task conditions, they argued that the functional locus of the PWI effect differs between post-congruent trials (i.e., locus in perceptual and conceptual encoding) and post-incongruent trials (i.e., locus in word planning). However, the dual-task procedure may have contaminated the results. We therefore performed an electroencephalography (EEG) study on the Gratton effect in a regular PWI task. We observed a PWI effect in the RTs, in the N400 component of the event-related brain potentials, and in the midfrontal theta power, regardless of the previous trial type. Moreover, the RTs, N400, and theta power reflected the Gratton effect. These results provide evidence that the PWI effect arises at the word planning stage following both congruent and incongruent trials, while the amount of top-down control changes depending on the previous trial type.
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In this study, we used electroencephalography to investigate the influence of discourse-level semantic coherence on electrophysiological signatures of local sentence-level processing. Participants read groups of four sentences that could either form coherent stories or were semantically unrelated. For semantically coherent discourses compared to incoherent ones, the N400 was smaller at sentences 2–4, while the visual N1 was larger at the third and fourth sentences. Oscillatory activity in the beta frequency range (13–21 Hz) was higher for coherent discourses. We relate the N400 effect to a disruption of local sentence-level semantic processing when sentences are unrelated. Our beta findings can be tentatively related to disruption of local sentence-level syntactic processing, but it cannot be fully ruled out that they are instead (or also) related to disrupted local sentence-level semantic processing. We conclude that manipulating discourse-level semantic coherence does have an effect on oscillatory power related to local sentence-level processing.
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When an adult claims he cannot sleep without his teddy bear, people tend to react surprised. Language interpretation is, thus, influenced by social context, such as who the speaker is. The present study reveals inter-individual differences in brain reactivity to social aspects of language. Whereas women showed brain reactivity when stereotype-based inferences about a speaker conflicted with the content of the message, men did not. This sex difference in social information processing can be explained by a specific cognitive trait, one's ability to empathize. Individuals who empathize to a greater degree revealed larger N400 effects (as well as a larger increase in γ-band power) to socially relevant information. These results indicate that individuals with high-empathizing skills are able to rapidly integrate information about the speaker with the content of the message, as they make use of voice-based inferences about the speaker to process language in a top-down manner. Alternatively, individuals with lower empathizing skills did not use information about social stereotypes in implicit sentence comprehension, but rather took a more bottom-up approach to the processing of these social pragmatic sentences.
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In an event related potential (ERP) experiment using written language materials only, we investigated a potential modulation of the N400 by the modality switch effect. The modality switch effect occurs when a first sentence, describing a fact grounded in one modality, is followed by a second sentence describing a second fact grounded in a different modality. For example, "A cellar is dark" (visual), was preceded by either another visual property "Ham is pink" or by a tactile property "A mitten is soft." We also investigated whether the modality switch effect occurs for false sentences ("A cellar is light"). We found that, for true sentences, the ERP at the critical word "dark" elicited a significantly greater frontal, early N400-like effect (270-370 ms) when there was a modality mismatch than when there was a modality-match. This pattern was not found for the critical word "light" in false sentences. Results similar to the frontal negativity were obtained in a late time window (500-700 ms). The obtained ERP effect is similar to one previously obtained for pictures. We conclude that in this paradigm we obtained fast access to conceptual properties for modality-matched pairs, which leads to embodiment effects similar to those previously obtained with pictorial stimuli.
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The current electroencephalography study investigated the relationship between the motor and (language) comprehension systems by simultaneously measuring mu and N400 effects. Specifically, we examined whether the pattern of motor activation elicited by verbs depends on the larger sentential context. A robust N400 congruence effect confirmed the contextual manipulation of action plausibility, a form of semantic congruency. Importantly, this study showed that: (1) Action verbs elicited more mu power decrease than non-action verbs when sentences described plausible actions. Action verbs thus elicited more motor activation than non-action verbs. (2) In contrast, when sentences described implausible actions, mu activity was present but the difference between the verb types was not observed. The increased processing associated with a larger N400 thus coincided with mu activity in sentences describing implausible actions. Altogether, context-dependent motor activation appears to play a functional role in deriving context-sensitive meaning.
