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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.

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]

Understanding the psychological antecedents of socioeconomic status (SES) on pro-environmental behavior is crucial for effectively encouraging individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds to address environmental issues. Previous research has separately examined the influence of SES and social observation on pro-environmental behavior. However, little is known about whether social observation moderates the influence of SES on proenvironmental behavior, and the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms remain uncharacterized. Using event-related potential (ERPs), we adopted the green purchase paradigm and manipulated subjective SES, to examine whether the influence of SES on pro-environmental behavior is moderated by social observation. The behavioral results revealed that individuals of high SES tended to purchase more eco-friendly products under the observable condition than those in the non-observable condition. The ERP results revealed that participants with high SES exhibited more negative N2 and N400 amplitude during environmental decisions in the non-observable condition than in the observable condition, indicating that high SES individuals experience less cognitive conflict during environmental decisions, which may reflect the attenuated cost--benefit trade-off due to reputational incentives in the presence of observers. Additionally, individuals with high SES exhibited greater reputational motivation when observed, as indicated by larger P3 amplitude. However, these differences were not observed among individuals with low SES. These findings suggest that SES is associated with distinct psychological and behavioral differences in pro-environmental behavior, moderated by social observation, evident across both the early and later stages of environmental decisions in the brain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Highlights This study examined how Mandarin‐speaking preschoolers with and without a history of late talking (LT) process familiar monosyllabic words with unexpected lexical tones, focusing on both phonological and semantic violations. This study initially enrolled 64 Mandarin‐speaking toddlers: 31 with a history of LT (mean age: 27.67 months) and 33 without a history of LT (non‐LT) (mean age: 27.85 months). Event‐related potentials were recorded at the age of 4 years during a picture‐word mismatch task (LT mean age: 51.36 months; non‐LT mean age: 51.20 months); in this task, the participants were presented with auditory words either matching (Tone 3) or mismatching with images in terms of their lexical tones; the mismatches encompassed acoustically dissimilar (Tone 1) and similar (Tone 2) mismatches. A significant difference in the phonological mapping negativity (PMN) responses to Tones 1 and 3 was observed only in the non‐LT group. However, differences in the N400 responses to Tones 1 and 3 remained consistent across both groups. In addition, greater differences in the PMN responses between Tones 1 and 3 were associated with higher language proficiency during the preschool period. The PMN response serves as an indicator of neural correlates in lexical tone processing, reflecting challenges encountered by preschoolers with a history of LT when processing the lexical tones of familiar words. Furthermore, the PMN response was correlated with concurrent language abilities. These findings indicate the importance of early tonal perception development for Mandarin speakers with a history of LT. Preschoolers with a history of late talking (LT), similar to preschoolers without such a history, can establish word expectations and detect the lexical tone violation in real time. However, those with a history of LT require additional time to process acoustic cues and differentiate between word semantics based on lexical tone information. The phonological mapping negativity response serves as an indicator of neural correlates in lexical tone processing, reflecting challenges encountered by preschoolers with a history of LT when processing the lexical tones of familiar words. The present findings indicate the importance of early intervention for Mandarin speakers with a history of LT, with an emphasis on lexical tone processing from toddlerhood. [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]

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]

Emotion is processed incrementally during sentence comprehension in a first language (L1) due to unification operations. Since processing multiple types of information is cognitively more demanding in a second language (L2), we investigated implied emotion processing in L1 and L2 using event-related brain potentials. We presented native Spanish speakers with sentences whose context rendered neutral words either negative-congruent, neutral-congruent or neutral-incongruent in Spanish (L1) and English (L2). Results showed differences in early emotion processing across languages: a larger N100 for neutral than negative sentences in L1 and a more positive P300 for negative than neutral sentences in L2. Effects in the N400 and LPP time windows were not language dependent. An N400 semantic incongruity effect was present in both languages. A gradual LPP effect was larger for negative than incongruent sentences in both languages, with neutral sentences in between. Results indicate early time-window differences in implied emotion processing across languages. [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]

The decision-making of soccer referees is one of the typical forms influenced by factors such as environmental pressure and individual emotions. While previous studies have explored how common factors like personal anxiety and on-field pressure affect the decisions of soccer referees, the mechanisms by which anxiety influences decision-making under pressure remain unclear. This study developed a penalty task based on real soccer match scenarios and recruited 76 experienced soccer referees. These referees were divided into two groups, high anxiety and low anxiety, based on their anxiety levels, to perform decisionmaking tasks under different pressure environments simulated to mimic real matches. Additionally, this research employed Event-Related Potential (ERP) technology to compare the brain signals of soccer referees with different levels of anxiety when facing foul play under various pressure environments. It was found that referees with high levels of anxiety displayed larger P300 and N400 amplitudes in a low-pressure environment (p = 0.0059, t = 2.9437). However, no significant differences in P300 and N400 amplitudes were observed between referees with high and low levels of anxiety under high-pressure conditions (p = 0.1890, t = 1.3411). This study not only reveals the complex mechanisms of anxiety in the decision-making process of referees but also emphasizes the importance of understanding and managing the psychological state of referees in competitive sports to improve the quality of their decisions. Our findings provide an empirical basis for future efforts to mitigate the impact of anxiety and optimize the decision-making process in similar high-pressure environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many domains, learners extract recurring units from continuous sequences. For example, in unknown languages, fluent speech is perceived as a continuous signal. Learners need to extract the underlying words