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Abstract:
The identification of a word makes available its semantic and
syntactic properties stored in the mental lexicon. Turning to the
details of this process one can ask whether there is a differential
time course, i.e. whether one kind of information is available
earlier than the other. To empirically investigate this issue,
Dutch nouns were presented orthographically to 16 native speakers
in single word mode while electroencephalographic recordings were
made. Participants had to perform a two-choice go/nogo task, based
on the grammatical gender and semantic category of each word: In
one of the conditions grammatical gender determined with which hand
to respond and semantic category determined whether to execute the
response or not (go/nogo). In the other condition response hand
depended on semantic category while execution of response depended
on grammatical gender. Lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs),
indicating response preparation, were derived for go- and
nogo-trials of each condition. The pattern of nogo-LRPs in the
different conditions supports the notion of a differential time
course for semantic and syntactic properties of a word.
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