To mind the mind: an event-related potential study of word class and semantic ambiguity

Brain Research
Chia-Lin Lee, K D Federmeier

Abstract

The goal of this study was to jointly examine the effects of word class, word class ambiguity, and semantic ambiguity on the brain response to words in syntactically specified contexts. Four types of words were used: (1) word class ambiguous words with a high degree of semantic ambiguity (e.g., 'duck'); (2) word class ambiguous words with little or no semantic ambiguity (e.g., 'vote'); (3) word class unambiguous nouns (e.g., 'sofa'); and (4) word class unambiguous verbs (e.g., 'eat'). These words were embedded in minimal phrases that explicitly specified their word class: "the" for nouns (and ambiguous words used as nouns) and "to" for verbs (and ambiguous words used as verbs). Our results replicate the basic word class effects found in prior work (Federmeier, K.D., Segal, J.B., Lombrozo, T., Kutas, M., 2000. Brain responses to nouns, verbs and class ambiguous words in context. Brain, 123 (12), 2552-2566), including an enhanced N400 (250-450 ms) to nouns compared with verbs and an enhanced frontal positivity (300-700 ms) to unambiguous verbs in relation to unambiguous nouns. A sustained frontal negativity (250-900 ms) that was previously linked to word class ambiguity also appeared in this study but was specific to word class a...Continue Reading

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Citations

Jul 9, 2008·Cognitive Neuropsychology·Paolo BernardisNicoletta Caramelli
Dec 24, 2008·Cognitive Neuropsychology·Martha W BurtonRita Sloan Berndt
Apr 12, 2007·Psychological Science·Sarah Laszlo, Kara D Federmeier
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Sep 16, 2016·Psychophysiology·Ayesha DholakiaDonna Coch
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Aug 21, 2018·Frontiers in Psychology·Brenda SteebAdolfo M García
Mar 21, 2017·Neuropsychologia·Xiaoping Fang, Charles A Perfetti

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