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Producing morphologically complex words: An ERP study with children and adults
- widely studied morphological phenomenon in psycholinguistic research is the plurals-inside-compounds effect in English, which is the avoidance of regular plural modifiers within compounds (e.g., *rats hunter). The current study employs event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the production of plurals-inside-compounds in children and adults. We specifically examined the ERP correlates of producing morphologically complex words in 8-year-olds, 12-year-olds and adults, by recording ERPs during the silent production of compounds with plural or singular modifiers. Results for both children and adults revealed a negativity in response to compounds produced from regular plural forms when compared to compounds formed from irregular plurals, indicating a highly specific brain response to a subtle linguistic contrast. Although children performed behaviourally with an adult-like pattern in the task, we found a broader distribution and a considerably later latency in children's brain potentials than in adults', indicating that evenwidely studied morphological phenomenon in psycholinguistic research is the plurals-inside-compounds effect in English, which is the avoidance of regular plural modifiers within compounds (e.g., *rats hunter). The current study employs event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the production of plurals-inside-compounds in children and adults. We specifically examined the ERP correlates of producing morphologically complex words in 8-year-olds, 12-year-olds and adults, by recording ERPs during the silent production of compounds with plural or singular modifiers. Results for both children and adults revealed a negativity in response to compounds produced from regular plural forms when compared to compounds formed from irregular plurals, indicating a highly specific brain response to a subtle linguistic contrast. Although children performed behaviourally with an adult-like pattern in the task, we found a broader distribution and a considerably later latency in children's brain potentials than in adults', indicating that even in late childhood the brain networks involved in language processing are subject to subtle developmental changes. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.…
Author details: | Mary-Jane BuddORCiD, Silke Paulmann, Christopher Barry, Harald ClahsenORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2014.11.002 |
ISSN: | 1878-9293 |
ISSN: | 1878-9307 |
Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25541272 |
Title of parent work (English): | Developmental cognitive neuroscience : a journal for cognitive, affective and social developmental neuroscience |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Place of publishing: | Oxford |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of first publication: | 2015 |
Publication year: | 2015 |
Release date: | 2017/03/27 |
Tag: | ERPs; Language production; Linguistics; Morphology |
Volume: | 12 |
Number of pages: | 10 |
First page: | 51 |
Last Page: | 60 |
Funding institution: | Leverhulme Trust [F/00213/U]; Alexander-von-Humboldt Professorship |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access |
Institution name at the time of the publication: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Linguistik / Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft |