TY - JOUR A1 - Passow, Susanne A1 - Westerhausen, Rene A1 - Hugdahl, Kenneth A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Heekeren, Hauke R. A1 - Lindenberger, Ulman A1 - Li, Shu-Chen T1 - Electrophysiological correlates of adult age differences in attentional control of auditory processing JF - Cerebral cortex N2 - In addition to sensory decline, age-related losses in auditory perception also reflect impairments in attentional modulation of perceptual saliency. Using an attention and intensity-modulated dichotic listening paradigm, we investigated electrophysiological correlates of processing conflicts between attentional focus and perceptual saliency in 25 younger and 26 older adults. Participants were instructed to attend to the right or left ear, and perceptual saliency was manipulated by varying the intensities of both ears. Attentional control demand was higher in conditions when attentional focus and perceptual saliency favored opposing ears than in conditions without such conflicts. Relative to younger adults, older adults modulated their attention less flexibly and were more influenced by perceptual saliency. Our results show, for the first time, that in younger adults a late negativity in the event-related potential (ERP) at fronto-central and parietal electrodes was sensitive to perceptual-attentional conflicts during auditory processing (N450 modulation effect). Crucially, the magnitude of the N450 modulation effect correlated positively with task performance. In line with lower attentional flexibility, the ERP waveforms of older adults showed absence of the late negativity and the modulation effect. This suggests that aging compromises the activation of the frontoparietal attentional network when processing the competing and conflicting auditory information. KW - aging KW - attention KW - auditory perception KW - conflict monitoring KW - ERP Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhs306 SN - 1047-3211 SN - 1460-2199 VL - 24 IS - 1 SP - 249 EP - 260 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Cary 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 - Spalek, Katharina A1 - Gotzner, Nicole A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - Not only the apples BT - Focus sensitive particles improve memory for information-structural alternatives JF - Journal of memory and language : JML N2 - Focus sensitive particles highlight the relevance of contextual alternatives for the interpretation of a sentence. Two experiments tested whether this leads to better encoding and therefore, ultimately, better recall of focus alternatives. Participants were presented with auditory stimuli that introduced a set of elements ("context sentence") and continued in three different versions: the critical sentences either contained the exclusive particle nur ("only"), the inclusive particle sogar ("even"), or no particle (control condition). After being exposed to blocks of ten trials, participants were asked to recall the elements in the context sentence. The results show that both particles enhanced memory performance for the alternatives to the focused element, relative to the control condition. The results support the assumption that information-structural alternatives are better encoded in memory in the presence of a focus sensitive particle. KW - Information structure KW - Focus particles KW - Alternative set KW - Delayed recall KW - Memory Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2013.09.001 SN - 0749-596X SN - 1096-0821 VL - 70 SP - 68 EP - 84 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - GEN A1 - Burmester, Juliane A1 - Sauermann, Antje A1 - Spalek, Katharina A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - Sensitivity to salience BT - linguistic vs. visual cues affect sentence processing and pronoun resolution T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Sentence comprehension is optimised by indicating entities as salient through linguistic (i.e., information-structural) or visual means. We compare how salience of a depicted referent due to a linguistic (i.e., topic status) or visual cue (i.e., a virtual person’s gaze shift) modulates sentence comprehension in German. We investigated processing of sentences with varying word order and pronoun resolution by means of self-paced reading and an antecedent choice task, respectively. Our results show that linguistic as well as visual salience cues immediately speeded up reading times of sentences mentioning the salient referent first. In contrast, for pronoun resolution, linguistic and visual cues modulated antecedent choice preferences less congruently. In sum, our findings speak in favour of a significant impact of linguistic and visual salience cues on sentence comprehension, substantiating that salient information delivered via language as well as the visual environment is integrated in the current mental representation of the discourse. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 454 KW - topic status KW - eye gaze KW - visual context KW - reading times KW - antecedent choice Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-412838 IS - 454 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Gotzner, Nicole A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Spalek, Katharina T1 - The impact of focus particles on the recognition and rejection of contrastive alternatives T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - The semantics of focus particles like only requires a set of alternatives (Rooth, 1992). In two experiments, we investigated the impact of such particles on the retrieval of alternatives that are mentioned in the prior context or unmentioned. The first experiment used a probe recognition task and showed that focus particles interfere with the recognition of mentioned alternatives and the rejection of unmentioned alternatives relative to a condition without a particle. A second lexical decision experiment demonstrated priming effects for mentioned and unmentioned alternatives (compared with an unrelated condition) while focus particles caused additional interference effects. Overall, our results indicate that focus particles trigger an active search for alternatives and lead to a competition between mentioned alternatives, unmentioned alternatives, and the focused element. