Talking out of order: task order and retrieval of grammatical gender and phonology in lexical access

<p>Despite early evidence that grammatical gender is retrieved prior to phonology in lexical access, more recent studies demonstrating task effects and non-converging evidence raise doubts about the extent to which this is a general feature of the language production system. We employed the dual-choice go/no-go paradigm with event-related potentials (ERPs) in order to further clarify the time course of retrieval of grammatical gender and phonology. Specifically, we examined how task order influences the relative timing with which these features are retrieved. Results find no clear evidence that grammatical gender is retrieved prior to phonology in a serial manner. Instead, the relative timing with which these features are retrieved is subject to task order, suggesting that prior estimates of lexical access obtained with this paradigm may be confounded by task effects. Overall, our result support parallel access models of feature retrieval during lexical access and suggest that attentional biases may modulate retrieval.</p

Effects of Grammaticality and Morphological Complexity on the P600 Event-Related Potential Component

<div><p>We investigated interactions between morphological complexity and grammaticality on electrophysiological markers of grammatical processing during reading. Our goal was to determine whether morphological complexity and stimulus grammaticality have independent or additive effects on the P600 event-related potential component. Participants read sentences that were either well-formed or grammatically ill-formed, in which the critical word was either morphologically simple or complex. Results revealed no effects of complexity for well-formed stimuli, but the P600 amplitude was significantly larger for morphologically complex ungrammatical stimuli than for morphologically simple ungrammatical stimuli. These findings suggest that some previous work may have inadequately characterized factors related to reanalysis during morphosyntactic processing. Our results show that morphological complexity by itself does not elicit P600 effects. However, in ungrammatical circumstances, overt morphology provides a more robust and reliable cue to morphosyntactic relationships than null affixation.</p></div

Interaction between grammaticality and morphological complexity.

<p>Grand mean ERP waveforms for all four sentence conditions over central parietal and occipital electrodes: grammatical, morphologically simple (black dashed line), grammatical, morphologically complex (black solid line), ungrammatical, morphologically simple (red dashed line), and ungrammatical, morphologically complex (red solid line). Onset of the critical word in the sentence is indicated by the vertical bar. Calibration bar shows 3μVof activity; each tick mark represents 100ms of time. Negative voltage is plotted up.</p

ERP responses to morphologically complex stimuli.

<p>Grand mean ERP waveforms for sentences with morphologically complex, grammatical critical words (black line) and sentences with morphologically complex, ungrammatical critical words (red line). Onset of the critical word in the sentence is indicated by the vertical bar. Calibration bar shows 3μVof activity; each tick mark represents 100ms of time. Negative voltage is plotted up.</p

Example experimental stimuli.

<p>Note: The critical word for ERP averaging is underlined.</p><p>Example experimental stimuli.</p

End-of-sentence judgment task accuracy.

<p>Note: SE = standard error</p><p>End-of-sentence judgment task accuracy.</p

ERP responses to morphologically simple stimuli.

<p>Grand mean ERP waveforms for morphologically simple, grammatical critical words (black line) and sentences with morphologically simple, ungrammatical critical words (red line). Onset of the critical word in the sentence is indicated by the vertical bar. Calibration bar shows 3μVof activity; each tick mark represents 100ms of time. Negative voltage is plotted up.</p