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Journal ArticleDOI

Brain potentials during reading reflect word expectancy and semantic association

01 Jan 1984-Nature (Nature Publishing Group)-Vol. 307, Iss: 5947, pp 161-163
TL;DR: The amplitude of the N400 component of the e.r.p.ps was found to be an inverse function of the subject's expectancy for the terminal word as measured by its ‘Cloze probability’, which suggests N400 may reflect processes of semantic priming or activation.
Abstract: The neuroelectric activity of the human brain that accompanies linguistic processing can be studied through recordings of event-related potentials (erp components) from the scalp The erps triggered by verbal stimuli have been related to several different aspects of language processing For example, the N400 component, peaking around 400 ms post-stimulus, appears to be a sensitive indicator of the semantic relationship between a word and the context in which it occurs Words that complete sentences in a nonsensical fashion elicit much larger N400 waves than do semantically appropriate words or non-semantic irregularities in a text In the present study, erps were recorded in response to words that completed meaningful sentences The amplitude of the N400 component of the erp was found to be an inverse function of the subject's expectancy for the terminal word as measured by its 'Cloze probability' In addition, unexpected words that were semantically related to highly expected words elicited lower N400 amplitudes These findings suggest N400 may reflect processes of semantic priming or activation
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The amplitude of the P300 component is controlled multiplicatively by the subjective probability and task relevance of eliciting events, whereas its latency depends on the duration of stimulus evaluation as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: To understand the endogenous components of the event-related brain potential (ERP), we must use data about the components' antecedent conditions to form hypotheses about the information-processing function of the underlying brain activity These hypotheses, in turn, generate testable predictions about the consequences of the component We review the application of this approach to the analysis of the P300 component The amplitude of the P300 is controlled multiplicatively by the subjective probability and the task relevance of the eliciting events, whereas its latency depends on the duration of stimulus evaluation These and other factors suggest that the P300 is a manifestation of activity occurring whenever one's model of the environment must be revised Tests of three predictions based on this “context updating” model are reviewed Verleger's critique is based on a misconstrual of the model as well as a partial and misleading reading of the relevant literature

3,451 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The mismatch negativity (MMN) enables one to establish the brain processes underlying the initiation of attention switch to, conscious perception of, sound change in an unattended stimulus stream.

2,104 citations


Cites background from "Brain potentials during reading ref..."

  • ...…for example, when the subject reads or hears a sentence ‘‘the pizza was too hot to sing’’, a negative ERP response called the N400 is elicited by the incongruent word, the word ‘‘sing’’ in this example (Kutas and Hillyard, 1980, 1984; Connolly and Phillips, 1994; Hagoort and Brown, 2000)....

    [...]

01 Jan 2007
TL;DR: In this article, the basic research using the mismatch negativity (MMN) and analogous results obtained by using the magnetoencephalography (MEG) and other brain-imaging technologies is reviewed.
Abstract: In the present article, the basic research using the mismatch negativity (MMN) and analogous results obtained by using the magnetoencephalography (MEG) and other brain-imaging technologies is reviewed. This response is elicited by any discriminable change in auditory stimulation but recent studies extended the notion of the MMN even to higher-order cognitive processes such as those involving grammar and semantic meaning. Moreover, MMN data also show the presence of automatic intelligent processes such as stimulus anticipation at the level of auditory cortex. In addition, the MMN enables one to establish the brain processes underlying the initiation of attention switch to, conscious perception of, sound change in an unattended stimulus stream. 2007 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

1,994 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Findings using an electrophysiological brain component, the N400, that reveal the nature and timing of semantic memory use during language comprehension support a view of memory in which world knowledge is distributed across multiple, plastic-yet-structured, largely modality-specific processing areas, and in which meaning is an emergent, temporally extended process.

1,924 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This review argues that sentence processing is supported by a temporo-frontal network, within this network, temporal regions subserve aspects of identification and frontal regions the building of syntactic and semantic relations.

1,760 citations

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
11 Jan 1980-Science
TL;DR: In a sentence reading task, words that occurred out of context were associated with specific types of event-related brain potentials that elicited a late negative wave (N400).
Abstract: In a sentence reading task, words that occurred out of context were associated with specific types of event-related brain potentials. Words that were physically aberrant (larger than normal) elecited a late positive series of potentials, whereas semantically inappropriate words elicited a late negative wave (N400). The N400 wave may be an electrophysiological sign of the "reprocessing" of semantically anomalous information.

4,226 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Event-related brain potentials were recorded while subjects silently read several prose passages, presented one word at a time, adding to the evidence that the N400 wave is more closely related to semantic than to grammatical processing.
Abstract: Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while subjects silently read several prose passages, presented one word at a time. Semantic anomalies and various grammatical errors had been inserted unpredictably at different serial positions within some of the sentences. The semantically inappropriate words elicited a large N400 component in the ERP, whereas the grammatical errors were associated with smaller and less consistent components that had scalp distributions different from that of the N400. This result adds to the evidence that the N400 wave is more closely related to semantic than to grammatical processing. Additional analyses revealed that different ERP configurations were elicited by open-class (“content”) and closed-class (“function”) words in these prose passages.

582 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The electrocortical manifestations of levels of perceptual processing and memory performance were investigated by recording event related potentials (ERPs) during a verbal comparison task and a subsequent test of recognition memory to interpret associative activation in the human memory system.
Abstract: The electrocortical manifestations of levels of perceptual processing and memory performance were investigated by recording event related potentials (ERPs) during a verbal comparison task and a subsequent test of recognition memory. Two words were judged, on each trial, to be the same or different according to an orthographic, phonemic, or semantic criterion. Orthographic processing of words led to poor performance on a test of recognition memory whereas phonemic and semantic processing led to increasingly better performance. “Same” judgments led to better memory performance for phonemically and semantically processed items. The ERP waveforms included a late positive component (LPC) and a slow wave, both of which were responsive to the comparison criterion and the type of judgment. Further, the LPC appeared to index recognition accuracy in the memory test. The ERP data are interpreted as reflecting associative activation in the human memory system.

438 citations