Never seem to find the time: evaluating the physiological time course of visual word recognition with regression analysis of single-item event-related potentials
TL;DR: This article examined the time course of influence of variables ranging from relatively perceptual (e.g., bigram frequency) to relatively semantic on ERP responses, analysed at the single-item level.
Abstract: Visual word recognition is a process that, both hierarchically and in parallel, draws on different types of information ranging from perceptual to orthographic to semantic. A central question concerns when and how these different types of information come online and interact after a word form is initially perceived. Numerous studies addressing aspects of this question have been conducted with a variety of techniques [e.g., behaviour, eye-tracking, event-related potentials (ERPs)], and divergent theoretical models, suggesting different overall speeds of word processing, have coalesced around clusters of mostly method-specific results. Here, we examine the time course of influence of variables ranging from relatively perceptual (e.g., bigram frequency) to relatively semantic (e.g., the number of lexical associates) on ERP responses, analysed at the single-item level. Our results, in combination with a critical review of the literature, suggest methodological, analytic and theoretical factors that may have led to inconsistency in results of past studies; we will argue that consideration of these factors may lead to a reconciliation between divergent views of the speed of word recognition.
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TL;DR: A strong modulation of the N400 and three earlier ERP components (P150, N250, and the P325) that the authors propose reflect sequential overlapping steps in the processing of printed words are shown.
Abstract: The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the time course of visual word recognition using a masked repetition priming paradigm. Participants monitored target words for occasional animal names, and ERPs were recorded to nonanimal critical items that were full repetitions, partial repetitions, or unrelated to the immediately preceding masked prime word. The results showed a strong modulation of the N400 and three earlier ERP components (P150, N250, and the P325) that we propose reflect sequential overlapping steps in the processing of printed words.
346 citations
TL;DR: There are robustly identifiable features of the ERP that enable labeling of ERPs as belonging to individuals with accuracy reliably above chance, and these features are stable over time, as indicated by continued accurate identification of individuals from ERPs after a lag of up to six months.
132 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that the averaged event-related potential (ERP) may provide the potential for more accurate biometric identification, as its elicitation allows for some control over the cognitive state of the user to be obtained through the design of the challenge protocol.
Abstract: The vast majority of existing work on brain biometrics has been conducted on the ongoing electroencephalogram. Here, we argue that the averaged event-related potential (ERP) may provide the potential for more accurate biometric identification, as its elicitation allows for some control over the cognitive state of the user to be obtained through the design of the challenge protocol. We describe the Cognitive Event-RElated Biometric REcognition (CEREBRE) protocol, an ERP biometric protocol designed to elicit individually unique responses from multiple functional brain systems (e.g., the primary visual, facial recognition, and gustatory/appetitive systems). Results indicate that there are multiple configurations of data collected with the CEREBRE protocol that all allow 100% identification accuracy in a pool of 50 users. We take this result as the evidence that ERP biometrics are a feasible method of user identification and worthy of further research.
124 citations
TL;DR: The regression-based rERP framework is introduced, which extends ERP averaging to handle arbitrary combinations of categorical and continuous covariates, partial confounding, nonlinear effects, and overlapping responses to distinct events, all within a single unified system.
Abstract: ERP averaging is an extraordinarily successful method, but can only be applied to a limited range of experimental designs. We introduce the regression-based rERP framework, which extends ERP averaging to handle arbitrary combinations of categorical and continuous covariates, partial confounding, nonlinear effects, and overlapping responses to distinct events, all within a single unified system. rERPs enable a richer variety of paradigms (including high-N naturalistic designs) while preserving the advantages of traditional ERPs. This article provides an accessible introduction to what rERPs are, why they are useful, how they are computed, and when we should expect them to be effective, particularly in cases of partial confounding. A companion article discusses how nonlinear effects and overlap correction can be handled within this framework, as well as practical considerations around baselining, filtering, statistical testing, and artifact rejection. Free software implementing these techniques is available.
123 citations
Cites background or methods from "Never seem to find the time: evalua..."
...…trials (Amsel, 2011; Dambacher, Kliegl, Hofmann, & Jacobs, 2006; Frank, Otten, Galli, & Vigliocco, 2013; Groppe et al., 2010) or single-item ERPs (Laszlo & Federmeier, 2011, 2014); this technique naturally allows post hoc control of multiple simultaneous discrete and continuous covariates, but…...
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...…scalp locations (DeLong et al., 2005; Rousselet et al., 2008, 2010), between latencies (Amsel, 2011; Ettinger et al., 2014; Hauk et al., 2006; Laszlo & Federmeier, 2014; Miozzo et al., 2014; Rousselet et al., 2008, 2009, 2010; Solomyak & Marantz, 2009, 2010), and between different…...
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TL;DR: Modelling word-level variability in ERPs reveals mechanisms by which different sources of information simultaneously contribute to the unfolding neural dynamics of comprehension, as well as probing the continuous and incremental effects of semantic and syntactic context on multiple aspects of lexical processing during sentence comprehension.