from this continuous signal and then memorize them. One prominent candidate mechanism is statistical learning, whereby learners track how predictive syllables (or other items) are of one another. Syllables within the same word predict each other better than syllables straddling word boundaries. But does statistical learning lead to memories of the underlying words—or just to pairwise associations among syllables? Electrophysiological results provide the strongest evidence for the memory view. Electrophysiological responses can be time‐locked to statistical word boundaries (e.g., N400s) and show rhythmic activity with a periodicity of word durations. Here, I reproduce such results with a simple Hebbian network. When exposed to statistically structured syllable sequences (and when the underlying words are not excessively long), the network activation is rhythmic with the periodicity of a word duration and activation maxima on word‐final syllables. This is because word‐final syllables receive more excitation from earlier syllables with which they are associated than less predictable syllables that occur earlier in words. The network is also sensitive to information whose electrophysiological correlates were used to support the encoding of ordinal positions within words. Hebbian learning can thus explain rhythmic neural activity in statistical learning tasks without any memory representations of words. Learners might thus need to rely on cues beyond statistical associations to learn the words of their native language. Research Highlights: Statistical learning may be utilized to identify recurring units in continuous sequences (e.g., words in fluent speech) but may not generate explicit memory for words.Exposure to statistically structured sequences leads to rhythmic activity with a period of the duration of the underlying units (e.g., words).I show that a memory‐less Hebbian network model can reproduce this rhythmic neural activity as well as putative encodings of ordinal positions observed in earlier research.Direct tests are needed to establish whether statistical learning leads to declarative memories for words. [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]

The way we establish meaning has been a profound question not only in language research but in developmental science as well. The relation between linguistic form and content has been loosened up in recent pragmatic approaches to communication, showing that code-based models of language comprehension must be augmented by context-sensitive, pragmatic-inferential mechanisms to recover the speaker’s intended meaning. Language acquisition has traditionally been thought to involve building a mental lexicon and extracting syntactic rules from noisy linguistic input, while communicative-pragmatic inferences have also been argued to be indispensable. Recent research findings exploring the electrophysiological indicator of semantic processing, the N400, have raised serious questions about the traditional separation between semantic decoding and pragmatic inferential processes. The N400 appears to be sensitive to mentalization—the ability to attribute beliefs to social partners—already from its developmental onset. This finding raises the possibility that mentalization may not simply contribute to pragmatic inferences that enrich linguistic decoding processes but that the semantic system may be functioning in a fundamentally mentalistic manner. The present review first summarizes the key contributions of pragmatic models of communication to language comprehension. Then, it provides an overview of how communicative intentions are interpreted in developmental theories of communication, with a special emphasis on mentalization. Next, it discusses the sensitivity of infants to the informationtransmitting potential of language, their ability to pick up its code-like features, and their capacity to track language comprehension of social partners using mentalization. In conclusion, I argue that the recovery of meaning during linguistic communication is not adequately modeled as a process of codebased semantic retrieval complemented by pragmatic inferences. Instead, the semantic system may establish meaning, as intended, during language comprehension and acquisition through mentalistic attribution of content to communicative partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psycholinguistic models of metaphor processing remain a subject of debate. A prime-probe design using Chinese materials with a specific time span (300 ms) was applied to test the mechanisms of metaphor processing. Conventional and familiarized metaphors were designed as primes, followed by a probe word semantically related to the prime metaphor (MT), a probe word related to the literal meaning of the final word of the prime metaphor (LT), control/unrelated probe word (UT), or non-word. Event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by the probes were recorded to examine metaphor processing. In N400, results revealed that UT and LT elicited significantly more negative waveforms than MT in both primes. MTs and LTs showed no di [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Packaging design is pivotal in motivating consumer decisions, as a key communication tool from creation to purchase. Currently, the interpretation and evaluation of packaging's impact are shifting toward non-traditional methods. This pilot study evaluated the packaging perception of York Ham and Turkey Breast products. The event-related potential (ERP) technique, the methodology priming words (positive and negative), and target images (original and modified packaging) were applied. A total of 23 participants were sampled using a 32-channels scalp elastic electrode cap and viewed 200 trials of word–image matching. Participants responded whether the images and adjectives matched or not, using the two groups of images. The results demonstrate an N400 effect in the parietal area. This region was observed to show evidence of cognitive processing related to congruency or incongruency, by contrasting the priming and target of this study. The evaluation positioned the York Ham packaging as the best rated. The findings show a relevant contribution to ERPs and research related to the food packaging perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negation as a universal feature of human language is used effortlessly in everyday communication. However, experimental research has shown that the comprehension of negated sentences seems to require additional cognitive resources compared to affirmative sentences. Many studies investigating the processing of negation report longer reading and reaction times for negative compared to affirmative sentences and many studies report a Polarity by Truth interaction: false affirmative sentences lead to longer response times and larger N400 event-related potentials (ERPs) than true affirmative sentences, whereas the pattern is reversed for negative sentences where it is the true sentence that elicits longer reaction times and higher N400 ERPs compared to false negative sentences. These interactions have been discussed in the light of lexical associations, predictability, and the need to construct two subsequent mental representations. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that the comprehension of negated sentences seems to make use of neural resources that are typically involved in cognitive control and inhibitory mechanisms. As both processes have been associated with two different and temporally overlapping ERP components (the N400 and the P300), we focus on studies with high temporal resolution. We discuss linguistic aspects of negation, such as semantic similarity and contextual invariance of negation. We furthermore discuss the role of the verb as well as the position of the negative marker with respect to the verb, and their respective relevance for predictive and inhibitory mechanisms in negated sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metaphor and simile, two prevalent forms of figurative language widely employed in daily communication, serve as significant research subjects in linguistics. The Career of Metaphor Theory in cognitive linguistics posits that as conventionality increases, the cognitive mechanisms of metaphor comprehension shift from "comparison" to "categorization." In line with this notion, prior electrophysiological investigations have revealed that novel metaphors elicit a stronger N400 brain response compared to conventional metaphors. However, the observed N400 difference between conventional and novel metaphors may merely stem from the familiarity contrast between them, as conventional metaphors are typically more familiar than novel ones. To address this dichotomy, the present study not only compared the N400 responses between conventional and novel metaphors but also between conventional and novel similes. While conventional and novel similes differ in familiarity, similar to conventional and novel metaphors, both are processed via "comparison" mechanisms. The results revealed that novel metaphors elicited larger N400 amplitudes compared to conventional metaphors, aligning with previous findings. In contrast, no significant N400 differences were observed between conventional and novel similes, suggesting that familiarity disparity is unlikely to account for N400 distinctions. Our findings imply that conventional and novel metaphors undergo distinct cognitive processing mechanisms ("comparison" versus "categorization"), thereby providing further empirical validation for the Career of Metaphor Theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The depth at which parafoveal words are processed during reading is an ongoing topic of debate. Recent studies using RSVP‐with‐flanker paradigms have shown that implausible words within sentences elicit an N400 component while they are still in parafoveal vision, suggesting that the semantics of parafoveal words can be accessed to rapidly update the sentence representation. To study this effect in natural reading, we combined the coregistration of eye movements and EEG with the deconvolution modeling of fixation‐related potentials (FRPs) to test whether semantic plausibility is processed parafoveally during Chinese sentence reading. For one target word per sentence, both its parafoveal and foveal plausibility were orthogonally manipulated using the boundary paradigm. Consistent with previous eye movement studies, we observed a delayed effect of parafoveal plausibility on fixation durations that only emerged on the foveal word. Crucially, in FRPs aligned to the pretarget fixation, a clear N400 effect emerged already based on parafoveal plausibility, with more negative voltages for implausible previews. Once participants fixated the target, we again observed an N400 effect of foveal plausibility. Interestingly, this foveal N400 was absent whenever the preview had been implausible, indicating that when a word's (im)plausibility is already processed in parafoveal vision, this information is not revised anymore upon direct fixation. Implausible words also elicited a late positive component (LPC), but exclusively when in foveal vision. Our results not only provide convergent neural and behavioral evidence for the parafoveal uptake of semantic information, but also indicate different contributions of parafoveal versus foveal information toward higher level sentence processing. A long‐standing question in reading research is whether readers can process the meaning of parafoveal words. We combined eye‐tracking, EEG, deconvolution modeling, and a saccade‐contingent preview manipulation to address this issue. Our findings provide direct neural evidence (parafoveal N400) that a word's semantic plausibility is processed in parafoveal vision during natural sentence reading and also show strong interactions between parafoveal and foveal plausibility processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the N400 component of event-related brain potentials, a neurophysiological marker associated with processing incongruity, we examined brain responses to sentences spoken by a robot that had no arms or legs. Statements concerning physically impossible actions (e.g., knitting) elicit significant N400 responses, reflecting that participants perceived these statements as incongruent with the robot's physical condition. However, this effect was attenuated for participants who indicated that the robot could have hidden limbs, indicating that expectations modify the way an agent's utterances are interpreted. When it came to statements relating to emotional capabilities a distinct pattern was found. Although participants acknowledged that the robot could have emotions, there were significant N400 responses to statements about the robot's emotional experiences (e.g., feeling happy). This effect was not modified by participants' beliefs, suggesting a cognitive challenge of accepting robots as capable of experiencing emotions. Our findings thus point to a boundary in human acceptance of artificial social agents: while physical attributes may be negotiable based on expectations, emotional expressions are more difficult to establish as credible. By elucidating the cognitive mechanisms at play, our study informs the design of social robots that are capable of more effective communication to better support social connectivity and human well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The N400 event‐related brain potential (ERP) semantic priming effect reflects greater activation of contextually related versus unrelated concepts in long‐term semantic memory. Deficits in this measure have been found in persons with schizophrenia and those at clinical high risk (CHR) for this disorder. In CHR patients, we previously found that these deficits predict poorer social functional outcomes after 1 year. In the present study, we tested whether these deficits predicted greater psychosis‐spectrum symptom severity and functional impairment over 2 years. We measured N400 semantic priming effects at baseline in CHR patients (n = 47) who viewed prime words each followed by a related/unrelated target word at stimulus‐onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 300 or 750 ms. We measured psychosis‐spectrum symptoms using the Structured Interview for Prodromal Symptoms and role and social functioning with the Global Functioning: Role and Social scales, at baseline, 1 (n = 29) and 2 years (n = 25). There was a significant interaction between the N400 semantic priming effect at the 300‐ms SOA and time on GF:Role scores, indicating that, contrary to expectations, smaller baseline N400 semantic priming effects were associated with more improvement in role functioning from baseline to Year 1, but baseline N400 priming effects did not predict role functioning at Year 2. N400 priming effects were not significantly associated with different trajectories in psychosis‐spectrum symptoms or social functioning. Thus, CHR patients' N400 semantic priming effects did not predict clinical outcomes over 2 years, suggesting that this ERP measure may have greater value as a state