Meaningful Physical Changes Mediate Lexical-Semantic Integration: Top-Down and Form-Based Bottom-Up Information Sources Interact in the N400

Autor/inn/en	Lotze, Netaya; Tune, Sarah; Schlesewsky, Matthias; Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Ina
Titel	Meaningful Physical Changes Mediate Lexical-Semantic Integration: Top-Down and Form-Based Bottom-Up Information Sources Interact in the N400
Quelle	In: Neuropsychologia, 49 (2011) 13, S.3573-3582 (10 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0028-3932
DOI	10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.09.009
Schlagwörter	Brain; Responses; Semantics; Sentences; Language Processing + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Gehirn; Semantik; Sentence analysis; Satzanalyse; Sprachverarbeitung
Abstract	Models of how the human brain reconstructs an intended meaning from a linguistic input often draw upon the N400 event-related potential (ERP) component as evidence. Current accounts of the N400 emphasise either the role of contextually induced lexical preactivation of a critical word (Lau, Phillips, & Poeppel, 2008) or the ease of integration into the overall discourse context including a wide variety of influencing factors (Hagoort & van Berkum, 2007). The present ERP study challenges both types of accounts by demonstrating a contextually independent and purely form-based bottom-up influence on the N400: the N400 effect for implausible sentence-endings was attenuated when the critical sentence-final word was capitalised (following a lowercase sentence context). By contrast, no N400 modulation occurred when the critical word involved a change from uppercase (sentence context) to lowercase. Thus, the N400 was only affected by a change to uppercase letters, as is often employed in computer-mediated communication as a sign of emphasis. This result indicates that N400 amplitude is reduced for unexpected words when a bottom-up (orthographic) cue signals that the word is likely to be highly informative. The lexical-semantic N400 thereby reflects the degree to which the semantic informativity of a critical word matches expectations, as determined by an interplay between top-down and bottom-up information sources, including purely form-based bottom-up information. (Contains 2 tables and 5 figures.) (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10