The influence of semantic category membership on syntactic decisions: a study using event-related brain potentials

Brain Research
Niels O SchillerBernadette M Jansma

Abstract

An event-related brain potentials (ERP) experiment was carried out to investigate the influence of semantic category membership on syntactic decision-making. Native speakers of German viewed a series of words that were semantically marked or unmarked for gender and made go/no-go decisions about the grammatical gender of those words. The electrophysiological results indicated that participants could make a gender decision earlier when words were semantically gender-marked than when they were semantically gender-unmarked. Our data provide evidence for the influence of semantic category membership on the decision of the syntactic gender of a visually presented German noun. More specifically, our results support models of language comprehension in which semantic information processing of words is initiated prior to syntactic information processing is finalized.

References

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Apr 17, 2001·The Behavioral and Brain Sciences·W J LeveltA S Meyer
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Oct 17, 2003·Brain Research. Cognitive Brain Research·Niels O SchillerBernadette M Jansma
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Apr 7, 2005·Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience·Anke HammerThomas F Münte
Jan 19, 2006·Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience·Oliver Müller, Peter Hagoort

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Citations

Mar 30, 2007·Brain Research·Ingrid K ChristoffelsNiels O Schiller
Sep 19, 2009·Psychophysiology·John B Meixner, J Peter Rosenfeld
Jul 29, 2011·Journal of Neurophysiology·Francesco Negro, Dario Farina

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