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What is the connection between the cultural evolution of a language and the rapid processing response to that language in the brains of individual learners? In an iterated communication study that was conducted previously, participants were asked to communicate temporal concepts such as "tomorrow," "day after," "year," and "past" using vertical movements recorded on a touch screen. Over time, participants developed simple artificial 'languages' that used space metaphorically to communicate in nuanced ways about time. Some conventions appeared rapidly and universally (e.g., using larger vertical movements to convey greater temporal durations). Other conventions required extensive social interaction and exhibited idiosyncratic variation (e.g., using vertical location to convey past or future). Here we investigate whether the brain's response during acquisition of such a language reflects the process by which the language's conventions originally evolved. We recorded participants' EEG as they learned one of these artificial space-time languages. Overall, the brain response to this artificial communication system was language-like, with, for instance, violations to the system's conventions eliciting an N400-like component. Over the course of learning, participants' brain responses developed in ways that paralleled the process by which the language had originally evolved, with early neural sensitivity to violations of a rapidly-evolving universal convention, and slowly developing neural sensitivity to an idiosyncratic convention that required slow social negotiation to emerge. This study opens up exciting avenues of future work to disentangle how neural biases influence learning and transmission in the emergence of structure in language.

In recent years, several ERP studies have investigated whether the early computation of agreement is permeable to the emotional content of words. Some studies have reported interactive effects of grammaticality and emotionality in the left anterior negativity (LAN) component, while others have failed to replicate these results. Furthermore, novel findings suggest that grammatical processing can elicit different neural patterns across individuals. In this study, we aim to investigate whether the interaction between grammaticality and emotionality is restricted to participants with a specific neural profile. Sixty‐one female native speakers of Spanish performed an agreement judgment task in noun phrases composed of a determiner, a noun, and an unpleasant or neutral adjective that could agree or disagree in gender with the preceding noun. Our results support the existence of two different brain profiles: negative and positive dominance (individuals showing either larger LAN or larger P600 amplitudes in ungrammatical stimuli than in grammatical ones, respectively). Interestingly, the neural pattern of these two groups diverged at different points along the time course. Thus, the negative dominance group showed grammaticality effects as early as 200 ms, along with parallel and autonomous processing of grammaticality and emotionality at the LAN/N400 time window. Instead, for the positive dominance group an early interaction was found at around 200 ms, evidencing a grammaticality effect that emerged only for unpleasant words. Our findings confirm the role of individual differences in the interplay between grammar and emotion at the neural level and call for the inclusion of this perspective in studies on syntactic processing. Our results suggest that the interaction between morphosyntactic and affective processing may be modulated by individual differences at the neural level. While some individuals are able to successfully process grammar and emotion independently, others exhibit a detrimental effect of unpleasantness on grammatical processing, challenging the classical idea of a universal and strictly modular syntactic processor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • N400 and P600 ERPs evoked in adolescents ignoring sentences with semantic errors. • Semantic processing is fundamentally different in passive versus active contexts. • We provide 22 control adolescent high-density electrophysiological BIDs datasets. Language comprehension requires semantic processing of individual words and their context within a sentence. Well-characterized event-related potential (ERP) components (the N400 and late positivity component (LPC/P600)) provide neuromarkers of semantic processing, and are robustly evoked when semantic errors are introduced into sentences. These measures are useful for evaluating semantic processing in clinical populations, but it is not known whether they can be evoked in more severe neurodevelopmental disorders where explicit attention to the sentence inputs cannot be objectively assessed (i.e., when sentences are passively listened to). We evaluated whether N400 and LPC/P600 could be detected in adolescents who were explicitly ignoring sentence inputs. Specifically, it was asked whether explicit attention to spoken inputs was required for semantic processing, or if a degree of automatic processing occurs when the focus of attention is directed elsewhere? High-density ERPs were acquired from twenty-two adolescents (12–17 years), under two experimental conditions: 1. individuals actively determined whether the final word in a sentence was congruent or incongruent with sentence context, or 2. passively listened to background sentences while watching a video. When sentences were ignored, N400 and LPC/P600 were robustly evoked to semantic errors, albeit with reduced amplitudes and protracted/delayed latencies. Statistically distinct topographic distributions during passive versus active paradigms pointed to distinct generator configurations for semantic processing as a function of attention. Covert semantic processing continues in neurotypical adolescents when explicit attention is withdrawn from sentence inputs. As such, this approach could be used to objectively investigate semantic processing in populations with communication deficits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Event concepts of common verbs (e.g. eat, sleep) can be broadly shared across languages, but a given language's rules for subcategorization are largely arbitrary and vary substantially across languages. When subcategorization information does not match between first language (L1) and second language (L2), how does this mismatch impact L2 speakers in real time? We hypothesized that subcategorization knowledge in L1 is particularly difficult for L2 speakers to override online. Event-related potential (ERP) responses were recorded from English sentences that include verbs that were ambitransitive in Mandarin but intransitive in English (* My sister listened the music). While L1 English speakers showed a prominent P600 effect to subcategorization violations, L2 English speakers whose L1 was Mandarin showed some sensitivity in offline responses but not in ERPs. This suggests that computing verb–argument relations, although seemingly one of the basic components of sentence comprehension, in fact requires accessing lexical syntax which may be vulnerable to L1 interference in L2. However, our exploratory analysis showed that more native-like behavioral accuracy was associated with a more native-like P600 effect, suggesting that, with enough experience, L2 speakers can ultimately overcome this interference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many studies document the role of propositional truth-value in human psychological reading behavior, there is a relative paucity of research examining the role of differential propositional truth-value in processing Chinese counterfactual conditionals. This study is to investigate the role of differential propositional value in processing Chinese counterfactual conditionals by means of ERPs (event-related potentials). The study is based on comprehending two types of Chinese counterfactual conditionals, which is propositional truth value introduced by two different markers of conditional conjunctions in the protasis and apodosis, such as true counterfactual conditional markers jiaru (if) & jiu (so) in the sentence wo xiang yu jiaru you tui jiu keyi zai shuixia zhixi (I think if fish had legs so they could stifle under water), and false counterfactual conditional markers ruguo (if) & namo (then) in the sentence wo xiang gou ruguo you lin namo keyi zai shuixia huxi (I think if dogs had scales, then they could breathe under water). Two counterfactual propositional values (i.e. true and false propositional values) are constructed through manipulating sentence counterfactuality between the true and false counterfactual conditional markers in the protasis and the apodosis. Twenty-four full-time Chinese college students participated in the ERP study. The results demonstrated that processing the true counterfactual propositional sentences with conditional markers jiaru (if) & jiu (so) elicited the N400 effect relative to false propositional sentences with conditional markers ruguo (if) & namo (then). Moreover, the counterfactual sentences with true propositional conditions varied from the elicitation of the N400 effect in the protasis and absence of the N400 effect in the apodosis, showing that semantic roles may gradually disappear under the impact of truth value of propositional counterfactual condition, and/or the roles of semantic anomaly was eliminated in the accumulated sentence processing. While for the false counterfactual conditional sentences, elicitations of P300 in the protasis and robust N400 effect in the apodosis were shown, indicating the increasing semantic role in the processing. Interestingly, there was the absence of the P600 effect for processing sentences with syntactic violation, suggesting little extra syntactic cost in processing sentences with false propositional condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psycholinguistic studies using the event‐related brain potential (ERP) technique have found both N400 and P600 effects for gender stereotype violations. The finding of a P600 effect for this type of world knowledge violation is surprizing given that this component is traditionally associated with syntactic violations. In this paper, we set out to systematically analyse design‐ and task patterns of ERP studies investigating gender stereotype violations. Based on our review, we propose a scheme that predicts a P600 effect for gender stereotype violations for stimuli comprising entire sentences, and specifically when the gender stereotype serves to establish coherence in inferences (i.e., expecting a specific referent gender or a stereotype‐appropriate behaviour of the sentence subject based on the gender stereotype information). We predict an N400 effect for gender stereotype information that does not serve to establish coherence in inferences, as well as in priming paradigms. By extension, our predictive scheme suggests that the N400 may reflect a hybrid process of semantic retrieval and integration, while the P600 may reflect a cognitive process of error monitoring, and mental revision. Our study can aid in the interpretation of previous findings and inform future studies investigating gender stereotyping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past, research on the cognitive neural mechanism of second language (L2) learners’ processing time information has focused on Indo-European languages. It has also focused on the temporal category expressed by morphological changes. However, there has been a lack of research on L2 learners’ various time coding means, especially for Mandarin, which lacks morphological changes. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we investigated the cognitive neural mechanism of L2 learners with native Indonesian background in processing two time coding means (time adverbs and aspect markers) in Chinese. Indonesian has time adverb encoding time information similar to that of Chinese, but there are no aspect markers similar to Chinese in Indonesian. We measured ERPs time locked to the time adverb “曾经 (cengjing)” and the aspect marker “verb + 过(verb + guo)” in two different conditions, i.e., a control condition (the correct sentence) and a temporal information violation. The experimental results showed that the native speaker group induced the biphasic N400-P600 effect under the condition of time adverb violation, and induced P600 under the condition of the aspect marker “verb + 过(verb + guo)” violation. Indonesian L2 learners of Chinese only elicited P600 for the violation of time adverbs, and there was no statistically significant N400 similar to that of Chinese native speakers. In the case of aspect marker violation, we observed no significant ERPs component for the Indonesian L2 learners of Chinese. Both groups of subjects induced elicited a widely distributed and sustained negativity on the post-critical words after “verb + 过(verb + guo)” and “曾经(cengjing)”. This showed that the neural mechanism of Indonesian L2 learners of Chinese processing Chinese time coding differs from that of Chinese native speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was conducted with the aim of exploring the general parsing mechanisms involved in processing different kinds of dependency relations, namely verb agreement with subjects versus objects in Punjabi, an SOV Indo-Aryan language. Event related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded as twenty-five native Punjabi speakers read transitive sentences. Critical stimuli were either fully acceptable as regards verb agreement, or alternatively violated gender agreement with the subject or object. A linear mixed-models analysis confirmed a P600 effect at the position of the verb for all violations, regardless of whether subject or object agreement was violated. These results thus suggest that an identical mechanism is involved in gender agreement computation in Punjabi regardless of whether the agreement is with the subject or the object argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: It is broadly acknowledged that children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) show verb-related limitations. While most previous studies have focused on tense, the mastery of lexical aspect—particularly telicity—has not been the primary focus of much research. Lexical aspect refers to whether an action has a defined endpoint (telic verbs) or not (atelic verbs). Objective: This study investigates the effect of telicity on verb recognition in Chilean children with DLD compared to their typically developing (TD) peers using the Event-Related Potential (ERP) technique. Method: The research design is a mixed factorial design with between-group factors of 2 (DLD/TD) and within-group factors of 2 (telic/atelic verbs) and 2 (coherent/incoherent sentences). The participants were 36 school-aged children (18 DLD, 18 TD) aged 7 to 7 years and 11 months. The task required subjects to listen to sentences that either matched or did not match an action in a video, with sentences including telic or atelic verbs. Results: The study found notable differences between groups in how they processed verbs (N400 and post-N400 components) and direct objects (N400 and P600 components). Conclusions: Children with DLD struggled to differentiate telic and atelic verbs, potentially because they employed overgeneralization strategies consistent with the Event Structural Bootstrapping model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Homonyms are words with multiple, unrelated meanings that share a single form and pronunciation. These words provide valuable insights into how semantic representation is retrieved and selected independently of orthography and phonology. This study aims to investigate the temporal dynamics of lexical and semantic processing in the visual recognition of Korean words. Specifically, we examine how homonyms and unambiguous words are processed differently during a lexical decision task (LDT) with EEG recording, considering the effects of word frequency and the number of meanings (NOMs). Methods: Participants performed a lexical decision task where they were required to determine if a visually presented stimulus was a valid Korean word. We compared the behavioral responses and event-related potentials (ERPs) evoked by homonyms and unambiguous words, each possessing either high or low word frequency. Both subjective and objective NOMs were measured and manipulated, while controlling for the subjective balance of individual frequencies of meanings to control for confounding from the relatedness of meaning (ROM). For ERP analysis, a non-parametric cluster-based permutation test was employed in addition to the two time windows of interest (i.e., N400 and P600). Results: Behavioral results indicated a marginally significant interaction between word frequency and semantic ambiguity along with a main effect of word frequency, showing faster and more accurate responses for high-frequency words. An ambiguity advantage was observed only for low-frequency words, with no significant effect found for high-frequency words. ERP results revealed that lexical-semantic interactions were reflected in the modulations of the N400 and P600 components. High-frequency homonyms elicited an enhanced N400 amplitude, while low-frequency homonyms showed a reduced P600 amplitude. Discussion: The findings suggest that the activation of semantic information occurs simultaneously with lexical processing, rather than during post-lexical or decision-making processes. Furthermore, considering balanced homonyms were employed in this study, inhibitory competition may arise from the highfrequency individual meanings of high-frequency words. In contrast, in lowfrequency words, a facilitative effect may arise from gains in global semantic activation or semantic feedback to the orthographic level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During language comprehension, anomalies and ambiguities in the input typically elicit the P600 event‐related potential component. Although traditionally interpreted as a specific signal of combinatorial operations in sentence processing, the component has alternatively been proposed to be a variant of the oddball‐sensitive, domain‐general P3 component. In particular, both components might reflect phasic norepinephrine release from the locus coeruleus (LC/NE) to motivationally significant stimuli. In this preregistered study, we tested this hypothesis by relating both components to the task‐evoked pupillary response, a putative biomarker of LC/NE activity. 36 participants completed a sentence comprehension task (containing 25% morphosyntactic violations) and a non‐linguistic oddball task (containing 20% oddballs), while the EEG and pupil size were co‐registered. Our results showed that the task‐evoked pupillary response and the ERP amplitudes of both components were similarly affected by both experimental tasks. In the oddball task, there was also a temporally specific relationship between the P3 and the pupillary response beyond the shared oddball effect, thereby further linking the P3 to NE. Because this link was less reliable in the linguistic context, we did not find conclusive evidence for or against a relationship between the P600 and the pupillary response. Still, our findings further stimulate the debate on whether language‐related ERPs are indeed specific to linguistic processes or shared across cognitive domains. However, further research is required to verify a potential link between the two ERP positivities and the LC/NE system as the common neural generator. We investigated the relationship between late, positive ERP components and the task‐evoked pupillary response, a proposed marker of norepinephrine release. While we did find evidence of such a link regarding the oddball‐sensitive P3, evidence regarding the language related P600 was more mixed. Further replication is required to verify whether the two components belong to the same family of positivities, reflecting transient norepinephrine activity in response to rare and motivationally significant stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The neurocognitive mechanism underlying negation processing remains controversial. While negation is suggested to modulate the access of word meaning, no such evidence has been observed in the event‐related potential (ERP) literature on sentence processing. In the current study, we applied both univariate ERP and multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) methods to examine the processing of sentence negation. We investigated two types of negative congruent/incongruent sentence pairs with truth‐value evaluation (e.g., "A robin is a/not a bird") and without (e.g., "The woman reads a/no book"). In the N400 time window, ERPs