@misc{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 = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {568}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-43323}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-433237}, 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{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{HavasRodriguezFornellsClahsen2012, author = {Havas, Viktoria and Rodriguez-Fornells, Antoni and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Brain potentials for derivational morphology an ERP study of deadjectival nominalizations in Spanish}, series = {Brain \& language : a journal of the neurobiology of language}, volume = {120}, journal = {Brain \& language : a journal of the neurobiology of language}, number = {3}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {San Diego}, issn = {0093-934X}, doi = {10.1016/j.bandl.2011.10.008}, pages = {332 -- 344}, year = {2012}, abstract = {This study investigates brain potentials to derived word forms in Spanish. Two experiments were performed on derived nominals that differ in terms of their productivity and semantic properties but are otherwise similar, an acceptability judgment task and a reading experiment using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in which correctly and incorrectly formed derived words were presented in sentence contexts. The first experiment indicated productivity differences between the different nominalization processes in Spanish. The second experiment yielded a pattern of ERP responses that differed from both the familiar lexical-semantic and grammatical ERP effects. Violations of derivational morphology elicited an increased N400 component plus a late positivity (P600), unlike gender-agreement violations, which produced the biphasic LAN/P600 ERP pattern known from previous studies of morpho-syntactic violations. We conclude that the recognition of derived word forms engages both word-level (lexical-semantic) and decompositional (morpheme-based) processes.}, language = {en} } @article{LeminenClahsen2014, author = {Leminen, Alina and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Brain potentials to inflected adjectives: Beyond storage and decomposition}, series = {Brain research : an international multidisciplinary journal devoted to fundamental research in the brain sciences}, volume = {1543}, journal = {Brain research : an international multidisciplinary journal devoted to fundamental research in the brain sciences}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0006-8993}, doi = {10.1016/j.brainres.2013.10.038}, pages = {223 -- 234}, year = {2014}, language = {en} } @article{Rabovsky2020, author = {Rabovsky, Milena}, title = {Change in a probabilistic representation of meaning can account for N400 effects on articles}, series = {Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience}, volume = {143}, journal = {Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0028-3932}, doi = {10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107466}, pages = {7}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Increased N400 amplitudes on indefinite articles (a/an) incompatible with expected nouns have been initially taken as strong evidence for probabilistic pre-activation of phonological word forms, and recently been intensely debated because they have been difficult to replicate. Here, these effects are simulated using a neural network model of sentence comprehension that we previously used to simulate a broad range of empirical N400 effects. The model produces the effects when the cue validity of the articles concerning upcoming noun meaning in the learning environment is high, but fails to produce the effects when the cue validity of the articles is low due to adjectives presented between articles and nouns during training. These simulations provide insight into one of the factors potentially contributing to the small size of the effects in empirical studies and generate predictions for cross-linguistic differences in article induced N400 effects based on articles' cue validity. The model accounts for article induced N400 effects without assuming pre-activation of word forms, and instead simulates these effects as the stimulus-induced change in a probabilistic representation of meaning corresponding to an implicit semantic prediction error.}, language = {en} } @article{Rabovsky2020, author = {Rabovsky, Milena}, title = {Change in a probabilistic representation of meaning can account for N400 effects on articles: a neural network model}, series = {Neuropsychologia}, volume = {143}, journal = {Neuropsychologia}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, pages = {7}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Increased N400 amplitudes on indefinite articles (a/an) incompatible with expected nouns have been initially taken as strong evidence for probabilistic pre-activation of phonological word forms, and recently been intensely debated because they have been difficult to replicate. Here, these effects are simulated using a neural network model of sentence comprehension that we previously used to simulate a broad range of empirical N400 effects. The model produces the effects when the cue validity of the articles concerning upcoming noun meaning in the learning environment is high, but fails to produce the effects when the cue validity of the articles is low due to adjectives presented between articles and nouns during training. These simulations provide insight into one of the factors potentially contributing to the small size of the effects in empirical studies and generate predictions for cross-linguistic differences in article induced N400 effects based on articles' cue validity. The model accounts for article induced N400 effects without assuming pre-activation of word forms, and instead simulates these effects as the stimulus-induced change in a probabilistic representation of meaning corresponding to an implicit semantic prediction error.}, language = {en} } @misc{Rabovsky2020, author = {Rabovsky, Milena}, title = {Change in a probabilistic representation of meaning can account for N400 effects on articles: a neural network model}, series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-52698}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-526988}, pages = {9}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Increased N400 amplitudes on indefinite articles (a/an) incompatible with expected nouns have been initially taken as strong evidence for probabilistic pre-activation of phonological word forms, and recently been intensely debated because they have been difficult to replicate. Here, these effects are simulated using a neural network model of sentence comprehension that we previously used to simulate a broad range of empirical N400 effects. The model produces the effects when the cue validity of the articles concerning upcoming noun meaning in the learning environment is high, but fails to produce the effects when the cue validity of the articles is low due to adjectives presented between articles and nouns during training. These simulations provide insight into one of the factors potentially contributing to the small size of the effects in empirical studies and generate predictions for cross-linguistic differences in article induced N400 effects based on articles' cue validity. The model accounts for article induced N400 effects without assuming pre-activation of word forms, and instead simulates these effects as the stimulus-induced change in a probabilistic representation of meaning corresponding to an implicit semantic prediction error.}, language = {en} } @misc{AllefeldFrischSchlesewsky2005, author = {Allefeld, Carsten and Frisch, Stefan and Schlesewsky, Matthias}, title = {Detection of early cognitive processing by event-related phase synchronization analysis}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-20126}, year = {2005}, abstract = {In order to investigate the temporal characteristics of cognitive processing, we apply multivariate phase synchronization analysis to event-related potentials. The experimental design combines a semantic incongruity in a sentence context with a physical mismatch (color change). In the ERP average, these result in an N400 component and a P300-like positivity, respectively. The synchronization analysis shows an effect of global desynchronization in the theta band around 288ms after stimulus presentation for the semantic incongruity, while the physical mismatch elicits an increase of global synchronization in the alpha band around 204ms. Both of these effects clearly precede those in the ERP average. Moreover, the delay between synchronization effect and ERP component correlates with the complexity of the cognitive processes.}, language = {en} } @article{ConradUllrichSchmidtkeetal.2022, author = {Conrad, Markus and Ullrich, Susann and Schmidtke, David S. and Kotz, Sonja A.}, title = {ERPs reveal an iconic relation between sublexical phonology and affective meaning}, series = {Cognition : international journal of cognitive science}, volume = {226}, journal = {Cognition : international journal of cognitive science}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0010-0277}, doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105182}, pages = {8}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Classical linguistic theory assumes that formal aspects, like sound, are not internally related to the meaning of words. However, recent research suggests language might code affective meaning such as threat and alert sublexically. Positing affective phonological iconicity as a systematic organization principle of the German lexicon, we calculated sublexical affective values for sub-syllabic phonological word segments from a large-scale affective lexical German database by averaging valence and arousal ratings of all words any phonological segment appears in. We tested word stimuli with either consistent or inconsistent mappings between lexical affective meaning and sublexical affective values (negative-valence/high-arousal vs. neutral-valence/lowarousal) in an EEG visual-lexical-decision task. A mismatch between sublexical and lexical affective values elicited an increased N400 response. These results reveal that systematic affective phonological iconicity - extracted from the lexicon - impacts the extraction of lexical word meaning during reading.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Hodapp2024, author = {Hodapp, Alice}, title = {Error-based learning in predictive language processing at the level of meaning}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-65717}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-657179}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {X, 68}, year = {2024}, abstract = {Prediction is often regarded as a central and domain-general aspect of cognition. This proposal extends to language, where predictive processing might enable the comprehension of rapidly unfolding input by anticipating upcoming words or their semantic features. To make these predictions, the brain needs to form a representation of the predictive patterns in the environment. Predictive processing theories suggest a continuous learning process that is driven by prediction errors, but much is still to be learned about this mechanism in language comprehension. This thesis therefore combined three electroencephalography (EEG) experiments to explore the relationship between prediction and implicit learning at the level of meaning. Results from Study 1 support the assumption that the brain constantly infers und updates probabilistic representations of the semantic context, potentially across multiple levels of complexity. N400 and P600 brain potentials could be predicted by semantic surprise based on a probabilistic estimate of previous exposure and a more complex probability representation, respectively. Subsequent work investigated the influence of prediction errors on the update of semantic predictions during sentence comprehension. In line with error-based learning, unexpected sentence continuations in Study 2 ¬- characterized by large N400 amplitudes ¬- were associated with increased implicit memory compared to expected continuations. Further, Study 3 indicates that prediction errors not only strengthen the representation of the unexpected word, but also update specific predictions made from the respective sentence context. The study additionally provides initial evidence that the amount of unpredicted information as reflected in N400 amplitudes drives this update of predictions, irrespective of the strength of the original incorrect prediction. Together, these results support a central assumption of predictive processing theories: A probabilistic predictive representation at the level of meaning that is updated by prediction errors. They further propose the N400 ERP component as a possible learning signal. The results also emphasize the need for further research regarding the role of the late positive ERP components in error-based learning. The continuous error-based adaptation described in this thesis allows the brain to improve its predictive representation with the aim to make better predictions in the future.}, language = {en} }