Re-Examination of Chinese Semantic Processing and Syntactic Processing: Evidence from Conventional ERPs and Reconstructed ERPs by Residue Iteration Decomposition (RIDE)

A number of studies have explored the time course of Chinese semantic and syntactic processing. However, whether syntactic processing occurs earlier than semantics during Chinese sentence reading is still under debate. To further explore this issue, an event-related potentials (ERPs) experiment was conducted on 21 native Chinese speakers who read individually-presented Chinese simple sentences (NP1+VP+NP2) word-by-word for comprehension and made semantic plausibility judgments. The transitivity of the verbs was manipulated to form three types of stimuli: congruent sentences (CON), sentences with a semantically violated NP2 following a transitive verb (semantic violation, SEM), and sentences with a semantically violated NP2 following an intransitive verb (combined semantic and syntactic violation, SEM+SYN). The ERPs evoked from the target NP2 were analyzed by using the Residue Iteration Decomposition (RIDE) method to reconstruct the ERP waveform blurred by trial-to-trial variability, as well as by using the conventional ERP method based on stimulus-locked averaging. The conventional ERP analysis showed that, compared with the critical words in CON, those in SEM and SEM+SYN elicited an N400–P600 biphasic pattern. The N400 effects in both violation conditions were of similar size and distribution, but the P600 in SEM+SYN was bigger than that in SEM. Compared with the conventional ERP analysis, RIDE analysis revealed a larger N400 effect and an earlier P600 effect (in the time window of 500–800 ms instead of 570–810ms). Overall, the combination of conventional ERP analysis and the RIDE method for compensating for trial-to-trial variability confirmed the non-significant difference between SEM and SEM+SYN in the earlier N400 time window. Converging with previous findings on other Chinese structures, the current study provides further precise evidence that syntactic processing in Chinese does not occur earlier than semantic processing.     

Mismatch field to tone pairs: neuromagnetic evidence for temporal integration at the sensory level

The mismatch field (MMF) to minor pitch changes in two experimental conditions was studied. Standard tones of 1000 Hz and deviant tones of 1050 Hz both of 50 ms duration were delivered in single tone condition. Paired tones of the same duration were used in the paired tone condition. The standard tone pair consisted of two 1000 Hz tones, whereas the deviant tone pair was composed of a 1000 Hz tone in the first position and a 1050 Hz tone in the second position with a silent interval of 15 ms between the two. Standards of 90% and deviants of 10% probability were presented in random order and with a randomized interstimulus interval between 600 and 900 ms. The source analysis showed a more lateral location for the MMF obtained in the paired tone condition (MMF.P) compared to the MMF elicited by the single deviants (MMF.S). The source location of both the MMF.P and MMF.S turned out to be significantly anterior relative to the sources of the M100. The increased stimulus repetition in the paired tone condition (two times more stimuli than in the single tone condition) lead to a strong suppression of the field amplitude and of the dipole moment of the M100, while this effect could not be seen for the MMF. The data demonstrate a fundamental difference between the processes reflected by the M100 and the MMF: while the M100 represents the processing of every individual tone, the MMF reflects the change detection of the paired stimuli as unitary events, forming a perceptual group. The different sources of the MMF.P and MMF.S also support an integrated processing of the paired stimuli.     

How the speed of working memory updating influences the on-line thematic processing of simple sentences in Mandarin Chinese