consistently showed increased negativity for negative and incongruent conditions. MVPA, on the other hand, revealed nuanced interactions between polarity and congruency. In the later P600 time window, MVPA but not the ERPs revealed an effect of congruency, which may be functionally distinct from the N400 window. We further used cross‐decoding to show that the cognitive processes underlying the N400 window for both affirmative and negative sentences are comparable, whereas in the P600 window, only for the truth sentences, negative sentences showed a distinct pattern from their affirmative counterparts. Our results thus speak for a more interactive, but nevertheless serial and biphasic, and potentially construction‐specific processing account of negation. We also discuss the advantage of applying MVPA in addition to the classical univariate methods for a better understanding of the neurobiology of negation processing and language comprehension alike. This study for the first time investigates sentence negation using multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) methods. It shows that when decoding semantically congruent versus incongruent words, negation modulates this process within the N400 time window. MVPA also reveals a late processing window of sentence negation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous psychological experiments have shown that predictive inference processing under different textual constraints is modulated by the directionality function of epistemic modality (EM) certainty within the context. Nevertheless, recent neuroscientific studies have not presented positive evidence for such a function during text reading. Consequently, the current study deposited Chinese EMs "也许" (possibly) and "一定" (surely) into a predictive inference context to examine whether a directionality of EM certainty influences the processing of predictive inference via the ERP technique. Two independent variables, namely textual constraint and EM certainty, were manipulated, and 36 participants were recruited. The results revealed that, in the anticipatory stage of predictive inference processing while under a weak textual constraint, low certainty evoked a larger N400 (300–500 ms) in the fronto-central and centro-parietal regions, indicating the augmentation of cognitive loads in calculating the possibility of representations of the forthcoming information. Meanwhile, high certainty elicited a right fronto-central late positive component (LPC) (500–700 ms) associated with semantically congruent but lexically unpredicted words. In the integration stage, low certainty resulted in larger right fronto-central and centro-frontal N400 (300–500 ms) effects in the weak textual constraint condition, associated with the facilitation of lexical-semantic retrieval or pre-activation, and high certainty successively elicited right fronto-central and centro-parietal LPC (500–700 ms) effects, associated respectively with lexical unpredictability and reanalysis of the sentence meaning. The results support the directionality function of EM certainty and reveal the complete neural processing of predictive inferences with high and low certainties under different textual constraint conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: It is broadly acknowledged that children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) show verb-related limitations. While most previous studies have focused on tense, the mastery of lexical aspect—particularly telicity—has not been the primary focus of much research. Lexical aspect refers to whether an action has a defined endpoint (telic verbs) or not (atelic verbs). Objective: This study investigates the effect of telicity on verb recognition in Chilean children with DLD compared to their typically developing (TD) peers using the Event-Related Potential (ERP) technique. Method: The research design is a mixed factorial design with between-group factors of 2 (DLD/TD) and within-group factors of 2 (telic/atelic verbs) and 2 (coherent/incoherent sentences). The participants were 36 school-aged children (18 DLD, 18 TD) aged 7 to 7 years and 11 months. The task required subjects to listen to sentences that either matched or did not match an action in a video, with sentences including telic or atelic verbs. Results: The study found notable differences between groups in how they processed verbs (N400 and post-N400 components) and direct objects (N400 and P600 components). Conclusions: Children with DLD struggled to differentiate telic and atelic verbs, potentially because they employed overgeneralization strategies consistent with the Event Structural Bootstrapping model.

Language difficulties vary widely among people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the semantic processing of autistic person and its underlying electrophysiological mechanism are still unclear. This meta-analysis aimed to explore the disturbance of semantic processing in patients with ASD. PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase were searched for eventrelated potential (ERP) studies on semantic processing in autistic people published in English before September 01, 2022. Pooled estimates were calculated by fixed-effects or random-effects models according to the heterogeneity using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis 2.0. The potential moderators were explored by meta-regression and subgroup analysis. This meta-analysis has been registered at the Prospero International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (no. CRD 42021265852). A total of 14 articles and 18 studies, including 254 autistic people and 262 neurodevelopmental people were included in this meta-analysis. Compared to the comparison group, autistic people showed an overall reduced N400 amplitude (Hedges' g = 0.350, p < 0.001) in response to linguistic stimuli instead of non-linguistic stimuli. The N400 amplitude was affected by verbal intelligence and gender. The reduced overall N400 amplitude in autistic people under linguistic stimuli suggests a linguistic-specific deficit in semantic processing in individuals of autism. The decrease of N400 amplitude might be a promising indication of the pool language capacity of autism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of word meaning into an unfolding utterance representation is a core operation of incremental language comprehension. There is considerable debate, however, as to which component of the ERP signal—the N400 or the P600—directly reflects integrative processes, with far reaching consequences for the temporal organization and architecture of the comprehension system. Multi‐stream models maintaining the N400 as integration crucially rely on the presence of a semantically attractive plausible alternative interpretation to account for the absence of an N400 effect in response to certain semantic anomalies, as reported in previous studies. The single‐stream Retrieval–Integration account posits the P600 as an index of integration, further predicting that its amplitude varies continuously with integrative effort. Here, we directly test these competing hypotheses using a context manipulation design in which a semantically attractive alternative is either available or not, and target word plausibility is varied across three levels. An initial self‐paced reading study revealed graded reading times for plausibility, suggesting differential integration effort. A subsequent ERP study showed no N400 differences across conditions, and that P600 amplitude is graded for plausibility. These findings are inconsistent with the interpretation of the N400 as an index of integration, as no N400 effect emerged even in the absence of a semantically attractive alternative. By contrast, the link between plausibility, reading times, and P600 amplitude supports the view that the P600 is a continuous index of integration effort. More generally, our results support a single‐stream architecture and eschew the need for multi‐stream accounts. We establish the P600 component of the ERP signal as a continuous index of integration effort by showing that its amplitude is a direct function of the plausibility of a word given the unfolding interpretation. This result rules out models that take the N400 to index integration, uncovers a novel dimension of the P600, and has far reaching consequences for the temporal organization and architecture of the comprehension system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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According to certain approaches to adaptation, readers and listeners quickly adjust their processing of sentences to match properties of recently encountered sentences. The present preregistered study used ERP (event-related brain potentials) to investigate how and when readers change their processing in response to recent exposure to sentences of a particular structure. We presented English speakers (n = 36) with three virtual blocks of English sentences with and-coordination ambiguities. In the first and third block, the ambiguity was always resolved towards a noun phrase (NP-) coordination; in the second block, the structure was always a clausal (S-) coordination. We manipulated the plausibility of the critical noun after the conjunct. N400 and P600 plausibility effects were probed to see to what extent the reader preferred an NP- coordination or expected the sentence to continue differently. Our results suggest that readers change their processing as a function of recent exposure but that they do not immediately adapt to the target structure. Furthermore, we observed substantial individual variation in the type and change in response over the course of the study. The idea that structural adaptation is immediate and a direct reflection of the properties of the recent context therefore needs to be fine-tuned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We employ a scenario-sentence-verification paradigm to inves-tigate the role of scenario-given alternatives for the process-ing of affirmative and negative sentences. We show that forboth affirmative and negative sentences the N400 amplitude islarger if the context model provides multiple alternatives fora true sentence continuation relative to the case when it pro-vides only a unique referent. Additionally, we observe a latepositivity effect for negative relative to affirmative sentences,independent of the context model.