or short‐term prognostic neurophysiological biomarker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used ratings and event-related potentials (ERPs) to compare the mechanisms through which verbal irony and cognitive reappraisal mitigate negative emotion. Verbal irony is when the literal meaning of words contrasts with their intended meaning. Cognitive reappraisal is when we reconsider emotional stimuli to make them less intense. Our hypothesis was that cognitive reappraisal is a potential mechanism through which irony reduces negative emotion. Participants viewed mildly negative pictures first, then read an ironic or literal statement about it in one block, and used cognitive reappraisal of or attending to the picture in the other block. Participants then viewed the picture for a second time, before rating how negative they felt. Behaviourally, irony reduced negative feelings more than literal statements, and reappraisal reduced negative feelings more than attending, with a larger reduction from reappraisal than from irony. In ERPs, irony elicited a prolonged N400 compared to literal, indexing an initial contrast between picture and word affect and sustained processing of their combination. Cognitive reappraisal elicited a larger late positivity compared to attending at the instruction screen. No differences were found during second picture presentation. These findings suggest that irony and cognitive reappraisal can reduce negative affect in different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The perceived social support individuals receive from their others plays a crucial role in shaping conformity with social norms. However, the specific mechanism underlying perceived social support and the detection of social norms remains unclear. Methods: In this study, college students with high and low levels of perceived social support were asked to judge the appropriateness of stranger's behaviors (e.g., singing) in different situations (e.g., library). The participants' electroencephalography activities were analyzed aiming to uncover the neural mechanism underlying how perceived social support influences the detection of others' normative behavior. Results: The ERP results indicate that, for individuals with a lower level of perceived social support, larger amplitudes of the N1 component (related to primary processing) and the N400 component (related to cognitive conflict) were observed when detecting others' social norm violation compared to the conformity condition. However, for individuals with a higher level of perceived social support, no significant differences were found in detecting others' conformity or violation of social norms. Discussion: The results indicate that, when the perceived social support level of the individual is low, detecting others' social norm violation elicits deeper primary processing and stronger cognitive conflict compared to conformity condition. [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]

We explored neural processing differences associated with aging across four cognitive functions. In addition to ERP analysis, we included task-related microstate analyses, which identified stable states of neural activity across the scalp over time, to explore whole-head neural activation differences. Younger and older adults (YA, OA) completed face perception (N170), word-pair judgment (N400), visual oddball (P3), and flanker (ERN) tasks. Age-related effects differed across tasks. Despite age-related delayed latencies, N170 ERP and microstate analyses indicated no age-related differences in amplitudes or microstates. However, age-related condition differences were found for P3 and N00 amplitudes and scalp topographies: smaller condition differences were found for in OAs as well as broader centroparietal scalp distributions. Age group comparisons for the ERN revealed similar focal frontocentral activation loci, but differential activation patterns. Our findings of differential age effects across tasks are most consistent with the STAC-r framework which proposes that age-related effects differ depending on the resources available and the kinds of processing and cognitive load required of various tasks. • ERP and microstate analyses showed that age effects differed across four tasks. • Microstates with ERPs help distinguish among current theories of neural aging. • Spatial distributions of neural processing phases differ by age across time and task. • Different age-related effects across tasks were most consistent with STAC-r. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research has found that iconicity facilitates sign production in picture-naming paradigms and has effects on ERP components. These findings may be explained by two separate hypotheses: (1) a task-specific hypothesis that suggests these effects occur because visual features of the iconic sign form can map onto the visual features of the pictures, and (2) a semantic feature hypothesis that suggests that the retrieval of iconic signs results in greater semantic activation due to the robust representation of sensory-motor semantic features compared to non-iconic signs. To test these two hypotheses, iconic and non-iconic American Sign Language (ASL) signs were elicited from deaf native/early signers using a picture-naming task and an English-to-ASL translation task, while electrophysiological recordings were made. Behavioral facilitation (faster response times) and reduced negativities were observed for iconic signs (both prior to and within the N400 time window), but only in the picture-naming task. No ERP or behavioral differences were found between iconic and non-iconic signs in the translation task. This pattern of results supports the task-specific hypothesis and provides evidence that iconicity only facilitates sign production when the eliciting stimulus and the form of the sign can visually overlap (a picture-sign alignment effect).

A long-standing question concerns whether sensory input can reach semantic stages of processing in the absence of attention and awareness. Here, we examine whether the N400, an event related potential associated with semantic processing, can occur under conditions of inattentional blindness. By employing a novel three-phase inattentional blindness paradigm designed to maximise the opportunity for detecting an N400, we found no evidence for it when participants were inattentionally blind to the eliciting stimuli (related and unrelated word pairs). In contrast, participants noticed the same task-irrelevant word pairs when minimal attention was allocated to them, and a small N400 became evident. When the same stimuli were fully attended and relevant to the task, a robust N400 was observed. In addition to univariate ERP measures, multivariate decoding analyses were unable to classify related from unrelated word pairs when observers were inattentionally blind to the words, with decoding reaching above-chance levels only when the words were (at least minimally) attended. By comparison, decoding reached above-chance levels when contrasting word pairs with non-word stimuli, even when participants were inattentionally blind to these stimuli. Our results also replicated several previous studies by finding a “visual awareness negativity” (VAN) that distinguished task-irrelevant stimuli that participants noticed compared with those that were not perceived, and a P3b (or “late positivity”) that was evident only when the stimuli were task relevant. Together, our findings suggest that semantic processing might require at least a minimal amount of attention.

