Processing differences across regular and irregular inflections revealed through ERPs

Research strongly suggests that printed words are recognized in terms of their constituent morphemes, but researchers have tended to consider the recognition of derivations and inflections in separate theoretical debates. Recently, Crepaldi et al. (2010) proposed a theory that claims to account for the recognition of both derivations and inflections. We investigated brain potentials in the context of masked priming to test two key predictions of this theory: (a) that regular inflections should prime their stems to a greater degree than irregular inflections should prime their stems; and (b) that priming for regular inflections should arise earlier in the recognition process than priming for irregular inflections. Significant masked priming effects were observed for both regular and irregular inflections, though these effects were greater for regular inflections. ERP data further suggested that masked priming effects for regular and irregular inflections had different time courses. Priming for regular but not irregular inflections emerged in a time window reflecting processing up to 250 ms post target onset, and while priming for regular and irregular inflections was observed in a time window reflecting processing 400-600 ms post target onset, these effects arose earlier and were of greater magnitude for the regular inflections. These findings support a form-then-meaning characterisation of the visual word processing system such as that proposed by Crepaldi et al. (2010) and raise challenges for alternative approache

An event-related potential study of cross-modal morphological and phonological priming

The current work investigated whether differences in phonological overlap between the past- and present-tense forms of regular and irregular verbs can account for the graded neurophysiological effects of verb regularity observed in past-tense priming designs. Event-related potentials were recorded from 16 healthy participants who performed a lexical-decision task in which past-tense primes immediately preceded present-tense targets. To minimize intra-modal phonological priming effects, cross-modal presentation between auditory primes and visual targets was employed, and results were compared to a companion intra-modal auditory study (Justus, T., Larsen, J., de Mornay Davies, P., Swick, D. (2008). Interpreting dissociations between regular and irregular past-tense morphology: evidence from event-related potentials. Cognitive, Affective, Behavioral Neuroscience, 8, 178–194.). For both regular and irregular verbs, faster response times and reduced N400 components were observed for present-tense forms when primed by the corresponding past-tense forms. Although behavioral facilitation was observed with a pseudopast phonological control condition, neither this condition nor an orthographic-phonological control produced significant N400 priming effects. Instead, these two types of priming were associated with a post-lexical anterior negativity (PLAN). Results are discussed with regard to dual- and single-system theories of inflectional morphology, as well as intra- and cross-modal prelexical priming

Morphological processing as we know it: An analytical review of morphological effects in visual word identification

The last 40 years have witnessed a growing interest in the mechanisms underlying the visual identification of complex words. A large amount of experimental data has been amassed, but although a growing number of studies are proposing explicit theoretical models for their data, no comprehensive theory has gained substantial agreement among scholars in the field. We believe that this is due, at least in part, to the presence of several controversial pieces of evidence in the literature and, consequently, to the lack of a well-defined set of experimental facts that any theory should be able to explain. With this review, we aim to delineate the state of the art in the research on the visual identification of complex words. By reviewing major empirical evidences in a number of different paradigms such as lexical decision, word naming, and masked and unmasked priming, we were able to identify a series of effects that we judge as reliable or that were consistently replicated in different experiments, along with some more controversial data, which we have tried to resolve and explain. We concentrated on behavioral and electrophysiological studies on inflected, derived and compound words, so as to span over all types of complex words. The outcome of this work is an analytical summary of well-established facts on the most relevant morphological issues, such as regularity, morpheme position coding, family size, semantic transparency, morpheme frequency, suffix allomorphy and productivity, morphological entropy, and morpho-orthographic parsing. In discussing this set of benchmark effects, we have drawn some methodological considerations on why contrasting evidence might have emerged, and have tried to delineate a target list for the construction of a new all-inclusive model of the visual identification of morphologically complex words. \ua9 2012 Amenta and Crepaldi

ERP priming studies of bilingual language processing

The aim of this review is to provide a selective overview of priming studies which have employed the event-related brain potential (ERP) technique in order to investigate bilingual language processing. The priming technique can reveal an implicit memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus influences the processing of another stimulus. Behavioral approaches, such as measuring reaction times, may not always be enough for providing a full view on the exact mechanisms and the time-course of language comprehension. Instead, ERPs have a time-resolution of a millisecond and hence they offer a precise temporal overview of the underlying neural processes involved in language processing. In our review, we summarize experimental research that has combined priming with ERP measurements, thus creating a valuable tool for examining the neurophysiological correlates of language processing in the bilingual brain.Peer reviewe