Morphosyntax processing is related to the P600 event-related potentials (ERPs) component and blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) activation of the Pars opercularis (PO). First, this paper aims to investigate the relation of these variables across individuals. Second, we consider the role of context in morphosyntactic processing.Highly proficient Turkish–Persian bilinguals (N = 33) made morphosyntactic judgments on sentences. In a monolingual context, only L2 sentences (Persian) were presented, and the electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. In a bilingual context, Persian and Turkish sentences alternated, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was measured.The EEG and fMRI data were taken from separately published experiments on the same participants. Here, we correlated amplitudes of EEG-derived ERP components and the number of activated voxels in fMRI in designated brain regions because both parameters are proportionally attuned to the number of activated neurons.Morphosyntactic violations in a Persian monolingual context yielded a P600 component in the ERP. In L1, morphosyntactic violations increased BOLD activation in the left PO and in L2 they activated the posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG). The P600 amplitude correlated only with BOLD activity in the left PO for L1. These results first support a critical role of the PO in generating the P600; second, the findings are context-specific and are most pronounced for the presumed base languages in different contexts (i.e., L2 in monolingual and L1 in bilingual contexts). These results are consistent with predictions of the adaptive control theory.This study contributes to the rarely investigated interface between ERPs and fMRI in bilingual speakers during morphosyntactic processing. The results offer novel insights into language context effects.Our findings highlight the importance of cross-modality neuroimaging in bilinguals and language processing in both monolingual and bilingual contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semantics of actions includes three types of knowledge: a) of the function of objects and tools, b) of the actions independently of the tools, and c) of the organization of simple actions in sequences. These types of knowledge might be structured as thematic roles into the semantics of actions. To test these hypothesis, 125 illustrations, divided into five conditions: i) Congruent (C), ii) Agent Inconsistent (AI), iii) Instrument Inconsistent (II), iv) Patient Inconsistent (PI), and v) Location Inconsistent (LI), were presented to 23 volunteers (50 % women), aged 20–25, who were asked to respond whether the image was congruent or incongruent. Electrical brain activity was recorded through 20 channels to obtain the event-related potentials (ERP) associated. Lower reaction times for II and PI than C, and a greater number of incorrect trials for C were found. A N300/N400 effect appeared for AI and LI conditions with respect to C. Finally, II and LI conditions present a deflected P600 in reference to C. These findings suggest semantic of actions is sensitive to thematic role manipulations and constitute evidence in favor of a semantic processing shared between visually observed praxis and words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When asked to convey temporal concepts such as ‘yesterday’and ‘tomorrow’ via movements of a dot on a vertical bar,American undergraduates utilize analogical mappingsbetween spatial and temporal concepts. Previous work hasrevealed two different strategies, hypothesized to requirediffering amounts of artificial language exposure to learn.Different pairs of participants, when interacting about thesetime concepts, all settled on the same association betweenspatial magnitude and temporal duration, with largermovements used to convey temporal intervals of greaterduration. However, the association between particular spatiallocations and temporal concepts such as ‘past’ and ‘future’,elicited much more arbitrary solutions, where the mappingsdiffered across pairs of participants. These findings suggestedthat the duration mapping might be driven by mostly shared,initial cognitive biases, while contrasting mappings forpast/future result more clearly from extensive linguisticinteraction. Here we tested whether the brain respondsdifferently to duration mappings as compared to directionmappings by recording participants’ EEG as they learn amini-language that includes both kinds. ERPs time locked toEnglish words elicited larger amplitude N400 and P600 whenthey did not match the preceding signal than when they didmatch. The P600 results were larger and more robust for theduration than the direction stimuli, suggesting participantswere more sensitive to violations of the duration mappingscheme. These data support our hypothesis that people have acognitive bias for the duration mappings that supports theirearly emergence in the development of a semiotic system.

This paper reports an event–related potential (ERP) study examining the processing of "gapless" relative clauses (RCs), normal ("gapped") RCs, attributive clauses, Subject–Verb–Object (SVO) forms and the morphological markers de and le in Mandarin Chinese. The objectives were to (1) determine whether a processing cost signature can be identified for gap–filler processing by comparing gapped RCs with SVO forms; and (2) determine whether processing gapless RCs is more similar to processing gapped RCs that they resemble on surface or attributive clauses that they resemble structurally by comparing gapped RCs, gapless RCs, and attributive clauses. ERP data was collected from 27 native speakers as they read 160 sentences containing gapped, gapless, attributive, and SVO sentences, which differed only in the second word of the string (e.g., 教授设计的/烧菜的/助手的/设计了/那个广告... The professor designed Ø/cooked food/assistant's/designed that advertisement...). Results indicate that (1) the head noun evoked larger N400 and P600 components and the determiner elicited a larger sustained anterior negativity for the gapped RCs than for the SVO forms, and (2) the word immediately following the head noun evoked a larger P600 and the determiner elicited a larger sustained anterior negativity for both gapped and gapless RCs than for attributive clauses. These results indicate that (1) gap–filler integration in Mandarin is both semantic (hence the N400) and syntactic (hence the P600) in nature, and (2) gapless RCs are neurophysiologically processed more like gapped RCs than attributive clauses. The ERP signatures to verb+le, verb+de, verbs with verb–object (VO)+de morphological structure, and noun+de revealed that the processing costs for VO verbs and noun modifications were higher than for simple verbs, and the morphological markers de and le induced similar processing costs, even though de triggered the positing of a syntactic gap whereas le did not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We provide a publicly available spoken word stimulus set designed to evoke the N400. • Both semantic and syntactic errors can be assayed using this public stimulus set. • We provide 20 high-density neurotypical adult electrophysiological datasets. • The utility of these stimuli is demonstrated through robust evocation of the N400. • Cloze probability values for each stimulus are provided. During speech comprehension, the ongoing context of a sentence is used to predict sentence outcome by limiting subsequent word likelihood. Neurophysiologically, violations of context-dependent predictions result in amplitude modulations of the N400 event-related potential (ERP) component. While the N400 is widely used to measure semantic processing and integration, no publicly-available auditory stimulus set is available to standardize approaches across the field. Here, we developed an auditory stimulus set of 442 sentences that utilized the semantic anomaly paradigm, measured cloze probability for all stimuli, and was made for both children and adults. With 20 neurotypical adults, we validated that this set elicits robust N400′s, as well as two additional semantically-related ERP components: the recognition potential (∼ 250 ms) and the late positivity component (∼ 600 ms). This stimulus set (https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.9ghx3ffkg) and the 20 high-density (128-channel) electrophysiological datasets (https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.6wwpzgmx4) are made publicly available to promote data sharing and reuse. Future studies that use this stimulus set to investigate sentential semantic comprehension in both control and clinical populations may benefit from the increased comparability and reproducibility within this field of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Augmented Reality (AR) technologies enhance the real world by integrating contextual digital information about physical entities. However, inconsistencies between physical reality and digital augmentations, which may arise from errors in the visualized information or the user's mental context, can considerably impact user experience. This work characterizes the brain dynamics associated with processing incongruent information within an AR environment. To study these effects, we designed an interactive paradigm featuring the manipulation of a Rubik's cube serving as a physical referent. Congruent and incongruent information regarding the cube's current status was presented via symbolic (digits) and non-symbolic (graphs) stimuli, thus examining the impact of different means of data representation. The analysis of electroencephalographic signals from 19 participants revealed the presence of centro-parietal N400 and P600 components following the processing of incongruent information, with significantly increased latencies for non-symbolic stimuli. Additionally, we explored the feasibility of exploiting incongruency effects for brain-computer interfaces. Hence, we implemented decoders using linear discriminant analysis, support vector machines, and EEGNet, achieving comparable performances with all methods. Therefore, this work contributes to the design of adaptive AR systems by demonstrating that above-chance detection of incongruent information based on physiological signals is feasible. The successful decoding of incongruency-induced modulations can inform systems about the current mental state of users without making it explicit, aiming for more coherent and contextually appropriate AR interactions., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

The event-related potential method has proven to be a useful tool for studying the effects of gender information in language. Studies have shown that mismatch between the antecedent and the following referent triggers two ERP components, N400 and P600. In the present study, we investigated how grammatical gender affects the mental representation of the grammatical subject. A match-mismatch paradigm was used to investigate how masculine grammatical gender and gender-balanced forms (the explicit mention of masculine and feminine forms as word pairs) as role nouns affect the processing of the referent in Slovenian. The morphological complexity of Slovenian language required the use of anaphoric verbs instead of nouns/pronouns, on which previous research was based. The results showed that following both the gender-balanced and the masculine generic forms, P600 (but not N400) was observed in response to the feminine verb but not to the masculine verb. The P600 amplitude was smaller in the case of the gender-balanced form than in the case of the masculine generic form only. We have concluded that gender-balanced forms are more open to feminine continuations than masculine generic forms. This is the first ERP study in Slovenian to address the effects of processing grammatical gender, thus contributing to existing research on languages with grammatical gender. The great strength of the study is that it is one of the first ERP studies to test the mental inclusivity of gender-balanced forms.

Second language (L2) learners experience challenges when word meanings differ across L1 and L2, and often display crosslinguistic influence (CLI) in speech production. In contrast, studies of online comprehension show more mixed results. Therefore, this study explored how L2 learners process fine-grained L2 verb semantics in the domain of caused motion (placement) and specifically the impact of having similar vs. non-similar semantics in the L1 and L2. Specifically, we examined English (20) and German (21) L2 learners of Swedish and native Swedish speakers (16) and their online neurophysiological processing and offline appropriateness ratings of three Swedish placement verbs obligatory for placement supported from below: sätta "set," ställa "stand," and lägga "lay." The learners' L1s differed from Swedish in that their placement verbs either shared or did not share semantic characteristics with the target language. English has a general placement verb put, whereas German has specific verbs similar but not identical to Swedish, stellen "set/stand" and legen "lay." Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants watched still frames (images) of objects being placed on a table and listened to sentences describing the event with verbs that either matched the image or not. Participants also performed an offline appropriateness rating task. Both tasks suggested CLI. English learners' appropriateness ratings of atypical verb use differed from those of both native Swedish speakers' and German learners, with no difference in the latter pair. Similarly, German learners' ERP effects were more similar to those of the native Swedish speakers (increased lateral negativity to atypical verb use) than to those of the English learners (increased positivity to atypical verb use). The results of this explorative study thus suggest CLI both offline and online with similarity between L1 and L2 indicating more similar processing and judgments, in line with previous production findings, but in contrast to previous ERP work on semantic L2 processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates bilectal grammatical representation and processing using three ERP reading experiments in two Norwegian dialect regions. Northern Norwegian bilectals were tested in two separate sessions in two written varieties: the local written standard (Bokmål, n = 83) and Northern Norwegian dialect writing (n = 68). The study included both non-contrastive gender (control) and dialect-specific number (target) agreement conditions. In grammatically incongruent number conditions, participants display contrasting processing profiles in both on-line and off-line measures (reversed P600 components and reversed grammaticality judgments). To further test the interaction between contrasting bilectal grammars in language processing, the Bokmål version of the experiment was also conducted in a second dialect region (Sunnmøre, n = 73) where the spoken dialect is grammatically aligned with Bokmål for both gender and number. In the Bokmål mode, compared to both the control group (Sunnmøre) and the control condition (gender agreement), Northern Norwegian participants in the target (number) condition show significantly attenuated ERPs and more gradient and less accurate grammaticality judgments, evidencing competition between distinct bilectal grammatical representations. The results further revealed significant individual differences in the degree of cross-dialectal influence between Bokmål and Northern Norwegian dialect modes, contingent on individual participants' bilectal engagement and exposure. Together these results suggest that bilectalism is a proper sub-case of bilingualism: bilectals develop distinct grammatical representations for contrastive grammatical features in distinct L1 varieties with which they have sufficient engagement and exposure. • Bilectal sentence processing was examined using ERPs and acceptability judgments. • Bilectals show distinct brain and behavioral responses depending on the dialect input. • Cross-dialectal influence reveals co-activation of separate dialect grammars. • Individual differences are shaped by degree of dialect engagement and exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the neural mechanisms of dynamic syntactic and semantic processing in Chinese garden-path sentence comprehension were investigated using electrophysiological and behavioral measures. Two groups of garden-path sentences were designed, with the ambiguity of multiple word categories in Group 1 and classifier-noun agreements in Group 2. Besides the ambiguous condition, there were also control and semantic violation conditions. Participants made plausibility judgment of each sentence. The ERPs elicited by the last three critical word regions in each sentence were examined continuously to uncover the time course of the revision process clearly. Relative to the control sentence, the ambiguous sentences of both groups elicited the smallest N400 before and on the disambiguating region, but the largest P600 at the disambiguation position, indicating that the sentences were misparsed and/or misinterpreted initially, and revised efficiently when the input cannot be integrated into the syntactic structure constructed. No significant N400 difference was observed between the ambiguous and the control condition on the disambiguating regions, indicating that semantic processing proceeded even no appropriate syntactic structures were built for the incomplete sentences. Therefore, without morphosyntactic constraints in Chinese, semantic processing is generally prior to the syntactic one, which will be revised only when semantic integration fails. • Neural mechanisms of dynamic syntactic and semantic processing were investigated. • Two groups of Chinese garden-path sentences were designed. • The smallest N400 was elicited before and on the disambiguating region. • Disambiguating words in garden-path sentences evoked enhanced P600. • Semantic processing proceeded even no appropriate syntactic structures were built. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an ongoing debate about the linguistic gender forms that should be used to elicit fair mental representations of all genders. While most languages with grammatical gender traditionally use the masculine form to refer to people in a gender-independent way, numerous empirical studies have demonstrated that this form leads to a male bias in mental representations. In German, the so-called gender star form has been proposed as an alternative to the masculine form, aimed at better representing persons with nonmale gender identities. To provide empirical data on this claim, we compared the neural processing mechanisms elicited by the gender star form with those elicited by the generically intended masculine form during reference resolution. Participants in the present ERP study read sentence pairs in which a group of people was introduced with a role noun in one of the two gender forms and then revealed to be partly comprised of men or women. Following the masculine form, anaphoric references to women (vs. men) resulted in an increased ERP amplitude in the P600 range. In contrast, following the gender star form, the P600 amplitude was increased for references to men (vs. women), albeit in a slightly different spatio-temporal range. The present data thus indicate that the gender star form and the generically intended masculine form impose partially different demands on the syntactic operations performed by the brain during reference resolution but that, in the end, neither form elicits gender-balanced mental representations of men and women in German. • The P600 amplitude was assessed during gender-form-dependent reference resolution. • Generic masculine role nouns hindered the processing of references to women. • Role nouns in the gender star form hindered the processing of references to men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual narratives sometimes depict successive images with different characters in the same physical space; corpus analysis has revealed that this occurs more often in Japanese manga than American comics. We used event-related brain potentials to determine whether comprehension of "visual narrative conjunctions" invokes not only incremental mental updating as traditionally assumed, but also, as we propose, "grammatical" combinatoric processing. We thus crossed (non)/conjunction sequences with character (in)/congruity. Conjunctions elicited a larger anterior negativity (300-500 ms) than nonconjunctions, regardless of congruity, implicating "grammatical" processes. Conjunction and incongruity both elicited larger P600s (500-700 ms), indexing updating. Both conjunction effects were modulated by participants' frequency of reading manga while growing up. Greater anterior negativity in frequent manga readers suggests more reliance on combinatoric processing; larger P600 effects in infrequent manga readers suggest more resources devoted to mental updating. As in language comprehension, it seems that processing conjunctions in visual narratives is not just mental updating but also partly grammatical, conditioned by comic readers' experience with specific visual narrative structures.