ObjectiveMethodsResultsConclusionsTo investigate whether alterations in the functional connectivity of networks underlying phoneme perception and semantic-categorical processing persist in adulthood following childhood acquired brain injury (cABI).EEG was recorded in seven adults with a cABI and seven matched controls during the administration of an inattentive and attentive phoneme-level oddball task and a categorical priming task. Functional connections underlying the mismatch negativity (MMN), P300 and N400 were compared between participant groups in five frequency bands by calculating the weighted phase lag index between 32 × 32 electrode pairs. Network modularity and path length were compared between the cABI and control group.We observed a positive network for MMN deviant processing in the low gamma band and N400 related processing in the alpha band, but a negative network for P300 standard processing in the theta band in cABI compared to control adults. No differences in graph measures of functional networks were observed between participant groups.Alterations in the functional connectivity of speech perception and semantic-categorical processing networks persist in adulthood following cABI. Nevertheless, normal-like network properties in terms of local segregation and global integration are observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examined the role of conscious and unconscious processes depending on the level of arithmetic skill. The participants were divided into two groups according to their arithmetic skill based on the calculation fluency test results. Masked and unmasked single-digit addition problems (primes) followed by correct and incorrect results were presented on the screen. In a conscious perception task (unmasked priming), when large and small problem results were presented, an arithmetic N400 and LPC effects were observed in both groups. In the case of unconscious perception (masked priming), when small problem results were presented, the LPC effect was observed in the group with low arithmetic skill. The fact that the LPC arithmetic effect was discovered during the unconscious presentation may indicate the automatic nature of the encoding and retrieving information processes, reflecting neurophysiological characteristics associated with the level of arithmetic skill. [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]

Chinese learners of English often experience difficulty with English tense presumably because their native language is tenseless. We showed that this difficulty relates to their incomplete conceptual representations for tense rather than their poor grammatical rule knowledge. Participants made acceptability judgments on sentences describing two‐event sequences that were either temporally plausible or misaligned according to verb tense (time clash). Both upper‐intermediate Chinese learners of English and native English speakers were able to detect time clashes between events, showing that Chinese participants could apply tense rules explicitly. However, a predicted modulation of the N400 event‐related brain potential elicited by time clashes in English‐speaking participants was entirely absent in Chinese participants. In contrast, the same Chinese participants could semantically process time information when it was lexically conveyed in both languages. Thus, despite their mastery of English grammar, high‐functioning Chinese learners of English failed to process the meaning of tense‐conveyed temporal information in real time. A one‐page Accessible Summary of this article in non‐technical language is freely available in the Supporting Information online and at https://oasis‐database.org [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to examine the process of L2 novel word learning through the combination of episodic and semantic memory, and how the process differs between the formation of thematic and taxonomic relations. The major approach adopted was observing the neural effects of word learning, which is manifested in the N400 from event-related potentials (ERPs). Eighty-eight participants were recruited for the experiment. In the learning session, L2 contextual discourses related to novel words were learned by participants. In the testing session, discourses embedded with incongruous and congruous novel words in the final position were used for participants to judge the congruency which affected the N400 neural activity. The results showed that both recurrent and new-theme discourses elicited significant N400 effects, while taxonomic sentences did not. These results confirmed the formation of episodic and semantic memory during L2 new word learning, in which semantic memory was mainly supported by thematic relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a misconception that pictures are easy to comprehend, which is problematic in pedagogical practices that include pictures. For example, if a child has difficulties with verbal narration to picture sequences, it may be interpreted as specific to spoken language even though the child may have additional difficulties with comprehension of visual narratives in the form of picture sequences. The purpose of the present study was therefore to increase our understanding of semantic processing in the pictorial domain in relation to semantic processing in the verbal domain, focusing on 9-13 years-old children with typical language development. To this end, we measured electrical brain responses (event related potentials, ERPs) in 17 children to (i) pictures (panels) that were predicted versus unpredicted in sequences of panels that conveyed visual narratives and (ii) words that were predicted versus unpredicted in sentences that conveyed verbal narratives. Results demonstrated similarities as there were no significant difference in the magnitude of the N400 effect across domains. The only difference between domains was the predicted difference in distribution, that is, a more posterior N400 effect in the verbal domain than in the pictorial domain. The study contributes to an increased understanding of the complexity of processing of visual narratives and its shared features with processing of verbal narratives, which should be considered in pedagogical practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language comprehension can be facilitated by the accurate prediction of upcoming words, but prediction effects are not ubiquitous, and comprehenders likely use predictive processing to varying degrees depending on task demands. To ascertain the processing consequences of prioritizing prediction, we here compared ERPs elicited when young adult participants simply read for comprehension with those collected in a subsequent block that required active prediction. We were particularly interested in frontally‐distributed post‐N400 effects for expected and unexpected words in strongly constraining contexts, which have previously been documented as two distinct patterns: an enhanced positivity ("anterior positivity") observed for prediction violations compared to words that are merely unpredictable (because they occur in weakly constraining sentences) and a distinction between expected endings in more constraining