Take a stand on understanding: electrophysiological evidence for stem access in German complex verbs

The lexical representation of complex words in Indo-European languages is generally assumed to depend on semantic compositionality. This study investigated whether semantically compositional and noncompositional derivations are accessed via their constituent units or as whole words. In an overt visual priming experiment (300 ms stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA), event-related potentials were recorded for verbs (e.g., ziehen, ‘pull’) that were preceded by purely semantically related verbs (e.g., zerren, ‘drag’), by morphologically related and semantically compositional verbs (e.g., zuziehen, ‘pull together’), by morphologically related and semantically noncompositional verbs (e.g., erziehen, ‘educate’), by orthographically similar verbs (e.g., zielen, ‘aim’), or by unrelated verbs (e.g., tarnen, ‘mask’). Compared to the unrelated condition, which evoked an N400 effect with the largest amplitude at centro-parietal recording sites, the N400 was reduced in all other conditions. The rank order of N400 amplitudes turned out as follows: morphologically related and semantically compositional ≈ morphologically related and semantically noncompositional < purely semantically related < orthographically similar < unrelated. Surprisingly, morphologically related primes produced similar N400 modulations—irrespective of their semantic compositionality. The control conditions with orthographic similarity confirmed that these morphological effects were not the result of a simple form overlap between primes and targets. Our findings suggest that the lexical representation of German complex verbs refers to their base form, regardless of meaning compositionality. Theories of the lexical representation of German words need to incorporate this aspect of language processing in German

The temporal dynamics of inflected word recognition: a masked ERP priming study of French verbs

Morphological aspects of human language processing have been suggested by some to be reducible to the combination of orthographic and semantic effects, while others propose that morphological structure is represented separately from semantics and orthography and involves distinct neuro-cognitive processing mechanisms. Here we used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate semantic, morphological and formal (orthographic) processing conjointly in a masked priming paradigm. We directly compared morphological to both semantic and formal/orthographic priming (shared letters) on verbs. Masked priming was used to reduce strategic effects related to prime perception and to suppress semantic priming effects. The three types of priming led to distinct ERP and behavioural patterns: semantic priming was not found, while formal and morphological priming resulted in diverging ERP patterns. These results are consistent with models of lexical processing that make reference to morphological structure. We discuss how they fit in with the existing literature and how unresolved issues could be addressed in further studies