Abstract: The amplitude of the N400-an event-related potential (ERP) component linked to meaning processing and initial access to semantic memory-is inversely related to the incremental buildup of semantic context over the course of a sentence. We revisited the nature and scope of this incremental context effect, adopting a word-level linear mixed-effects modeling approach, with the goal of probing the continuous and incremental effects of semantic and syntactic context on multiple aspects of lexical processing during sentence comprehension (i.e., effects of word frequency and orthographic neighborhood). First, we replicated the classic word-position effect at the single-word level: Open-class words showed reductions in N400 amplitude with increasing word position in semantically congruent sentences only. Importantly, we found that accruing sentence context had separable influences on the effects of frequency and neighborhood on the N400. Word frequency effects were reduced with accumulating semantic context. However, orthographic neighborhood was unaffected by accumulating context, showing robust effects on the N400 across all words, even within congruent sentences. Additionally, we found that N400 amplitudes to closed-class words were reduced with incrementally constraining syntactic context in sentences that provided only syntactic constraints. Taken together, our findings indicate that modeling word-level variability in ERPs reveals mechanisms by which different sources of information simultaneously contribute to the unfolding neural dynamics of comprehension.
103 citations
Cites background or methods from "Never seem to find the time: evalua..."
...This period is the same size as the N400 latency measurement window (300–500 ms), but is one in which semantic influences would be unexpected (Laszlo & Federmeier, 2014)....
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...Indeed, other methods have been used to examine item-to-item (word-to-word) variation in N400 amplitude other than those used here (Laszlo and Federmeier, 2014; Van Petten, 2014)....
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...More recently, studies of visual word recognition in and out of sentence contexts (Holcomb, Grainger, & O’Rourke, 2002; Laszlo & Federmeier, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2014; Van Petten, 2014; Vergara-Mart ınez & Swaab, 2012) have examined the influence of a word’s orthographic neighborhood (the number and…...
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...…(Dambacher et al., 2006; Delorme, Miyakoshi, Jung, & Makeig, 2014; Frank, Otten, Galli, & Vigliocco, 2015; Gaspar, Rousselet, & Pernet, 2011; Laszlo & Federmeier, 2014; Tremblay & Newman, 2015; Van Petten, 2014), challenging the assumption that the signal-to-noise ratio may be too low to…...
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References
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TL;DR: As a result of this grant, the researchers have now published on CDROM a corpus of over 4 million words of running text annotated with part-of- speech (POS) tags, which includes a fully hand-parsed version of the classic Brown corpus.
Abstract: : As a result of this grant, the researchers have now published oil CDROM a corpus of over 4 million words of running text annotated with part-of- speech (POS) tags, with over 3 million words of that material assigned skeletal grammatical structure This material now includes a fully hand-parsed version of the classic Brown corpus About one half of the papers at the ACL Workshop on Using Large Text Corpora this past summer were based on the materials generated by this grant
8,377 citations
TL;DR: The empirical and theoretical development of the P300 event-related brain potential is reviewed by considering factors that contribute to its amplitude, latency, and general characteristics.
6,283 citations
"Never seem to find the time: evalua..." refers background in this paper
...In the present study, target detection responses (P3b component; see Polich, 2007) to proper names peaked around 400 ms; it may be that once participants were able to classify words as non-targets, they did not engage in much additional semantic processing....
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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
TL;DR: The effectiveness of the N400 as a dependent variable for examining almost every aspect of language processing is emphasized and its expanding use to probe semantic memory is highlighted to determine how the neurocognitive system dynamically and flexibly uses bottom-up and top-down information to make sense of the world.
Abstract: We review the discovery, characterization, and evolving use of the N400, an event-related brain potential response linked to meaning processing. We describe the elicitation of N400s by an impressive range of stimulus types—including written, spoken, and signed words or pseudowords; drawings, photos, and videos of faces, objects, and actions; sounds; and mathematical symbols—and outline the sensitivity of N400 amplitude (as its latency is remarkably constant) to linguistic and nonlinguistic manipulations. We emphasize the effectiveness of the N400 as a dependent variable for examining almost every aspect of language processing and highlight its expanding use to probe semantic memory and to determine how the neurocognitive system dynamically and flexibly uses bottom-up and top-down information to make sense of the world. We conclude with different theories of the N400’s functional significance and offer an N400-inspired reconceptualization of how meaning processing might unfold.
3,164 citations
"Never seem to find the time: evalua..." refers methods in this paper
...In the BIAM, as in a multitude of other frameworks (for review, see Kutas & Federmeier, 2011), the N400 is thought to reflect semantic Table 1....
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TL;DR: A computerised database of psycholinguistic information is described, where semantic, syntactic, phonological and orthographic information about some or all of the 98,538 words in the database is accessible, by using a specially-written and very simple programming language.
Abstract: This paper describes a computerised database of psycholinguistic information. Semantic, syntactic, phonological and orthographic information about some or all of the 98,538 words in the database is accessible, by using a specially-written and very simple programming language. Word-association data are also included in the database. Some examples are given of the use of the database for selection of stimuli to be used in psycholinguistic experimentation or linguistic research.
2,277 citations