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 517 KW - focus particles KW - alternative-set semantics KW - probe recognition task KW - lexical decision task KW - competitive inhibition Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-413420 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 517 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Burmester, Juliane A1 - Spalek, Katharina A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - Context updating during sentence comprehension: The effect of aboutness topic JF - Brain & language : a journal of the neurobiology of language KW - Information structure KW - Discourse context KW - Aboutness topic KW - Sentence processing KW - Word order variation KW - ERP KW - Late positivity KW - Syntax-Discourse Model Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2014.08.001 SN - 0093-934X SN - 1090-2155 VL - 137 SP - 62 EP - 76 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Heekeren, Hauke R. A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Schmidt, Helge A1 - Prehn, Kristin A1 - Schwintowski, Hans-Peter A1 - Villringer, Arno T1 - Influence of bodily harm on neural correlates of semantic and moral decision-making N2 - Moral decision-making is central to everyday social life because the evaluation of the actions of another agent or our own actions made with respect to the norms and values guides our behavior in a community. There is previous evidence that the presence of bodily harm-even if irrelevant for a decision-may affect the decision-making, process. While recent neuroimaging studies found a common neural substrate of moral decision-making, the role of bodily harm has not been systematically studied so far. Here we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate how behavioral and neural correlates of semantic and moral decision-making processes are modulated by the presence of direct bodily harm or violence in the stimuli. Twelve participants made moral and semantic decisions about sentences describing actions of agents that either contained bodily harm or not and that could easily be judged as being good or bad or correct/incorrect, respectively. During moral and semantic decision-making, the presence of bodily harm resulted in faster response times (RT) and weaker activity in the temporal poles relative to trials devoid of bodily harm/violence, indicating a processing advantage and reduced processing depth for violence-related linguistic stimuli. Notably, there was no increase in activity in the amygdala and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) in response to trials containing bodily harm. These findings might be a correlate of limited generation of the semantic and emotional context in the anterior temporal poles during the evaluation of actions of another agent related to violence that is made with respect to the norms and values guiding our behavior in a community. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved Y1 - 2005 SN - 1053-8119 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mell, Thomas A1 - Heekeren, Hauke R. A1 - Marschner, Alexander A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Villringer, Arno A1 - Reischies, Friedel M. T1 - Effect of aging on stimulus-reward association learning N2 - The flexible learning of stimulus-reward associations when required by situational context is essential for everyday behavior. Older adults experience a progressive decline in several cognitive functions and show deficiencies in neuropsychological tasks requiring flexible adaptation to external feedback, which could be related to impairments in reward association learning. To study the effect of aging on stimulus-reward association learning 20 young and 20 older adults performed a probabilistic object reversal task (pORT) along with a battery of tests assessing executive functions and general intellectual abilities. The pORT requires learning and reversing associations between actions and their outcomes. Older participants collected fewer points, needed more trials to reach the learning criterion, and completed less blocks successfully compared to young adults. This difference remained statistically significant after correcting for the age effect of other tests assessing executive functions. This suggests that there is an age-related difference in reward association learning as measured using the pORT, which is not closely related to other executive functions with respect to the age effect. In human aging, structural alterations of reward detecting structures and functional changes of the dopaminergic as well as the serotonergic system might contribute to the deficit in reward association learning observed in this study. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved Y1 - 2005 SN - 0028-3932 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Heekeren, Hauke R. A1 - Burchert, Frank A1 - Heinemann, Steffi A1 - De Bleser, Ria A1 - Villringer, Arno T1 - Neural correlates of syntactic transformations N2 - Many agrammatic aphasics have a specific syntactic comprehension deficit involving processing syntactic transformations. It has been proposed that this deficit is due to a dysfunction of Broca's area, an area that is thought to be critical for comprehension of complex transformed sentences. The goal of this study was to investigate the role of Broca's area in processing canonical and non-canonical sentences in healthy subjects. The sentences were presented auditorily and were controlled for task difficulty. Subjects were asked to judge the grammaticality of the sentences while their brain activity was monitored using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. Processing both kinds of sentences resulted in activation of language-related brain regions. Comparison of non-canonical and canonical sentences showed greater activation in bilateral temporal regions; a greater activation of Broca's area in processing antecedent-gap relations was not found. Moreover, the posterior part of Broca's area was conjointly activated by both sentence conditions. Broca's area is thus involved in general syntactic processing as required by grammaticality judgments and does not seem to have a specific role in processing syntactic transformations. (C) 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc Y1 - 2004 UR - http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/38751/home SN - 1065-9471 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Burchert, Frank A1 - Heekeren, Hauke R. A1 - De Bleser, Ria A1 - Villringer, Arno T1 - Grammaticality judgments on sentences with and without movement of phrasal constituents : an event-related fMRI study Y1 - 2003 UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09116044 SN - 0911-6044 ER -