TY - JOUR A1 - Drummer, Janna-Deborah A1 - van der Meer, Elke A1 - Schaadt, Gesa T1 - Event-related potentials in response to violations of content and temporal event knowledge JF - Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience N2 - Scripts that store knowledge of everyday events are fundamentally important for managing daily routines. Content event knowledge (i.e., knowledge about which events belong to a script) and temporal event knowledge (i.e., knowledge about the chronological order of events in a script) constitute qualitatively different forms of knowledge. However, there is limited information about each distinct process and the time course involved in accessing content and temporal event knowledge. Therefore, we analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to either correctly presented event sequences or event sequences that contained a content or temporal error. We found an N400, which was followed by a posteriorly distributed P600 in response to content errors in event sequences. By contrast, we did not find an N400 but an anteriorly distributed P600 in response to temporal errors in event sequences. Thus, the N400 seems to be elicited as a response to a general mismatch between an event and the established event model. We assume that the expectancy violation of content event knowledge, as indicated by the N400, induces the collapse of the established event model, a process indicated by the posterior P600. The expectancy violation of temporal event knowledge is assumed to induce an attempt to reorganize the event model in working memory, a process indicated by the frontal P600. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. KW - Event model KW - Content event knowledge KW - Temporal event knowledge KW - N400 KW - P600 Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.11.007 SN - 0028-3932 SN - 1873-3514 VL - 80 SP - 47 EP - 55 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Havas, Viktoria A1 - Rodriguez-Fornells, Antoni A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Brain potentials for derivational morphology an ERP study of deadjectival nominalizations in Spanish JF - Brain & language : a journal of the neurobiology of language N2 - 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. KW - Event-related brain potentials KW - N400 KW - P600 KW - Derivational morphology KW - Spanish Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2011.10.008 SN - 0093-934X VL - 120 IS - 3 SP - 332 EP - 344 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lago, Sol A1 - Namyst, Anna A1 - Jäger, Lena Ann A1 - Lau, Ellen T1 - Antecedent access mechanisms in pronoun processing BT - evidence from the N400 JF - Language, cognition and neuroscience N2 - 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. KW - Coreference KW - semantic priming KW - event-related potentials KW - sentence comprehension KW - N400 Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1566561 SN - 2327-3798 SN - 2327-3801 VL - 34 IS - 5 SP - 641 EP - 661 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Leminen, Alina A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Brain potentials to inflected adjectives: Beyond storage and decomposition JF - Brain research : an international multidisciplinary journal devoted to fundamental research in the brain sciences KW - Inflection KW - Morphology KW - Morpho-syntactic feature KW - Lexical-semantics KW - ERP KW - N400 Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2013.10.038 SN - 0006-8993 SN - 1872-6240 VL - 1543 SP - 223 EP - 234 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rabovsky, Milena T1 - Change in a probabilistic representation of meaning can account for N400 effects on articles BT - a neural network model JF - Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience N2 - 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. KW - N400 KW - ERPs KW - prediction KW - neural networks KW - cue validity KW - meaning Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107466 SN - 0028-3932 SN - 1873-3514 VL - 143 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rabovsky, Milena T1 - Change in a probabilistic representation of meaning can account for N400 effects on articles: a neural network model JF - Neuropsychologia N2 - 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. KW - N400 KW - ERPs KW - prediction KW - neural networks KW - cue validity KW - meaning Y1 - 2019 VL - 143 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rabovsky, Milena A1 - McClelland, James L. T1 - Quasi-compositional mapping from form to meaning BT - a neural network-based approach to capturing neural responses during human language comprehension JF - Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London : B, Biological sciences N2 - We argue that natural language can be usefully described as quasi-compositional and we suggest that deep learning-based neural language models bear long-term promise to capture how language conveys meaning. We also note that a successful account of human language processing should explain both the outcome of the comprehension process and the continuous internal processes underlying this performance. These points motivate our discussion of a neural network model of sentence comprehension, the Sentence Gestalt model, which we have used to account for the N400 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP), which tracks meaning processing as it happens in real time. The model, which shares features with recent deep learning-based language models, simulates N400 amplitude as the automatic update of a probabilistic representation of the situation or event described by the sentence, corresponding to a temporal difference learning signal at the level of meaning. We suggest that this process happens relatively automatically, and that sometimes a more-controlled attention-dependent process is necessary for successful comprehension, which may be reflected in the subsequent P600 ERP component. We relate this account to current deep learning models as well as classic linguistic