| |
Abstract:
In everyday speech, words are usually processed in the
context of other words. In the literature on language comprehension
there is evidence to suggest that contextual influences play a role
in the on-line recognition of spoken words. An event-related brain
potential experiment was carried out to investigate the time course
of contextual effects on spoken-word recognition. The focus of our
study was on the electrophysiological manifestation of these
effects. Subjects were presented with spoken sentences that ended
with a word that was either (a) congruent, (b) semantically
anomalous beginning with the same initial phonemes as the congruent
completion, or (c) semantically anomalous beginning with phonemes
that differed from the congruent completion (e.g. "During the power
failure Caroline lit her room with CANDLES/CANDY/BOXES"). In
addition to finding an N400 component in the two semantically
anomalous conditions reflecting lexical-semantic integration
processes, we obtained an early negative component in all three
conditions. This component, the N200, was largest in the
semantically anomalous condition where word onset differed from
that of the congruent completions. It was concluded that the N200
is an indicator of the lexical selection process, where word-form
information resulting from an initial phonological analysis and
content information derived from the context interact.
|
