@article{EiserbeckEngeRabovskyetal.2022, author = {Eiserbeck, Anna and Enge, Alexander and Rabovsky, Milena and Abdel Rahman, Rasha}, title = {Electrophysiological chronometry of graded consciousness during the attentional blink}, series = {Cerebral cortex}, volume = {32}, journal = {Cerebral cortex}, number = {6}, publisher = {Oxford University Press}, address = {New York, NY}, issn = {1047-3211}, doi = {10.1093/cercor/bhab289}, pages = {1244 -- 1259}, year = {2022}, abstract = {One of the ongoing debates about visual consciousness is whether it can be considered as an all-or-none or a graded phenomenon. While there is increasing evidence for the existence of graded states of conscious awareness based on paradigms such as visual masking, only little and mixed evidence is available for the attentional blink paradigm, specifically in regard to electrophysiological measures. Thereby, the all-or-none pattern reported in some attentional blink studies might have originated from specifics of the experimental design, suggesting the need to examine the generalizability of results. In the present event-related potential (ERP) study (N = 32), visual awareness of T2 face targets was assessed via subjective visibility ratings on a perceptual awareness scale in combination with ERPs time-locked to T2 onset (components P1, N1, N2, and P3). Furthermore, a classification task preceding visibility ratings allowed to track task performance. The behavioral results indicate a graded rather than an all-or-none pattern of visual awareness. Corresponding graded differences in the N1, N2, and P3 components were observed for the comparison of visibility levels. These findings suggest that conscious perception during the attentional blink can occur in a graded fashion.}, language = {en} } @article{FuhrmeisterMadecLorenzetal.2022, author = {Fuhrmeister, Pamela and Madec, Sylvain and Lorenz, Antje and Elbuy, Shereen and B{\"u}rki Foschini, Audrey Damaris}, title = {Behavioural and EEG evidence for inter-individual variability in late encoding stages of word production}, series = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, volume = {37}, journal = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, number = {7}, publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Abingdon}, issn = {2327-3798}, doi = {10.1080/23273798.2022.2030483}, pages = {902 -- 924}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Individuals differ in the time needed to name a picture. This contribution asks whether this inter-individual variability emerges in earlier stages of word production (e.g. lexical selection) or later stages (e.g. articulation) and examines the consequences of this variability for EEG group results. We measured participants' (N = 45) naming latencies and continuous EEG in a picture-word interference task and naming latencies in a delayed naming task. Inter-individual variability in naming latencies in immediate naming (in contrast with inter-item variability) was not larger than the variability in the delayed task, suggesting that some variability in immediate naming originates in later stages of word production. EEG data complemented this interpretation: Differences between relatively fast vs. slow speakers emerged in response-aligned analyses in a time window close to the vocal response. We additionally present a method to assess the generalisability of the timing of effects across participants based on random sampling.}, language = {en} } @article{VenturaBortDolcosWendtetal.2017, author = {Ventura-Bort, Carlos and Dolcos, Florin and Wendt, Julia and Wirkner, Janine and Hamm, Alfons O. and Weymar, Mathias}, title = {Item and source memory for emotional associates is mediated by different retrieval processes}, series = {Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience}, volume = {145}, journal = {Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0028-3932}, doi = {10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.12.015}, pages = {11}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Recent event-related potential (ERP) data showed that neutral objects encoded in emotional background pictures were better remembered than objects encoded in neutral contexts, when recognition memory was tested one week later. In the present study, we investigated whether this long-term memory advantage for items is also associated with correct memory for contextual source details. Furthermore, we were interested in the possibly dissociable contribution of familiarity and recollection processes (using a Remember/Know procedure). The results revealed that item memory performance was mainly driven by the subjective experience of familiarity, irrespective of whether the objects were previously encoded in emotional or neutral contexts. Correct source memory for the associated background picture, however, was driven by recollection and enhanced when the content was emotional. In ERPs, correctly recognized old objects evoked frontal ERP Old/New effects (300-500 ms), irrespective of context category. As in our previous study (Ventura-Bort et al., 2016b), retrieval for objects from emotional contexts was associated with larger parietal Old/New differences (600-800 ms), indicating stronger involvement of recollection. Thus, the results suggest a stronger contribution of recollection-based retrieval to item and contextual background source memory for neutral information associated with an emotional event.}, language = {en} } @article{HolzgrefeLangWellmannHoehleetal.2018, author = {Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia and Wellmann, Caroline and H{\"o}hle, Barbara and Wartenburger, Isabell}, title = {Infants' Processing of Prosodic Cues}, series = {Language and speech}, volume = {61}, journal = {Language and speech}, number = {1}, publisher = {Sage Publ.