This ERP study used electrophysiological technique to examine how individual differences in the speed of working memory updating influence the use of syntactic and semantic information during on-line sentence argument interpretation, and the time course of that working memory updating effect. The basic structure of the experimental sentences was “Noun + Verb + adverb + ‘le’ + a two-character word”, with the Noun being the sentence initial argument. This initial argument is animate or inanimate and the following verb disambiguates it as an agent or patient. The results at the initial argument revealed that, the quick-updating group elicited a larger positivity over the frontal cortex (within 500–800 ms post-noun onset) as compared with the slow-updating group. At the following disambiguating verb, the slow-updating group only showed a word order effect, indicating that the patient-first condition elicited a larger P600 (within 500–1,000 ms post-verb onset) than the agent-first one; for the quick-updating group, at the early stage of processing, the patient-first sentences elicited a larger N400 (within 300–500 ms post-verb onset) than the agent-first ones only when the initial argument was inanimate; however, at the late stage, the patient-first sentences elicited an enhanced P600 (within 800–1,000 ms post-verb onset) only when the initial argument was animate. These results suggested that the speed of working memory updating not only influences the maintenance of sentence argument when the contents of working memory change but also influences the efficiency of integrating that argument with the verb at a late time point. When integrating the argument with the disambiguating verb, individuals with quick-updating ability can combine multiple sources of information (both noun animacy and word order), and conduct rapid and fine-grained two-stage processing; individuals with slow-updating ability, however, only rely on one dominant source of information types (word order), and conducted slow and course-grained processing.     

DURATION DISCRIMINATION IN NORTHERN BOBWHITE QUAIL

ABSTRACT

We examined the ability of northern bobwhite quail Colinus virginianus to discriminate along the duration dimension because of its suspected importance in their ability to identify individual covey members. If quail are using variability along this dimension to identify individuals we would expect their auditory resolving powers to be sufficiently refined in that dimension to make appropriate discriminations. Three 2-year old male bobwhite quail were trained using a positive reinforcement technique to discriminate between a 1000 Hz standard (correct) tone 600 ms in duration (100 ms rise/fall time) and a 1000 Hz comparison tone 300 ms in duration (also 10 ms rise/fall time). Quail were then required to discriminate between pairs of tones in which the duration of the comparison tone was progressively increased from 400 ms to 590 ms. Because of the categorical nature of the analysis we concluded that the two tones must differ in duration by 20 ms or more if they are to be discriminated correctly. Our study has shown that bobwhites are able to detect a 3% difference in duration around a standard tone 600 ms in duration, which compares favourably with results obtained from earlier studies with parakeets Melopsittacus undulatus and pigeons Columbia livia. Such a finely tuned duration discrimination ability also suggests that it is possible bobwhites may be using individual variability along the duration dimension of the separation call to identify individual covey members.     

Distinguishing Neurocognitive Processes Reflected by P600 Effects: Evidence from ERPs and Neural Oscillations

Research on language comprehension using event-related potentials (ERPs) reported distinct ERP components reliably related to the processing of semantic (N400) and syntactic information (P600). Recent ERP studies have challenged this well-defined distinction by showing P600 effects for semantic and pragmatic anomalies. So far, it is still unresolved whether the P600 reflects specific or rather common processes. The present study addresses this question by investigating ERPs in response to a syntactic and pragmatic (irony) manipulation, as well as a combined syntactic and pragmatic manipulation. For the syntactic condition, a morphosyntactic violation was applied, whereas for the pragmatic condition, such as “That is rich”, either an ironic or literal interpretation was achieved, depending on the prior context. The ERPs at the critical word showed a LAN-P600 pattern for syntactically incorrect sentences relative to correct ones. For ironic compared to literal sentences, ERPs showed a P200 effect followed by a P600 component. In comparison of the syntax-related P600 to the irony-related P600, distributional differences were found. Moreover, for the P600 time window (i.e., 500–900 ms), different changes in theta power between the syntax and pragmatics effects were found, suggesting that different patterns of neural activity contributed to each respective effect. Thus, both late positivities seem to be differently sensitive to these two types of linguistic information, and might reflect distinct neurocognitive processes, such as reanalysis of the sentence structure versus pragmatic reanalysis.     

Information Structure Influences Depth of Syntactic Processing: Event-Related Potential Evidence for the Chomsky Illusion

Information structure facilitates communication between interlocutors by highlighting relevant information. It has previously been shown that information structure modulates the depth of semantic processing. Here we used event-related potentials to investigate whether information structure can modulate the depth of syntactic processing. In question-answer pairs, subtle (number agreement) or salient (phrase structure) syntactic violations were placed either in focus or out of focus through information structure marking. P600 effects to these violations reflect the depth of syntactic processing. For subtle violations, a P600 effect was observed in the focus condition, but not in the non-focus condition. For salient violations, comparable P600 effects were found in both conditions. These results indicate that information structure can modulate the depth of syntactic processing, but that this effect depends on the salience of the information. When subtle violations are not in focus, they are processed less elaborately. We label this phenomenon the Chomsky illusion.     

