TY - JOUR A1 - Rabovsky, Milena A1 - Schad, Daniel A1 - Abdel Rahman, Rasha T1 - Semantic richness and density effects on language production BT - Electrophysiological and behavioral evidence JF - Journal of experimental psychology : Learning, memory, and cognition N2 - Language production ultimately aims to convey meaning. Yet words differ widely in the richness and density of their semantic representations, and these differences impact conceptual and lexical processes during speech planning. Here, we replicated the recent finding that semantic richness, measured as the number of associated semantic features according to semantic feature production norms, facilitates object naming. In contrast, intercorrelational semantic feature density, measured as the degree of intercorrelation of a concept's features, presumably resulting in the coactivation of closely related concepts, has an inhibitory influence. We replicated the behavioral effects and investigated their relative time course and electrophysiological correlates. Both the facilitatory effect of high semantic richness and the inhibitory influence of high feature density were reflected in an increased posterior positivity starting at about 250 ms, in line with previous reports of posterior positivities in paradigms employing contextual manipulations to induce semantic interference during language production. Furthermore, amplitudes at the same posterior electrode sites were positively correlated with object naming times between about 230 and 380 ms. The observed effects follow naturally from the assumption of conceptual facilitation and simultaneous lexical competition and are difficult to explain by language production theories dismissing lexical competition. KW - picture naming KW - ERPs KW - semantic richness KW - semantic features KW - lexical KW - competition Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000940 SN - 0278-7393 SN - 1939-1285 VL - 47 IS - 3 SP - 508 EP - 517 PB - American Psychological Association CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hilton, Matthew A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Elsner, Birgit T1 - Kinematic boundary cues modulate 12-month-old infants’ segmentation of action sequences BT - an ERP study JF - Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience N2 - Human infants can segment action sequences into their constituent actions already during the first year of life. However, work to date has almost exclusively examined the role of infants' conceptual knowledge of actions and their outcomes in driving this segmentation. The present study examined electrophysiological correlates of infants' processing of lower-level perceptual cues that signal a boundary between two actions of an action sequence. Specifically, we tested the effect of kinematic boundary cues (pre-boundary lengthening and pause) on 12-month-old infants' (N = 27) processing of a sequence of three arbitrary actions, performed by an animated figure. Using the Event-Related Potential (ERP) approach, evidence of a positivity following the onset of the boundary cues was found, in line with previous work that has found an ERP positivity (Closure Positive Shift, CPS) related to boundary processing in auditory stimuli and action sequences in adults. Moreover, an ERP negativity (Negative Central, Nc) indicated that infants' encoding of the post-boundary action was modulated by the presence or absence of prior boundary cues. We therefore conclude that 12-month-old infants are sensitive to lower-level perceptual kinematic boundary cues, which can support segmentation of a continuous stream of movement into individual action units. KW - Action segmentation KW - Kinematic boundary processing KW - ERPs KW - Boundary cues Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107916 SN - 0028-3932 SN - 1873-3514 VL - 159 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ventura-Bort, Carlos A1 - Wirkner, Janine A1 - Wendt, Julia A1 - Hamm, Alfons O. A1 - Weymar, Mathias T1 - Establishment of emotional memories is mediated by vagal nerve activation BT - evidence from noninvasive taVNS JF - The journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience N2 - Emotional memories are better remembered than neutral ones, but the mechanisms leading to this memory bias are not well under-stood in humans yet. Based on animal research, it is suggested that the memory-enhancing effect of emotion is based on central nor-adrenergic release, which is triggered by afferent vagal nerve activation. To test the causal link between vagus nerve activation and emotional memory in humans, we applied continuous noninvasive transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) during exposure to emotional arousing and neutral scenes and tested subsequent, long-term recognition memory after 1 week. We found that taVNS, compared with sham, increased recollection-based memory performance for emotional, but not neutral, material. These findings were complemented by larger recollection-related brain potentials (parietal ERP Old/New effect) during retrieval of emotional scenes encoded under taVNS, compared with sham. Furthermore, brain potentials recorded during encoding also revealed that taVNS facilitated early attentional discrimination between emotional and neutral scenes. Extending animal research, our behavioral and neu-ral findings confirm a modulatory influence of the vagus nerve in emotional memory formation in humans. KW - emotion KW - ERPs KW - memory KW - Old KW - New effect KW - LPP KW - vagus nerve KW - tVNS Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2329-20.2021 SN - 1529-2401 VL - 41 IS - 36 SP - 7636 EP - 7648 PB - Society for Neuroscience CY - Washington, DC ER -