Visual narratives sometimes depict successive images with different characters in the same physical space; corpus analysis has revealed that this occurs more often in Japanese manga than American comics. We used event-related brain potentials to determine whether comprehension of "visual narrative conjunctions" invokes not only incremental mental updating as traditionally assumed, but also, as we propose, "grammatical" combinatoric processing. We thus crossed (non)/conjunction sequences with character (in)/congruity. Conjunctions elicited a larger anterior negativity (300-500 ms) than nonconjunctions, regardless of congruity, implicating "grammatical" processes. Conjunction and incongruity both elicited larger P600s (500-700 ms), indexing updating. Both conjunction effects were modulated by participants' frequency of reading manga while growing up. Greater anterior negativity in frequent manga readers suggests more reliance on combinatoric processing; larger P600 effects in infrequent manga readers suggest more resources devoted to mental updating. As in language comprehension, it seems that processing conjunctions in visual narratives is not just mental updating but also partly grammatical, conditioned by comic readers' experience with specific visual narrative structures.

Second language (L2) learners experience challenges when word meanings differ across L1 and L2, and often display crosslinguistic influence (CLI) in speech production. In contrast, studies of online comprehension show more mixed results. Therefore, this study explored how L2 learners process fine-grained L2 verb semantics in the domain of caused motion (placement) and specifically the impact of having similar vs. non-similar semantics in the L1 and L2. Specifically, we examined English (20) and German (21) L2 learners of Swedish and native Swedish speakers (16) and their online neurophysiological processing and offline appropriateness ratings of three Swedish placement verbs obligatory for placement supported from below: sätta “set,” ställa “stand,” and lägga “lay.” The learners’ L1s differed from Swedish in that their placement verbs either shared or did not share semantic characteristics with the target language. English has a general placement verb put, whereas German has specific verbs similar but not identical to Swedish, stellen “set/stand” and legen “lay.” Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants watched still frames (images) of objects being placed on a table and listened to sentences describing the event with verbs that either matched the image or not. Participants also performed an offline appropriateness rating task. Both tasks suggested CLI. English learners’ appropriateness ratings of atypical verb use differed from those of both native Swedish speakers’ and German learners, with no difference in the latter pair. Similarly, German learners’ ERP effects were more similar to those of the native Swedish speakers (increased lateral negativity to atypical verb use) than to those of the English learners (increased positivity to atypical verb use). The results of this explorative study thus suggest CLI both offline and online with similarity between L1 and L2 indicating more similar processing and judgments, in line with previous production findings, but in contrast to previous ERP work on semantic L2 processing.

Agreement is one of the most important as well as the most studied linguistic features in the field of language processing. There are two views regarding the processing of Person and Number features. According to the first view, Person and Number features are defined as distinct probes in derivation, while the latter view suggests that these features are bundle features. The current study investigated whether there is any difference in the processing of Person and Number features in Turkish via ERP. The findings indicated that the N400 + P600 pattern was obtained in the processing of both Person and Number features, but a greater N400 amplitude was elicited in Person feature than in the Number feature. The findings are in line with the views suggesting that there are differences in the processing of Person and Number features.