theory, and use it to illustrate a domain general perspective on some specific linguistic operations postulated based on compositional analyses of natural language. This article is part of the theme issue 'Towards mechanistic models of meaning composition'. KW - language KW - meaning KW - event-related brain potentials KW - neural networks KW - N400 KW - P600 Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0313 SN - 0962-8436 SN - 1471-2970 SN - 0080-4622 VL - 375 IS - 1791 PB - Royal Society CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Räling, Romy A1 - Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia A1 - Schröder, Astrid A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - On the influence of typicality and age of acquisition on semantic processing: Diverging evidence from behavioural and ERP responses JF - Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience N2 - Various behavioural studies show that semantic typicality (TYP) and age of acquisition (AOA) of a specific word influence processing time and accuracy during the performance of lexical-semantic tasks. This study examines the influence of TYP and AOA on semantic processing at behavioural (response times and accuracy data) and electrophysiological levels using an auditory category-member-verification task. Reaction time data reveal independent TYP and AOA effects, while in the accuracy data and the event-related potentials predominantly effects of TYP can be found. The present study thus confirms previous findings and extends evidence found in the visual modality to the auditory modality. A modality-independent influence on semantic word processing is manifested. However, with regard to the influence of AOA, the diverging results raise questions on the origin of AOA effects as well as on the interpretation of offline and online data. Hence, results will be discussed against the background of recent theories on N400 correlates in semantic processing. In addition, an argument in favour of a complementary use of research techniques will be made. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. KW - Event-related potentials KW - N400 KW - Semantic typicality KW - Age of acquisition KW - Semantic priming KW - Category verification Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.05.031 SN - 0028-3932 SN - 1873-3514 VL - 75 SP - 186 EP - 200 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Räling, Romy A1 - Schröder, Astrid A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - The origins of age of acquisition and typicality effects: Semantic processing in aphasia and the ageing brain JF - Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience N2 - Age of acquisition (AOA) has frequently been shown to influence response times and accuracy rates in word processing and constitutes a meaningful variable in aphasic language processing, while its origin in the language processing system is still under debate. To find out where AOA originates and whether and how it is related to another important psycholinguistic variable, namely semantic typicality (TYP), we studied healthy, elderly controls and semantically impaired individuals using semantic priming. For this purpose, we collected reaction times and accuracy rates as well as event-related potential data in an auditory category-member-verification task. The present results confirm a semantic origin of TYP, but question the same for AOA while favouring its origin at the phonology-semantics interface. The data are further interpreted in consideration of recent theories of ageing. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. KW - Ageing KW - Aphasia KW - N400 KW - Semantic typicality KW - Age of acquisition Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.04.019 SN - 0028-3932 SN - 1873-3514 VL - 86 SP - 80 EP - 92 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stone, Kate A1 - Nicenboim, Bruno A1 - Vasishth, Shravan A1 - Rösler, Frank T1 - Understanding the effects of constraint and predictability in ERP JF - Neurobiology of Language N2 - Intuitively, strongly constraining contexts should lead to stronger probabilistic representations of sentences in memory. Encountering unexpected words could therefore be expected to trigger costlier shifts in these representations than expected words. However, psycholinguistic measures commonly used to study probabilistic processing, such as the N400 event-related potential (ERP) component, are sensitive to word predictability but not to contextual constraint. Some research suggests that constraint-related processing cost may be measurable via an ERP positivity following the N400, known as the anterior post-N400 positivity (PNP). The PNP is argued to reflect update of a sentence representation and to be distinct from the posterior P600, which reflects conflict detection and reanalysis. However, constraint-related PNP findings are inconsistent. We sought to conceptually replicate Federmeier et al. (2007) and Kuperberg et al. (2020), who observed that the PNP, but not the N400 or the P600, was affected by constraint at unexpected but plausible words. Using a pre-registered design and statistical approach maximising power, we demonstrated a dissociated effect of predictability and constraint: strong evidence for predictability but not constraint in the N400 window, and strong evidence for constraint but not predictability in the later window. However, the constraint effect was consistent with a P600 and not a PNP, suggesting increased conflict between a strong representation and unexpected input rather than greater update of the representation. We conclude that either a simple strong/weak constraint design is not always sufficient to elicit the PNP, or that previous PNP constraint findings could be an artifact of smaller sample size. KW - N400 KW - anterior PNP KW - posterior P600 KW - probabilistic processing KW - constraint KW - predictability KW - entropy Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1162/nol_a_00094 SN - 2641-4368 VL - 4 EP - 2 PB - MIT Press CY - Cambridge, MA, USA ER -