Neurocognitive processing of inflected and derived words

The representation of morphologically complex words in the mental lexicon and their neurocognitive processing has been a vigorously debated topic in psycholinguistics and the cognitive neuroscience of language. This thesis investigates the effect of stimulus modality on morphological processing, the spatiotemporal dynamics of the neural processing of inflected (e.g., work+ed ) and derived (e.g., work+er ) words and their interaction, using the Finnish language. Overall, the results suggest that the constituent morphemes of isolated written and spoken inflected words are accessed separately, whereas spoken derived words activate both their full form and the constituent morphemes. The processing of both spoken and written inflected words elicited larger N400 responses than monomorphemic words (Study I), whereas the responses to spoken derived words did not differ from those to monomorphemic words (Study IV). Spoken inflected words elicited a larger left-lateralized negativity and greater source strengths in the left temporal cortices than derived words (Study IV). Thus, the results suggest different cortical processing for derived and inflected words. Moreover, the neural mechanisms underlying inflection and derivation seem to be not only different, but also independent as indexed by the linear summation of the responses to derived and inflected stimuli in a combined (derivation+inflection) condition (Study III). Furthermore, the processing of meaningless, spoken derived pseudowords was more difficult than for existing derived words, indexed by a larger N400-type effect for the pseudowords. However, no differences were observed between meaningful derived pseudowords and existing derived words (Study II). The results of Study II suggest that semantic compatibility between morphemes seems to have a crucial role in a successful morphological analysis. As a methodological note, time-locking the auditory event-related potentials/fields (ERP/ERF) to the suffix onset revealed the processes related to morphological analysis more precisely (Studies II and IV), which also enables comparison of the neural processes in different modalities (Study I).Morfologisesti kompleksisten, eli useammasta itsenäisestä merkitysyksiköstä muodostuvien sanojen käsittely aivoissa on ollut vilkkaan keskustelun kohteena psykolingvistiikassa sekä kielen kognitiivisessa neurotieteessä. Tällaisia morfologisesti kompleksisia sanoja ovat esimerkiksi taivutetut ( työ + tä ) ja johdetut ( työ + tön ) sanat. Erityisesti keskustelua on käyty siitä, missä määrin tällaiset sanat haetaan muistista kokonaisina ja mikä tehtävä on mekanismilla, joka pilkkoo päätteet (kuten tä ja tön ) sanavartaloista. Samoin on ollut vielä epäselvyyttä siitä miten kuullun ja luetun kielen käsittelymekanismit eroavat toisistaan. Tässä väitöskirjassa tutkittiin taivutettujen ja johdettujen sanojen hermostollista käsittelyä, niiden välistä vuorovaikutusta sekä aistipiirin vaikutusta sanojen morfologian käsittelyyn. Väitöskirjatutkimuksen perusteella on mahdollista olettaa, että taivutettujen sanojen morfeemit ( työ + tä ) käsitellään erikseen lukemisen tai sanan kuulemisen aikana, kun taas johdosten osalta aktivoituvat sekä koko sanan edustuma ( työtön ) että yksittäiset morfeemit ( työ + tön ). Taivutuspäätteen yhdistäminen sanavartaloon aktivoi voimakkaammin vasemman aivopuoliskon LAN- ja N400-vasteita. MEG-kokeessa löydettiin erityisesti taivutukseen liittyvä hermostollinen vaste ohimolohkon alueella. Tulosten mukaan taivutuksen ja johtamisen hermostolliset taustamekanismit ovat toisistaan erillisiä ja lisäksi myös ainakin osittain toisistaan riippumattomia. Jälkimmäistä havaintoa tuki tulos, jonka mukaan yhdistelmätilanteen aiheuttamat jännitevasteet olivat selitettävissä johtamisen ja taivutuksen erikseen aiheuttamien jännitevasteiden yhtäaikaisella summautumisella. Morfologisesti kompleksisten sanojen lukemisen ja kuulemisen mekanismien välillä havaittiin myös eroja. Tämä johtunee siitä, että kuultaessa sanaa käsitellään koko ajan sen edetessä ajassa, kun visuaalisessa modaliteetissa puolestaan kielellinen informaatio tullee käyttöön kokonaisena nopeammin. Tästä johtuen morfologisia prosesseja tutkittaessa pitää kiinnittää erityistä huomiota siihen, millä ajanhetkellä morfologinen informaatio on aivojen käytettävissä aistipiiristä riippuen. Väitöskirjatyössä kehitetty suffiksilukittujen vasteiden menetelmä auttaa tässä vertailussa

Semantic radical consistency and character transparency effects in Chinese: an ERP study

BACKGROUND: This event-related potential (ERP) study aims to investigate the representation and temporal dynamics of Chinese orthography-to-semantics mappings by simultaneously manipulating character transparency and semantic radical consistency. Character components, referred to as radicals, make up the building blocks used dur...postprin

The Processing of Emotional Sentences by Young and Older Adults: A Visual World Eye-movement Study

Carminati MN, Knoeferle P. The Processing of Emotional Sentences by Young and Older Adults: A Visual World Eye-movement Study. Presented at the Architectures and Mechanisms of Language and Processing (AMLaP), Riva del Garda, Italy

Processing Verbal Inflection in Native and Non-Native Spanish

The role of morphological complexity in visual word recognition has recently been studied in detail both with native speakers and second language (L2) learners. The present study investigates how morphologically complex words (such as walk-walked) are processed by native speakers of Spanish and English learners of Spanish as an L2. Moreover, the study examines factors such as proficiency and lexical decoding ability to see whether they can predict individual variability in the sensitivity that L2 learners show to morphological information. Subjects participated in two experiments, a lexical decision task (using a long-lag priming experiment), and a gating task, in order to assess their lexical decoding ability. Results show that native speakers of Spanish can decompose inflected verbs into their constituents, while L2 learners need to rely more on whole word storage in order to process the same forms. Furthermore, neither proficiency nor decoding ability were found to be related to individual differences in morphological processing in the learner group. These results suggest that native speakers and L2 learners rely on different mechanisms in order to process inflectional morphology