contexts and those same weakly constrained words ("frontal negativity" to the strongly predicted words). We found that the size of the anterior positivity effect was unchanged between passive comprehension and active prediction, suggesting that some processes related to prediction may engage state‐like networks. On the other hand, the frontal negativity showed graded patterns from the interaction of task and sentence type. These differing patterns support the hypothesis that there are two separate effects with frontal scalp distributions that occur after the N400 and further suggest that the impact of violating predictions (as long as prediction is engaged at all) is largely stable across varying levels of effort/attention directed toward prediction, whereas other comprehension processes can be modulated by task demands. A comparison of event‐related potentials across a passive comprehension task and an active prediction task examined the consequences of prioritizing prediction and the underlying mechanisms. N400 expectancy effects and a late frontal negativity were enhanced by active prediction, but the late anterior positivity, a marker of prediction consequences, was unchanged, suggesting that some comprehension processes are sensitive to task demands while others are more state‐like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In previous work investigating the relationship between domain knowledge (of the fictional world of Harry Potter) and sentence comprehension, domain knowledge had a greater impact on electrical brain potentials to words which completed sentences about fictional "facts" participants reported they did not know compared to facts they did. This suggests that individuals use domain knowledge continuously to activate relevant/related concepts as they process sentences, even with only partial knowledge. As that study relied on subjective reports, it may have resulted in response bias related to an individual's overall domain knowledge. In the present study, we therefore asked participants with varying degrees of domain knowledge to complete sentences describing fictional "facts" as an objective measure of sentence‐level knowledge. We then recorded EEG as the same individuals (re‐)read the same sentences, including their appropriate final words, and sorted these according to their objective knowledge scores. Replicating and extending Troyer et al., domain knowledge immediately facilitated access to meaning for unknown words; greater domain knowledge was associated with reduced N400 amplitudes for unknown words. These findings constitute novel evidence for graded preactivation of conceptual knowledge (e.g., at the level of semantic features and/or relations) in the absence of lexical prediction. Knowledge also influenced post‐N400 memory/integration processes for these same unknown words; greater domain knowledge was associated with enhanced late positive components (LPCs), suggesting that deeper encoding during language processing may be engendered when knowledgeable individuals encounter an apparent gap in their knowledge. We examined how content/domain expertise influences electrophysiology during language processing. Within a third of a second, neural signatures indexing access to word meaning reveal sensitivity to fine‐grained variation in domain knowledge—especially for words not explicitly recalled during a fact‐completion task. For the same words, domain knowledge also influenced neural signatures thought to index elaborative encoding processes, likely because generally knowledgeable individuals could more readily link "unknown" words with existing knowledge structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way we establish meaning has been a profound question not only in language research but in developmental science as well. The relation between linguistic form and content has been loosened up in recent pragmatic approaches to communication, showing that code-based models of language comprehension must be augmented by context-sensitive, pragmatic-inferential mechanisms to recover the speaker’s intended meaning. Language acquisition has traditionally been thought to involve building a mental lexicon and extracting syntactic rules from noisy linguistic input, while communicative-pragmatic inferences have also been argued to be indispensable. Recent research findings exploring the electrophysiological indicator of semantic processing, the N400, have raised serious questions about the traditional separation between semantic decoding and pragmatic inferential processes. The N400 appears to be sensitive to mentalization—the ability to attribute beliefs to social partners—already from its developmental onset. This finding raises the possibility that mentalization may not simply contribute to pragmatic inferences that enrich linguistic decoding processes but that the semantic system may be functioning in a fundamentally mentalistic manner. The present review first summarizes the key contributions of pragmatic models of communication to language comprehension. Then, it provides an overview of how communicative intentions are interpreted in developmental theories of communication, with a special emphasis on mentalization. Next, it discusses the sensitivity of infants to the information-transmitting potential of language, their ability to pick up its code-like features, and their capacity to track language comprehension of social partners using mentalization. In conclusion, I argue that the recovery of meaning during linguistic communication is not adequately modeled as a process of code-based semantic retrieval complemented by pragmatic inferences. Instead, the semantic system may establish meaning, as intended, during language comprehension and acquisition through mentalistic attribution of content to communicative partners.

Extensive studies have been conducted on the impact of foreign language reading anxiety on reading, primarily focusing on pedagogy and behavior but lacking electrophysiological evidence. The current study aimed to investigate the influence of foreign language reading anxiety on reading and its underlying mechanisms. The results revealed a negative correlation between foreign language reading anxiety and foreign language reading performance, irrespective of the native language. Adults with low levels of foreign language reading anxiety (LFLRA) demonstrated a significant difference in early lexical component N170 amplitude between foreign and native languages. However, this effect was not observed in adults with high levels of foreign language reading anxiety (HFLRA). In terms of N170 latency, HFLRA showed a longer N170 for the foreign language compared to the native language. Furthermore, the N170 effects were predominantly localized over the left occipitotemporal electrodes. Regarding N400 latency, a significant difference was found in LFLRA individuals between foreign and native language processing, while HFLRA individuals did not exhibit this difference. These findings suggest that HFLRA individuals experience inefficient lexical processing (such as orthography or semantics) during reading in foreign language.

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.

