EEG and Event-Related Brain Potentials

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) have become a standard method in many areas of cognitive research, including second-language research, over the last decade and a half (Van Hell and Tokowicz 2010). ERPs can provide evidence which is central to the controversy on the similarity or difference of first and second-language processing. However, they provide a challenge which can be daunting for a large-scale multi-lab study, because there are so many technical details which vary from lab to lab, making it difficult to acquire data that is fully comparable across testing sites. In this chapter we will discuss a number of aspects of ERP measurement, focusing partly on experimental designs and partly on the way in which data from different languages and different labs can successfully be combined. These aspects will require somewhat more detail than the techniques treated in previous chapters.