Memory-based mismatch response to frequency changes in rats

Any occasional changes in the acoustic environment are of potential importance for survival. In humans, the preattentive detection of such changes generates the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of event-related brain potentials. MMN is elicited to rare changes ('deviants') in a series of otherwise regularly repeating stimuli ('standards'). Deviant stimuli are detected on the basis of a neural comparison process between the input from the current stimulus and the sensory memory trace of the standard stimuli. It is, however, unclear to what extent animals show a similar comparison process in response to auditory changes. To resolve this issue, epidural potentials were recorded above the primary auditory cortex of urethane-anesthetized rats. In an oddball condition, tone frequency was used to differentiate deviants interspersed randomly among a standard tone. Mismatch responses were observed at 60-100 ms after stimulus onset for frequency increases of 5% and 12.5% but not for similarly descending deviants. The response diminished when the silent inter-stimulus interval was increased from 375 ms to 600 ms for +5% deviants and from 600 ms to 1000 ms for +12.5% deviants. In comparison to the oddball condition the response also diminished in a control condition in which no repetitive standards were presented (equiprobable condition). These findings suggest that the rat mismatch response is similar to the human MMN and indicate that anesthetized rats provide a valuable model for studies of central auditory processing.     

Speed of Human Biological Form and Motion Processing

Recent work suggests that biological motion processing can begin within ~110 ms of stimulus onset, as indexed by the P1 component of the event-related potential (ERP). Here, we investigated whether modulation of the P1 component reflects configural processing alone, rather than the processing of both configuration and motion cues. A three-stimulus oddball task was employed to evaluate bottom-up processing of biological motion. Intact point-light walkers (PLWs) or scrambled PLWs served as distractor stimuli, whereas point-light displays of tool motion served as standard and target stimuli. In a second experiment, the same design was used, but the dynamic stimuli were replaced with static point-light displays. The first experiment revealed that dynamic PLWs elicited a larger P1 as compared to scrambled PLWs. A similar P1 increase was also observed for static PLWs in the second experiment, indicating that these stimuli were more salient than static, scrambled PLWs. These findings suggest that the visual system can rapidly extract global form information from static PLWs and that the observed P1 effect for dynamic PLWs is not dependent on the presence of motion cues. Finally, we found that the N1 component was sensitive to dynamic, but not static, PLWs, suggesting that this component reflects the processing of both form and motion information. The sensitivity of P1 to static PLWs has implications for dynamic form models of biological motion processing that posit temporal integration of configural cues present in individual frames of PLW animations.     

Neural Correlates of the In-Group Memory Advantage on the Encoding and Recognition of Faces

People have a memory advantage for faces that belong to the same group, for example, that attend the same university or have the same personality type. Faces from such in-group members are assumed to receive more attention during memory encoding and are therefore recognized more accurately. Here we use event-related potentials related to memory encoding and retrieval to investigate the neural correlates of the in-group memory advantage. Using the minimal group procedure, subjects were classified based on a bogus personality test as belonging to one of two personality types. While the electroencephalogram was recorded, subjects studied and recognized faces supposedly belonging to the subject’s own and the other personality type. Subjects recognized in-group faces more accurately than out-group faces but the effect size was small. Using the individual behavioral in-group memory advantage in multivariate analyses of covariance, we determined neural correlates of the in-group advantage. During memory encoding (300 to 1000 ms after stimulus onset), subjects with a high in-group memory advantage elicited more positive amplitudes for subsequently remembered in-group than out-group faces, showing that in-group faces received more attention and elicited more neural activity during initial encoding. Early during memory retrieval (300 to 500 ms), frontal brain areas were more activated for remembered in-group faces indicating an early detection of group membership. Surprisingly, the parietal old/new effect (600 to 900 ms) thought to indicate recollection processes differed between in-group and out-group faces independent from the behavioral in-group memory advantage. This finding suggests that group membership affects memory retrieval independent of memory performance. Comparisons with a previous study on the other-race effect, another memory phenomenon influenced by social classification of faces, suggested that the in-group memory advantage is dominated by top-down processing whereas the other-race effect is also influenced by extensive perceptual experience.     