Counterfactual conditionals posit hypothetical scenarios in which antecedent events contradict reality. This study examined whether and how the processing difficulty of Chinese counterfactual conditionals (yaobushi, equivalent to if it had not been for in English) can be affected by the length of temporal shifts of the events across clauses and the likelihood of the antecedent occurrence. Participants read Chinese counterfactuals that contained either long (e.g., qunian-xianzai [last year-right now]) or short temporal shifts (e.g., zuotian-xianzai [yesterday-right now]) within highly likely (e.g., sign up for school activity) or less likely contexts (e.g., sign up for Arctic scientific research). ERP results revealed a significant N400 interaction between the temporal shift length and antecedent likelihood on the temporal indicators in the consequent and the sentence-ending verbs. Specifically, the less likely events elicited larger negativity than highly likely events with short temporal shifts on the temporal indicator. On the sentence-ending word, the long temporal shift elicited enlarged negativity than the short temporal shift when the antecedent was highly likely. These findings have two key implications regarding the interplay of implied causality and falsity constraints during counterfactual comprehension. First, salient falsity constraints can override effects of causal coherence on processing. Second, greater negativity for unlikely antecedents suggests that counterfactual markers concurrently activate factual and hypothetical representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tested two accounts of the cognitive process underlying the N400 event‐related potential component: one that it reflects meaning‐based processing and one that it reflects the processing of specific words. The experimental design utilized separable Persian phrasal verbs, which form a strongly probabilistic, long‐distance dependency, ideal for the study of probabilistic processing. In sentences strongly constraining for a particular continuation, we show evidence that between two low‐probability words, only the word that changed the expected meaning of the sentence increased N400 amplitude, while a synonym of the most probable target word did not. The findings support an account of the N400 in which its underlying process is driven by the processing of meaning rather than of specific words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anticipatory mechanisms are known to play a key role in language, but they have been mostly investigated with violation paradigms, which only consider what happens after predictions have been (dis)confirmed. Relatively few studies focused on the pre‐stimulus interval and found that stronger expectations are associated with lower pre‐stimulus alpha power. However, alpha power also fluctuates spontaneously, in the absence of experimental manipulations; and in the attention and perception domains, spontaneously low pre‐stimulus power is associated with better behavioral performance and with event‐related potential (ERPs) with shorter latencies and higher amplitudes. Importantly, little is known about the role of alpha fluctuations in other domains, as it is in language. To this aim, we investigated whether spontaneous fluctuations in pre‐stimulus alpha power modulate language‐related ERPs in a semantic congruence task. Electrophysiology data were analyzed using Generalized Additive Mixed Models to model nonlinear interactions between pre‐stimulus alpha power and EEG amplitude, at the single‐trial level. We found that the N400 and the late posterior positivity/P600 were larger in the case of lower pre‐stimulus alpha power. Still, while the N400 was observable regardless of the level of pre‐stimulus power, a late posterior positivity/P600 effect was only observable for low pre‐stimulus alpha power. We discuss these findings in light of the different, albeit connected, functional interpretations of pre‐stimulus alpha and the ERPs according to both a nonpredictive interpretation focused on attentional mechanisms and under a predictive processing framework. We tested whether spontaneous fluctuations of pre‐stimulus alpha power could have an impact on linguistic violation ERPs. Analyses were performed at the single‐trial level using Generalized Additive Mixed Models (GAMMs) to model the whole post‐stimulus EEG signal as a function of pre‐stimulus alpha fluctuations. Results demonstrated that spontaneous pre‐stimulus alpha power fluctuations differently modulate the N400 and P600, indicating that pre‐stimulus activation has a different impact on linguistic prediction error (N400) and subsequent reanalysis (P600). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to examine how real-time processing of information about the social status of interlocutors (high vs. low) and the imposition of making a refusal by manipulating the indirectness of invitation forms (declining direct invitations vs. declining indirect invitations) affects the interpretation of refusals in Chinese. The event-related potentials results showed that high-status invitees who decline invitations from low-status inviters elicited weaker N400 effects followed by late mitigated negative effects, while high imposition refusals elicited stronger N400 effects followed by increased late negativities. The two factors of social status and imposition functioned independently during the comprehension of refusal utterances. These findings suggest that individuals take the social status of interlocutors and the imposition of making a refusal into consideration as an utterance unfolds, while face-threatening contexts create inferential difficulties for reinterpreting the pragmatic implications of an utterance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent neurobiological models on language suggest that auditory sentence comprehension is supported by a coordinated temporal interplay within a left-dominant brain network, including the posterior inferior frontal gyrus (pIFG), posterior superior temporal gyrus and sulcus (pSTG/STS), and angular gyrus (AG). Here, we probed the timing and causal relevance of the interplay between these regions by means of concurrent transcranial magnetic stimulation and electroencephalography (TMSEEG). Our TMS-EEG experiments reveal region- and time-specific causal evidence for a bidirectional information flow from left pSTG/STS to left pIFG and back during auditory sentence processing. Adapting a condition-and-perturb approach, our findings further suggest that the left pSTG/STS can be supported by the left AG in a statedependent manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morality has been an integral part of social cognition and our daily life, and different languages may exert distinct impacts on human moral judgment. However, it remains unclear how moral concept is encoded in the bilingual brain. This study, therefore, aimed to explore the emotional and cognitive involvement of bilingual morality judgement by using combined event-related potential (ERP) and psychophysiological (including skin, heart, and pulse) measures. In the experiment, thirty-one Chinese–English bilingual participants were asked to make moral judgments in Chinese and English, respectively. Our results revealed increased early frontal N400 and decreased LPC in L1 moral concept encoding as compared to L2, suggesting that L1 was more reliant on automatic processes and emotions yet less on elaboration. In contrast, L2 moral and immoral concepts elicited enhanced LPC, decreased N400, and greater automatic psychophysiological electrocardiograph responses, which might reflect more elaborate processing despite blunted emotional responses and increased anxiety. Additionally, both behavioral and P200 data revealed a reliable