}, address = {London}, issn = {0023-8309}, doi = {10.1177/0023830917730590}, pages = {153 -- 169}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Infants as young as six months are sensitive to prosodic phrase boundaries marked by three acoustic cues: pitch change, final lengthening, and pause. Behavioral studies suggest that a language-specific weighting of these cues develops during the first year of life; recent work on German revealed that eight-month-olds, unlike six-month-olds, are capable of perceiving a prosodic boundary on the basis of pitch change and final lengthening only. The present study uses Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neuro-cognitive development of prosodic cue perception in German-learning infants. In adults' ERPs, prosodic boundary perception is clearly reflected by the so-called Closure Positive Shift (CPS). To date, there is mixed evidence on whether an infant CPS exists that signals early prosodic cue perception, or whether the CPS emerges only later—the latter implying that infantile brain responses to prosodic boundaries reflect acoustic, low-level pause detection. We presented six- and eight-month-olds with stimuli containing either no boundary cues, only a pitch cue, or a combination of both pitch change and final lengthening. For both age groups, responses to the former two conditions did not differ, while brain responses to prosodic boundaries cued by pitch change and final lengthening showed a positivity that we interpret as a CPS-like infant ERP component. This hints at an early sensitivity to prosodic boundaries that cannot exclusively be based on pause detection. Instead, infants' brain responses indicate an early ability to exploit subtle, relational prosodic cues in speech perception—presumably even earlier than could be concluded from previous behavioral results.}, language = {en} } @article{LischkeJungeHammetal.2018, author = {Lischke, Alexander and Junge, Martin and Hamm, Alfons O. and Weymar, Mathias}, title = {Enhanced processing of untrustworthiness in natural faces with neutral expressions}, series = {Emotion : a new journal from the American Psychological Association}, volume = {18}, journal = {Emotion : a new journal from the American Psychological Association}, number = {2}, publisher = {American Psychological Association}, address = {Washington}, issn = {1528-3542}, doi = {10.1037/emo0000318}, pages = {181 -- 189}, year = {2018}, abstract = {During social interactions, individuals rapidly and automatically judge others' trustworthiness on the basis of subtle facial cues. To investigate the behavioral and neural correlates of these judgments, we conducted 2 studies: 1 study for the construction and evaluation of a set of natural faces differing in trustworthiness (Study 1: n = 30) and another study for the investigation of event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to this set of natural faces (Study 2: n = 30). Participants of both studies provided highly reliable and nearly identical trustworthiness ratings for the selected faces, supporting the notion that the discrimination of trustworthy and untrustworthy faces depends on distinct facial cues. These cues appear to be processed in an automatic and bottom-up-driven fashion because the free viewing of these faces was sufficient to elicit trustworthiness-related differences in late positive potentials (LPPs) as indicated by larger amplitudes to untrustworthy as compared with trustworthy faces. Taken together, these findings suggest that natural faces contain distinct cues that are automatically and rapidly processed to facilitate the discrimination of untrustworthy and trustworthy faces across various contexts, presumably by enhancing the elaborative processing of untrustworthy as compared with trustworthy faces. (}, language = {en} } @article{LagoNamystJaegeretal.2019, author = {Lago, Sol and Namyst, Anna and J{\"a}ger, Lena Ann and Lau, Ellen}, title = {Antecedent access mechanisms in pronoun processing}, series = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, volume = {34}, journal = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, number = {5}, publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Abingdon}, issn = {2327-3798}, doi = {10.1080/23273798.2019.1566561}, pages = {641 -- 661}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Previous cross-modal priming studies showed that lexical decisions to words after a pronoun were facilitated when these words were semantically related to the pronoun's antecedent. These studies suggested that semantic priming effectively measured antecedent retrieval during coreference. We examined whether these effects extended to implicit reading comprehension using the N400 response. The results of three experiments did not yield strong evidence of semantic facilitation due to coreference. Further, the comparison with two additional experiments showed that N400 facilitation effects were reduced in sentences (vs. word pair paradigms) and were modulated by the case morphology of the prime word. We propose that priming effects in cross-modal experiments may have resulted from task-related strategies. More generally, the impact of sentence context and morphological information on priming effects suggests that they may depend on the extent to which the upcoming input is predicted, rather than automatic spreading activation between semantically related words.}, language = {en} } @article{HolzgrefeLangWellmannPetroneetal.2013, author = {Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia and Wellmann, Caroline and Petrone, Caterina and Truckenbrodt, Hubert and H{\"o}hle, Barbara and Wartenburger, Isabell}, title = {Brain response to prosodic boundary cues depends on boundary position}, series = {Frontiers in psychology}, volume = {4}, journal = {Frontiers in psychology}, number = {28}, publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00421}, pages = {14}, year = {2013}, abstract = {Prosodic information is crucial for spoken language comprehension and especially for syntactic parsing, because prosodic cues guide the hearer's syntactic analysis. The time course and mechanisms of this interplay of prosody and syntax are not yet well-understood. In particular, there is an ongoing debate whether local prosodic cues are taken into account automatically or whether they are processed in relation to the global prosodic context in which they appear. The present study explores whether the perception of a prosodic boundary is affected by its position within an utterance. In an event-related potential (PRP) study we tested if the brain response evoked by the prosodic boundary differs when the boundary occurs early in a list of three names connected by conjunctions (i.e., after the first name) as compared to later in the utterance (i.e., after the second name). A closure positive shift (CPS)-marking the processing of a prosodic phrase boundary-was elicited for stimuli with a late boundary, but not for stimuli with an early boundary. This result is further evidence for an immediate integration of prosodic information into the parsing of an utterance. In addition, it shows that the processing of prosodic boundary cues depends on the previously processed information from the preceding prosodic context.}, language = {en} }