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Previous event-related potentials (ERP) studies on the processing of emotional information in sentence/discourse context have yielded inconsistent findings. An important reason for the discrepancies is the different lexico-semantic properties of the emotional words. The present study controlled for the lexico-semantic meaning of emotional information by endowing the same person names with either positive or negative valence. ERPs were computed for positively and negatively valenced person names that were either congruent or incongruent to previous emotional contexts. We found that positive names elicited an N400 effect while negative names elicited a P600 effect in response to the incongruence. These results suggest that the integration of positive and negative information into emotional context exhibits different time courses, with a relatively delayed integration for negative information. Our study demonstrates that using person names constitutes a new and improved tool for investigating the integration of emotional information into context.
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Both emotional words and words focused by information structure can capture attention. This study examined the interplay between emotional salience and information structure in modulating attentional resources in the service of integrating emotional words into sentence context. Event-related potentials (ERPs) to affectively negative, neutral, and positive words, which were either focused or nonfocused in question-answer pairs, were evaluated during sentence comprehension. The results revealed an early negative effect (90-200 ms), a P2 effect, as well as an effect in the N400 time window, for both emotional salience and information structure. Moreover, an interaction between emotional salience and information structure occurred within the N400 time window over right posterior electrodes, showing that information structure influences the semantic integration only for neutral words, but not for emotional words. This might reflect the fact that the linguistic salience of emotional words can override the effect of information structure on the integration of words into context. The interaction provides evidence for attention-emotion interactions at a later stage of processing. In addition, the absence of interaction in the early time window suggests that the processing of emotional information is highly automatic and independent of context. The results suggest independent attention capture systems of emotional salience and information structure at the early stage but an interaction between them at a later stage, during the semantic integration of words.
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The colour-word Stroop task and the picture-word interference task (PWI) have been used extensively to study the functional processes underlying spoken word production. One of the consistent behavioural effects in both tasks is the Stroop-like effect: The reaction time (RT) is longer on incongruent trials than on congruent trials. The effect in the Stroop task is usually linked to word planning, whereas the effect in the PWI task is associated with either word planning or perceptual encoding. To adjudicate between the word planning and perceptual encoding accounts of the effect in PWI, we conducted an EEG experiment consisting of three tasks: a standard colour-word Stroop task (three colours), a standard PWI task (39 pictures), and a Stroop-like version of the PWI task (three pictures). Participants overtly named the colours and pictures while their EEG was recorded. A Stroop-like effect in RTs was observed in all three tasks. ERPs at centro-parietal sensors started to deflect negatively for incongruent relative to congruent stimuli around 350 ms after stimulus onset for the Stroop, Stroop-like PWI, and the Standard PWI tasks: an N400 effect. No early differences were found in the PWI tasks. The onset of the Stroop-like effect at about 350 ms in all three tasks links the effect to word planning rather than perceptual encoding, which has been estimated in the literature to be finished around 200-250 ms after stimulus onset. We conclude that the Stroop-like effect arises during word planning in both Stroop and PWI.
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Language comprehension involves activating word meanings and integrating them with the sentence context. This study examined whether these routines are carried out even when they are theoretically unnecessary, namely, in the case of opaque idiomatic expressions, for which the literal word meanings are unrelated to the overall meaning of the expression. Predictable words in sentences were replaced by a semantically related or unrelated word. In literal sentences, this yielded previously established behavioral and electrophysiological signatures of semantic processing: semantic facilitation in lexical decision, a reduced N400 for semantically related relative to unrelated words, and a power increase in the gamma frequency band that was disrupted by semantic violations. However, the same manipulations in idioms yielded none of these effects. Instead, semantic violations elicited a late positivity in idioms. Moreover, gamma band power was lower in correct idioms than in correct literal sentences. It is argued that the brain's semantic expectancy and literal word meaning integration operations can, to some extent, be "switched off" when the context renders them unnecessary. Furthermore, the results lend support to models of idiom comprehension that involve unitary idiom representations.
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