immorality bias across languages. Our results were discussed in light of the dual-process framework of moral judgments and the (dis)embodiment of bilingual processing, which may advance our understanding of the interplay between language and morality as well as between emotion and cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musical expertise has been proposed to facilitate speech perception and comprehension in noisy environments. This study further examined the open question of whether musical expertise modulates high‐level lexical‐semantic prediction to aid online speech comprehension in noisy backgrounds. Musicians and nonmusicians listened to semantically strongly/weakly constraining sentences during EEG recording. At verbs prior to target nouns, both groups showed a positivity‐ERP effect (Strong vs. Weak) associated with the predictability of incoming nouns; this correlation effect was stronger in musicians than in nonmusicians. After the target nouns appeared, both groups showed an N400 reduction effect (Strong vs. Weak) associated with noun predictability, but musicians exhibited an earlier onset latency and stronger effect size of this correlation effect than nonmusicians. To determine whether musical expertise enhances anticipatory semantic processing in general, the same group of participants participated in a control reading comprehension experiment. The results showed that, compared with nonmusicians, musicians demonstrated more delayed ERP correlation effects of noun predictability at words preceding the target nouns; musicians also exhibited more delayed and reduced N400 decrease effects correlated with noun predictability at the target nouns. Taken together, these results suggest that musical expertise enhances lexical‐semantic predictive processing in speech‐in‐noise comprehension. This musical‐expertise effect may be related to the strengthened hierarchical speech processing in particular. These findings deepen our understanding of the mechanisms by which musical experience shapes language processing. We provide strong evidence that musical expertise can bolster higher‐level lexical‐semantic prediction to aid speech comprehension in a noisy background. This may contribute to the enhanced hierarchical processing efficiency specifically in speech processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional approaches to quantify components in event-related potentials (ERPs) are based on averaging EEG responses. However, this method ignores the trial-to-trial variability in the component's latency, resulting in a smeared version of the component and underestimates of its amplitude. Different techniques to quantify ERP components in single trials have therefore been described in literature. In this study, two approaches based on neural networks are proposed and their performance was compared with other techniques using simulated data and two experimental datasets. On the simulated dataset, the neural networks outperformed other techniques for most signal-to-noise ratios and resulted in better estimates of the topography and shape of the ERP component. In the first experimental dataset, the highest correlation values between the estimated latencies of the P300 component and the reaction times were obtained using the neural networks. In the second dataset, the single-trial latency estimation techniques showed an amplitude reduction of the N400 effect with age and ascertained this effect could not be attributed to differences in latency variability. These results illustrate the applicability and the added value of neural networks for the quantification of ERP components in individual trials. A limitation, however, is that simulated data is needed to train the neural networks, which can be difficult when the ERP components to be found are not known a priori. Nevertheless, the neural networks-based approaches offer more information on the variability of the timing of the component and result in better estimates of the shape and topography of ERP components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 study reported here addressed the behavioral and EEG correlates of the effects of dual images used as primers for a lexical decision task to seek evidence for inhibition theory or episode retrieval theory as explanations of the negative priming effect. At the behavioral level, conscious meanings of dual images were found to produce positive priming effects, while unconscious meanings produced negative priming effects. EEG correlates of these effects were identified in the anterior-central regions of the brain. Thus, a decrease in the amplitude of the N400 component served as a correlate of positive priming, while a decrease in the amplitude of the late positive complex was a correlate of negative priming. Both components are considered in the literature as indicators of episode retrieval, a process associated with memory. The fact that the priming effect of unconscious meanings of dual images at the psychophysiological level is expressed in terms of memory phenomena leads to the conclusion that subjects remember meanings that they did not notice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negation as a universal feature of human language is used effortlessly in everyday communication. However, experimental research has shown that the comprehension of negated sentences seems to require additional cognitive resources compared to affirmative sentences. Many studies investigating the processing of negation report longer reading and reaction times for negative compared to affirmative sentences and many studies report a Polarity by Truth interaction: false affirmative sentences lead to longer response times and larger N400 event-related potentials (ERPs) than true affirmative sentences, whereas the pattern is reversed for negative sentences where it is the true sentence that elicits longer reaction times and higher N400 ERPs compared to false negative sentences. These interactions have been discussed in the light of lexical associations, predictability, and the need to construct two subsequent mental representations. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that the comprehension of negated sentences seems to make use of neural resources that are typically involved in cognitive control and inhibitory mechanisms. As both processes have been associated with two different and temporally overlapping ERP components (the N400 and the P300), we focus on studies with high temporal resolution. We discuss linguistic aspects of negation, such as semantic similarity and contextual invariance of negation. We furthermore discuss the role of the verb as well as the position of the negative marker with respect to the verb, and their respective relevance for predictive and inhibitory mechanisms in negated sentences.

Differential auditory experiences of children with hearing-loss who receive cochlear implants (CIs) may influence the integration of lexical and conceptual information. Here we measured event-related potentials during a word-picture priming task in CI-using children (n = 29, mean age = 81 months) and typically-hearing children (n = 19, mean age = 75 months) while they viewed audiovisual-word primes and picture targets that were semantically congruent or incongruent. In both groups, semantic relatedness modulated ERP amplitude 300-500ms after picture onset, signifying an N400 semantic effect. Critically, the CI-using children's responses to unrelated pairs were significantly more negative than hearing children's responses. Group differences were mirrored in an earlier 150-275ms time window associated with a P2 response. The present findings suggest attentional and/or strategic differences impact semantic processing and contribute to the N400 differences observed between groups.