[Display omitted] • Processing of pseudohomophones requiring morphological analysis increases N400 amplitude. • Pseudohomophones based on the traditional writing principle modulate P600. • Both pseudohomophones activate the left inferior frontal gyrus. • Pseudohomophones based on traditional principles activate additional postcentral areas. Spelling in any writing system is governed by fundamental principles. We examined the processing of two types of pseudohomophones constructed from words whose spellings are based on different principles – on the traditional principle of writing, requiring memorization of their spelling, and on the morphological principle, allowing the determination of their spelling from another word with the same morpheme (root) to examine the dependence of the occurrence of orthography–phonology conflict on spelling principles. Event-related potentials were recorded from 22 volunteers during silent reading. Pseudohomophones based on the morphological principle increased the N400 amplitude, emphasizing semantic and morphological processing importance. The P600 component showed significant effects for differentiating words and pseudohomophones based on the traditional principle, predominantly indicating the involvement of memory and reanalysis processes. Source reconstruction demonstrates that both pseudohomophones activate the left inferior frontal gyrus. However, pseudohomophones based on the traditional principle additionally activate the right and left postcentral gyrus, indicating the involvement of additional areas in the differentiation process. The earlier differences for stimuli based on the morphological principle indicate access to smaller units (morphemes), whereas stimuli based on the traditional principle require whole word processing. Our findings underscore the significant role of spelling principles in orthographic processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children tend to rely on semantics rather than syntax during sentence comprehension. In transitive sentences, with no reliance on semantics, the syntax-based strategy becomes critical. We aimed to describe developmental changes of brain mechanisms for syntax processing in typically developing (TD) four to six year old's. A specially designed sentence-picture matching task using active (AV) and passive (PV) voice enforced children to use grammar cues for sentence comprehension. Fifty children with above >60% level of accuracy in PV sentences comprehension demonstrated brain sensitivity to voice grammar markers-inflections of the second noun phrase (NP2), which was expressed in a greater event-related potentials (ERP) amplitude to PV vs. AV sentences in four-, five-, and six-year-old children. The biphasic positive-negative component at 200–400 ms was registered in the frontocentral and bilateral temporoparietal areas. Only in six-year-old children P600 was registered in the right temporoparietal area. LAN-like negativity seems to be a mechanism for distinguishing AV from PV in the early stages of mastering syntax processing of transitive sentences in four to five year old children. Both behavioral and ERP results distinguished six-year-olds from four-year-old's and five-year-old's, reflecting the possible transition to the "adult-like" syntax-based thematic role assignment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amusia is defined as a difficulty processing the tonal pitch structure of music such that an individual cannot tell the difference between notes that are in-key and out-of-key. A fine-grained pitch discrimination deficit is often observed in people with amusia. It is possible that an intervention, early in development, could mitigate amusia; however, one challenge identifying amusia early in development is that identifying in- and out-of-key notes is a metacognitive task. Given the common co-occurrence of difficulties with pitch discrimination, it would be easier to identify amusia in developing children by using a pitch change detection task. The goal of this study was to explore the behavioural and neurophysiological profiles of adolescents with poor pitch processing (Poor PP) abilities compared with those with normal pitch processing (Normal PP) abilities. Neurophysiologically, the Poor PPs exhibited a similar event-related potential (ERP) profile to adult amusics during both acoustic and musical pitch discrimination tasks. That is, early ERPs (ERAN, MMN) were similar in Poor PPs compared with Normal PPs, whereas late positivities (P300, P600) were absent in Poor PPs, but present in Normal PPs. At the same time, behavioural data revealed a double dissociation between the abilities to detect a pitch deviant in acoustic and musical context, suggesting that about a third of the children would be missed by selecting a fine-grained acoustic pitch discrimination task to identify the presence of amusia in early childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La técnica de potenciales evocados consiste en el registro de la actividad eléctrica cerebral generada tras la presentación de un estímulo. Gracias a su elevada resolución temporal, del orden de milisegundos, esta técnica es útil para analizar con precisión el curso temporal del procesamiento del lenguaje. La investigación con potenciales evocados ha logrado identificar algunos patrones de actividad cerebral asociados a distintos niveles del procesamiento y representación del lenguaje. Entre los más estudiados se encuentran el potencial de disparidad (MMN), asociado a la fonología, y los componentes N400 y P600, asociados a la semántica y sintaxis, respectivamente.

Structured sequence processing (SSP) refers to theneurocognitive mechanisms used to learn sequential patternsin the environment. SSP ability seems to be important forlanguage (Conway, Bauernschmidt, Huang, & Pisoni, 2010);however, there are few neural studies showing an empiricalconnection between SSP and language. The purpose of thisstudy was to investigate the association between SSP andlanguage processing by comparing the underlying neuralcomponents elicited during each type of task. Healthy adultsubjects completed a visual, non-linguistic SSP taskincorporating an artificial grammar and a visual morpho-syntactic language task. Both tasks were designed to causeviolations in expectations of items occurring in a series.Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to examine theunderlying neural mechanisms associated with theseexpectancy violations. The results indicated the P3acomponent elicited by the SSP task and the P600 componentelicited by the language task shared similarities in theirtopographic distribution. These preliminary analyses suggestthat the P3a and P600 may reflect processes involvingdetection of sequential violations in non-language andlanguage domains, which is consistent with the idea thatlanguage processing relies on general-purpose SSPmechanisms.

Studies of native syntactic processing often target phrase structure violations that do not occur in natural production. In contrast, this study examines how variation in basic word order is processed, looking specifically at structures traditionally labelled as violations but that do occur naturally. We examined Swedish verb-second (V2) and verb-third (V3) word order processing in adult native Swedish speakers, manipulating sentence-initial adverbials (temporal idag 'today', spatial hemma 'at home' and sentential kanske 'maybe') in acceptability judgements, in simultaneously recorded event-related potentials (ERP) to visually presented sentences and in a written sentence completion task. An initial corpus study showed that the adverbials differ in frequency in fronted position (idag > kanske > hemma), and although all occur mainly with V2 word order, kanske occurs more frequently with V3 in natural production than both idag and hemma. The experimental results reflected these patterns such that V2 sentences were overall more frequently produced and were deemed more acceptable than V3 sentences. The ERP results consisted of a biphasic N400/P600 response to V3 word order that indicated effects of word retrieval and sentence reanalysis. We also found consistent effects of adverbials. As predicted, V3 was produced more frequently and judged as more acceptable in Kanske sentences than in sentences with the other two adverbials. The ERP analyses showed stronger effects for idag and hemma with V3, especially regarding the P600. The results suggest that the naturally occurring word order 'violation', V3 with kanske , is processed differently than V3 with other adverbials where the V2 norm is stronger. Moreover, these patterns are related to individuals' own production patterns. Overall, the results suggest a more varied native word order processing than previously reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refusal is considered a face-threatening act (FTA), since it contradicts the inviter's expectations. In the case of Japanese, native speakers (NS) are known to prefer to leave sentences unfinished for a conventional indirect refusal. Successful comprehension of this indirect refusal depends on whether the addressee is fully conventionalized to the preference for syntactic unfinishedness so that they can identify the true intention of the refusal. Then, non-native speakers (NNS) who are not fully accustomed to the convention may be confused by the indirect style. In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) of electroencephalography in an attempt to differentiate the neural substrates for perceiving unfinished sentences in a conventionalized indirect refusal as an FTA between NS and NNS, in terms of the unfinishedness and indirectness of the critical sentence. In addition, we examined the effects of individual differences in mentalization, or the theory of mind, which refers to the ability to infer the mental states of others. We found several different ERP effects for these refusals between NS and NNS. NNS induced stronger P600 effects for the unfinishedness of the refusal sentences, suggesting their perceived syntactic anomaly. This was not evoked in NS. NNS also revealed the effects of N400 and P300 for the indirectness of refusal sentences, which can be interpreted as their increased processing load for pragmatic processing in the inexperienced contextual flow. We further found that the NNS's individual mentalizing ability correlates with the effect of N400 mentioned above, indicating that lower mentalizers evoke higher N400 for indirect refusal. NS, on the contrary, did not yield these effects reflecting the increased pragmatic processing load. Instead, they evoked earlier ERPs of early posterior negativity (EPN) and P200, both of which are known as indices of emotional processing, for finished sentences of refusal than for unfinished ones. We interpreted these effects as a NS's dispreference for finished sentences to realize an FTA, given that unfinished sentences are considered more polite and more conventionalized in Japanese social encounters. Overall, these findings