How Is Sentence Processing Affected by External Semantic and Syntactic Information? Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

Background

A crucial question for understanding sentence comprehension is the openness of syntactic and semantic processes for other sources of information. Using event-related potentials in a dual task paradigm, we had previously found that sentence processing takes into consideration task relevant sentence-external semantic but not syntactic information. In that study, internal and external information both varied within the same linguistic domain—either semantic or syntactic. Here we investigated whether across-domain sentence-external information would impact within-sentence processing.

Methodology

In one condition, adjectives within visually presented sentences of the structure [Det]-[Noun]-[Adjective]-[Verb] were semantically correct or incorrect. Simultaneously with the noun, auditory adjectives were presented that morphosyntactically matched or mismatched the visual adjectives with respect to gender.

Findings

As expected, semantic violations within the sentence elicited N400 and P600 components in the ERP. However, these components were not modulated by syntactic matching of the sentence-external auditory adjective. In a second condition, syntactic within-sentence correctness-variations were combined with semantic matching variations between the auditory and the visual adjective. Here, syntactic within-sentence violations elicited a LAN and a P600 that did not interact with semantic matching of the auditory adjective. However, semantic mismatching of the latter elicited a frontocentral positivity, presumably related to an increase in discourse level complexity.

Conclusion

The current findings underscore the open versus algorithmic nature of semantic and syntactic processing, respectively, during sentence comprehension.     

The role of gender information in pronoun resolution: evidence from Chinese

Although previous studies have consistently demonstrated that gender information is used to resolve pronouns, the mechanisms underlying the use of gender information continue to be controversial. The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate whether working memory modulates the effect of gender information on pronoun resolution. The critical pronoun agreed or disagreed with its antecedent in gender. Moreover, the distance between a pronoun and its antecedent was varied to assess the influence of working memory. Compared with the congruent pronouns, the incongruent pronouns elicited an N400 effect in the short distance condition and a P600 effect in the long distance condition. The results suggest that the effect of gender information on pronoun comprehension is modulated by working memory.     

Effects of Early Bilingual Experience with a Tone and a Non-Tone Language on Speech-Music Integration

We investigated music and language processing in a group of early bilinguals who spoke a tone language and a non-tone language (Cantonese and Dutch). We assessed online speech-music processing interactions, that is, interactions that occur when speech and music are processed simultaneously in songs, with a speeded classification task. In this task, participants judged sung pseudowords either musically (based on the direction of the musical interval) or phonologically (based on the identity of the sung vowel). We also assessed longer-term effects of linguistic experience on musical ability, that is, the influence of extensive prior experience with language when processing music. These effects were assessed with a task in which participants had to learn to identify musical intervals and with four pitch-perception tasks. Our hypothesis was that due to their experience in two different languages using lexical versus intonational tone, the early Cantonese-Dutch bilinguals would outperform the Dutch control participants. In online processing, the Cantonese-Dutch bilinguals processed speech and music more holistically than controls. This effect seems to be driven by experience with a tone language, in which integration of segmental and pitch information is fundamental. Regarding longer-term effects of linguistic experience, we found no evidence for a bilingual advantage in either the music-interval learning task or the pitch-perception tasks. Together, these results suggest that being a Cantonese-Dutch bilingual does not have any measurable longer-term effects on pitch and music processing, but does have consequences for how speech and music are processed jointly.     

