ERP effects of listening to speech: semantic ERP effects

• Published in: Neuropsychologia Vol. 38; no. 11; pp. 1518 - 1530
• Main Authors: Hagoort, Peter, Brown, Colin M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01-01-2000; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Adult; Attention - physiology; Behavioral psychophysiology; Biological and medical sciences; Brain Mapping; Cerebral Cortex - physiology; Contingent Negative Variation - physiology; Electroencephalography; Electrophysiology; Evoked Potentials, Auditory - physiology; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Lexical integration; Lexical selection; Male; N250; N400; Natural speech; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reading; Semantics; Speech Perception - physiology; Electrophysiology; Lexical selection; N400; Lexical integration; N250; Natural speech; Human; Memory; Central nervous system; Lexicon; Cognition; Verbal perception; Hearing; Reading; Semantics; Speech; Event evoked potential; Brain (vertebrata)
• ISSN: 0028-3932; 1873-3514
• DOI: 10.1016/S0028-3932(00)00052-X

In this study, event-related brain potential effects of speech processing are obtained and compared to similar effects in sentence reading. In two experiments spoken sentences were presented with semantic violations in sentence-final or mid-sentence positions. For these violations N400 effects were obtained that were very similar to N400 effects obtained in reading. However, the N400 effects in speech were preceded by an earlier negativity (N250). This negativity is not commonly observed with written input. The early effect is explained as a manifestation of a mismatch between the word forms expected on the basis of the context, and the actual cohort of activated word candidates that is generated on the basis of the speech signal.