provide evidence that a syntactic anomaly inherent in a cultural convention as well as individual mentalizing ability plays an important role in understanding an indirect speech act of face-threatening refusal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences in reading repeated/new words in adults are known to be reflected in the N400 and P600 components of event-related potentials (ERP), though the question of the functional significance of these components in the age-related trajectory of their development remains open. The aim of the present work was to evaluate the amplitudes and latencies of the N400 and P600 components in responses to repeated and new words in three age groups: preadolescent children (N = 25; age 9–11 years), adolescents (N = 17, age 12–14 years), and adults (N = 22, age 18–36 years). Age-related differences in amplitudes were seen for the N400 component averaged for leads F3, Fz, F4, C3, Cz, and C4 and the P600 component averaged for leads P3, Pz, and P4, while no differences in latency were seen. Comparison of the amplitudes of averaged ERP to repeated and new words identified differences in all age groups: in children in the time interval 750–850 msec, in adolescents in the time interval 650–750 msec, and in adults in the interval 600–800 msec. P600 amplitude in all age groups was greater in responses to repeated than to new words. In the case of N400, differences in responses to repeated and new words were seen only among adults, where latency to new words was shorter than latency to repeated words. The process of comparing new and previously presented verbal and visual information is evidently a multistage process. These stages are formed at different points of ontogeny and are reflected to different extents in the various ERP components. Differences between repeated and new words initially appeared in the P600 component: the pattern of differences at age 12–14 years was analogous to that in adults. At the same time, there were no differences in the N400 component in childhood and adolescence, these being present only in adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When listening to a speaker, we need to adapt to her individual speaking characteristics, such as error proneness, accent, etc. The present study investigated two aspects of adaptation to speaker identity during processing spoken sentences in multi‐speaker situations: the effect of speaker sequence across sentences and the effect of learning speaker‐specific error probability. Spoken sentences were presented, cued, and accompanied by one of three portraits that were labeled as the speakers' faces. In Block 1 speaker‐specific probabilities of syntax errors were 10%, 50%, or 90%; in Block 2 they were uniformly 50%. In both blocks, speech errors elicited P600 effects in the scalp recorded ERP. We found a speaker sequence effect only in Block 1: the P600 to target words was larger after speaker switches than after speaker repetitions, independent of sentence correctness. In Block 1, listeners showed higher accuracy in judging sentence correctness spoken by speakers with lower error proportions. No speaker‐specific differences in target word P600 and accuracy were found in Block 2. When speakers differ in error proneness, listeners seem to flexibly adapt their speech processing for the upcoming sentence through attention reorientation and resource reallocation if the speaker is about to change, and through proactive maintenance of neural resources if the speaker remains the same. We provided evidence from ERPs that listeners dynamically adapt to a switch or repetition of the speaker identity during processing spoken sentences in multi‐speaker situations, where the speakers differ in their language use. Cognitive processes of attention and memory are engaged in adaptations to speaker identity across sentence borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored the syntactic transfer effect of the non-local subject-verb agreement structure with plural head noun after two intensive phases of input training with event-related potentials (ERP). The non-local subject-verb agreement stimuli with the plural head nouns, which never appeared in training phases, were used for the stimuli. A total of 26 late L1-Chinese L2-English learners, who began to learn English after a critical period and participated in our previous experiments, were asked back to take part in this syntactic transfer experiment. Results indicated that a significant ERP component P600 occurred in the key region (the verb) of the sentences with syntactic violations in the experimental group, but none occurred in the control group. This demonstrated that there was a significant transfer effect of the input training. The possible theoretical explanation was provided and also the malleability of the late L2 learners was discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This study examined the effect of proficiency level on the second Language (L2) syntactic and semantic processing by addressing the role of procedural and declarative memory systems in light of the Declarative/Procedural (DP) model. The primary purpose was to determine to what extent proficiency accounts for native-like language processing in L2 in adult bilinguals who learned English (L2) after the age of 15 under explicit instruction. Methods: Using a mixed-method design and an oddball violation paradigm, we examined the functional neural correlates of syntactic and semantic processing in two groups of Persian-English bilinguals (L1=Persian, L2=English; N=10 high-proficient, N=10 pre-intermediate levels; Gender= Female; mean age=25.50 years, SD = 5.09 years, age range = 19-35 years of age) across 6 different conditions. They included a visual stimulus task of 240 English sentences with three different experimental conditions (violated regular past forms or phrase structure rules or final-word semantic violation) and three control conditions (sets of correct sentences for each experimental condition). Both groups started learning English late (age of onset=15+) and under an explicit learning context. To evaluate the effect of L2 proficiency, Event-related potentials (ERPs) to target words in each condition were elicited across the N400 time window (300-500 ms) and the P600 time window (500-700 ms). Results: Results showed different cortical responses in the two groups. Upon processing the violated forms, high-proficient subjects showed more native-like patterns of scalp activity in both lexical-semantic and syntactic processing. In contrast, less proficient learners have shown delayed onsets and or peaks of components, reduced amplitudes, or absent components in some regions. For instance, the difference in N400 amplitude for the incorrect regular past conditions was observed only in the pre-intermediate (PI) subjects in the O1 channel. This finding is compatible with the DP Model in that at lower levels of L2 proficiency, the participants show N400s or N400-like posterior negativities instead of Anterior Negativities (ANs). This finding shows the initial reliance on the declarative memory system for syntactic processing at lower levels of L2. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that attained proficiency was a more determinant factor in the L1-like cortical representation of L2 than the age of acquisition and or the type of instruction/context. Several brain areas, similar to those observed for L1, were activated during L2 syntactic processing in high-proficient subjects addressing their reliance on the procedural memory system for syntactic processing to gain more proficiency. For instance, our results showed a significant difference in N400 amplitude for the incorrect regular past conditions in O1 for the PI subjects, which shows the initial reliance on the declarative memory system for syntactic processing at lower levels of L2.

Literacy is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon that has been well studied in psychology and pedagogy. Neurophysiologists try to understand the mechanisms of writing and reading acquisition by analyzing different linguistic processes. In this paper, we review the data that were revealed by using the event-related potentials (ERPs) method in the light of spelling, lexical, semantic and syntactic aspects of literacy, as well as changes in the components of ERPs in children and adults during language acquisition and in dyslexia, the most studied reading disorder. The ERPs method can help to understand both the general, universal neural underpinnings of literacy development and the unique features of different languages.

Refusal is considered a face-threatening act (FTA), since it contradicts the inviter’s expectations. In the case of Japanese, native speakers (NS) are known to prefer to leave sentences unfinished for a conventional indirect refusal. Successful comprehension of this indirect refusal depends on whether the addressee is fully conventionalized to the preference for syntactic unfinishedness so that they can identify the true intention of the refusal. Then, non-native speakers (NNS) who are not fully accustomed to the convention may be confused by the indirect style. In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) of electroencephalography in an attempt to differentiate the neural substrates for perceiving unfinished sentences in a conventionalized indirect refusal as an FTA between NS and NNS, in terms of the unfinishedness and indirectness of the critical sentence. In addition, we examined the effects of individual differences in mentalization, or the theory of mind, which refers to the ability to infer the mental states of others. We found several different ERP effects for these refusals between NS and NNS. NNS induced stronger P600 effects for the unfinishedness of the refusal sentences, suggesting their perceived syntactic anomaly. This was not evoked in NS. NNS also revealed the effects of N400 and P300 for the indirectness of refusal sentences, which can be interpreted as their increased processing load for pragmatic processing in the inexperienced contextual flow. We further found that the NNS’s individual mentalizing ability correlates with the effect of N400 mentioned above, indicating that lower mentalizers evoke higher N400 for indirect refusal. NS, on the contrary, did not yield these effects reflecting the increased pragmatic processing load. Instead, they evoked earlier ERPs of early posterior negativity (EPN) and P200, both of which are known as indices of emotional processing, for finished sentences of refusal than for unfinished ones. We interpreted these effects as a NS’s dispreference for finished sentences to realize an FTA, given that unfinished sentences are considered more polite and more conventionalized in Japanese social encounters. Overall, these findings provide evidence that a syntactic anomaly inherent in a cultural convention as well as individual mentalizing ability plays an important role in understanding an indirect speech act of face-threatening refusal.