规律短音中极短间隔短音诱发的失匹配负电位

失匹配负电位是听觉事件相关电位的一个成分,它由一系列重复的,同性质的“标准刺激”的物理性质稍有偏离的“偏差刺激”所诱发,在规律性的标准刺激中,偶然的物理性质稍有偏离的刺激,如频率,强度,久度等的些微变化均可诱发ＭＭＮ。偶然地给于时间上“过早出现”的同样刺激,即频率,强度,久度完全相同,只是在规律性的标准刺激中过早地出现的刺激,作为偏差刺激,也可以诱发出ＮＮＭ。本研究在恒定刺激间隔ＩＳＩ＝６００ｍｓ     

Different Timing Features in Brain Processing of Core and Moral Disgust Pictures: An Event-Related Potentials Study

Disgust, an emotion motivating withdrawal from offensive stimuli, protects us from the risk of biological pathogens and sociomoral violations. Homogeneity of its two types, namely, core and moral disgust has been under intensive debate. To examine the dynamic relationship between them, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) for core disgust, moral disgust and neutral pictures while participants performed a modified oddball task. ERP analysis revealed that N1 and P2 amplitudes were largest for the core disgust pictures, indicating automatic processing of the core disgust-evoking pictures. N2 amplitudes were higher for pictures evoking moral disgust relative to core disgust and neutral pictures, reflecting a violation of social norms. The core disgust pictures elicited larger P3 and late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes in comparison with the moral disgust pictures which, in turn, elicited larger P3 and LPP amplitudes when compared to the neutral pictures. Taken together, these findings indicated that core and moral disgust pictures elicited different neural activities at various stages of information processing, which provided supporting evidence for the heterogeneity of disgust.     

Effects on Automatic Attention Due to Exposure to Pictures of Emotional Faces while Performing Chinese Word Judgment Tasks

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the automatic processing of emotional facial expressions while performing low or high demand cognitive tasks under unattended conditions. In Experiment 1, 35 subjects performed low (judging the structure of Chinese words) and high (judging the tone of Chinese words) cognitive load tasks while exposed to unattended pictures of fearful, neutral, or happy faces. The results revealed that the reaction time was slower and the performance accuracy was higher while performing the low cognitive load task than while performing the high cognitive load task. Exposure to fearful faces resulted in significantly longer reaction times and lower accuracy than exposure to neutral faces on the low cognitive load task. In Experiment 2, 26 subjects performed the same word judgment tasks and their brain event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured for a period of 800 ms after the onset of the task stimulus. The amplitudes of the early component of ERP around 176 ms (P2) elicited by unattended fearful faces over frontal-central-parietal recording sites was significantly larger than those elicited by unattended neutral faces while performing the word structure judgment task. Together, the findings of the two experiments indicated that unattended fearful faces captured significantly more attention resources than unattended neutral faces on a low cognitive load task, but not on a high cognitive load task. It was concluded that fearful faces could automatically capture attention if residues of attention resources were available under the unattended condition.     

Extension of the CS past the US can facilitate conditioning of the rabbit's nictitating membrane response

Five experiments were conducted in which the onset of a tone conditioned stimulus (CS) preceded the unconditioned stimulus (US) by 500 ms. Across experiments, the offset of the CS was extended past the offset of the US by values ranging from 0 ms to 40000 ms. Extensions of the CS of 2000 ms or greater produced acquisition of a conditioned response (CR) that was as fast or faster than in the no-extension condition (0 ms). While extension of a forward tone CS after the US enhanced excitatory conditioning, insertion of another CS (light) in a purely backward relationship with the US passed only a retardation test, indicative of latent inhibition, and not a summation test needed for conditioned inhibition. The results add to the evidence that excitatory and inhibitory processes are both engaged following US offset. Alternative theories of CS processing are discussed.     

Effect of frequency on the loudness of short sounds: comparison between 2 near frequencies, 500 and 1000 Hz]

Loudness egalizations between short tone (1 to 400 ms) and a long reference tone (800 ms) were made. Two frequencies, 500 and 1000 Hz, were employed. Loudness comparisons were made at 20, 40 and 80 dB SL. Results show a frequency effect on the loudness of short tones. Some partial recuperation of loudness appears, it is greater for the high level.