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Experimental techniques

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Priming

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Main article: Priming (psychology)
  • Zwitzerlood
Cross-modal lexical priming
  • Zurif et al (1993)
Long-lag priming
  • Devlin et al (2004)
  • Pylkkanen et al (2008)
Masked priming
  • Fiorentino and Poeppel (2007)

The following sections have already been moved to Neurolinguistics. Please do not modify them here; instead, edit the mainspace article.

Mismatch paradigm

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Main article: Mismatch negativity

The mismatch negativity (MMN) is a rigorously documented ERP component frequently used in neurolinguistic experiments.[1][2] It is an electrophysiological response that occurs in the brain when a subject hears or sees a "deviant" stimulus in a set of perceptually identical "standards" (as in the sequence s s s s s s s d d s s s s s s d s s s s s d).[3][4] Since the MMN is elicited only in response to a rare "oddball" stimulus in a set of other stimuli that are perceived to be the same, it has been used to test how speakers perceive sounds and organize stimuli categorically.[5][6] For example, one study presented speakers with numerous /t/ and /d/ stimuli, keeping the ratio of /t/s and /d/s constant to achieve a standard-deviant ratio but varying the voice onset time of all the stimuli within each category; the subjects still showed an MMN, suggesting that even though all the /d/ tokens (and all the /t/ tokens) were physically different in terms of their acoustic properties, the subjects perceptually organized them into the abstract phonemic categories of /d/ and /t/.[3] In addition, the mismatch paradigm has been used to study syntactic processing and the recognition of word category.[2][1][7]

Violation-based

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Many studies in neurolinguistics take advantage of anomalies or violations of syntactic or semantic rules in experimental stimuli, and analyzing the brain responses elicited when a subject encounters these violations. For example, sentence beginning with phrases such as *the garden was on the worked,[8] which violates an English phrase structure rule, often elicit a brain response called the Early Left Anterior Negativity (ELAN).[9] Violation techniques have been in use since at least 1980,[9] when Kutas and Hillyard first reported that semantic violations elicited an N400 effect.[10] Violation designs have also been used for hemodynamic studies (fMRI and PET): Embick and colleagues, for example, used grammatical and spelling violations to investigate the location of syntactic processing in the brain using fMRI.[11] Another common use of violation designs is to combine two kinds of violations in the same sentence and thus make predictions about how different language processes interact with one another.[12] For example, Ye and colleagues performed a study of syntactic and semantic violations in Mandarin to demonstrate that syntactic structure-building may precede semantic interpretation,[13] and Frisch et al used different kinds of syntactic violations to demonstrate that the semantic interpretation of verbs cannot take place if the language parser fails to build an initial syntactic structure.[14]

Tasks

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In many neurolinguistics experiments, subjects do not simply sit and listen to or watch stimuli, but also are instructed to perform some sort of task in response to the stimuli.[15] At least one study has suggested that the task the subject does has an effect on the brain responses and the results of the experiment.[16]

Lexical decision
Main article: Lexical decision task

The lexical decision task involves subjects seeing or hearing an isolated word and answering whether or not it is a real word. It is frequently used in priming studies, since subjects are known to make a lexical decision more quickly if a word has been primed by a related word (as in "doctor" priming "nurse").[17][18][19]

Grammaticality judgment, acceptability judgment

Many studies, especially violation-based studies, have subjects make a decision about the "acceptability" of stimuli.[16][13][20][21][22] Such a task is often used to "ensure that subjects [are] reading the sentences attentively and that they [distinguish] acceptable from unacceptable sentences in the way [the experimenter] expected them to do."[20]

Experimental evidence has shown that the instructions given to subjects in an acceptability judgment task can influence the subjects' brain responses to stimuli. One experiment showed that when subjects were instructed to judge the "acceptability" of sentences they did not show an N400 brain response (a response commonly associated with semantic processing, but that they did show that response when instructed to ignore structural acceptability and only judge whether or not the sentences "made sense."[16]

Probe verification

Some studies use a "probe verification" task rather than an overt acceptability judgment; in this paradigm, each experimental sentence is followed by a "probe word," and subjects must answer whether or not the probe word had appeared in the sentence.[19][20] This task, like the acceptability judgment task, ensures that subjects are reading or listening attentively, but may avoid some of the additional processing demands of acceptability judgments, and may be used no matter what type of violation is being presented in the study.[19]

Truth-value judgment

Subjects may be instructed not to judge whether or not the sentence is grammatically acceptable or logical, but whether the proposition expressed by the sentence is true or false. It is most commonly used in psycholinguistic studies of child language.[23][24]

Active distraction

Some experiments give subjects a "distractor" task to ensure that subjects are not paying attention to the experimental stimuli; this may be done to test whether a certain computation in the brain is carried out automatically, regardless of whether the subject devotes attentional resources to it. For example, one study had subjects listen to nonlinguistic tones in one ear and speech in the other hear, and instructed subjects to press a button when they perceived an attenuation in the tone; this caused subjects not to pay attention to grammatical violations in the speech stimuli. This experimental task allowed the researchers to conclude that brain responses to grammatical errors reflected automatic syntactic processing, since the subjects were not actively paying attention to grammar.[2]

References (test)

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  1. ^ a b Pulvermüller, Friedemann; Shtyrov, Yury (2003). "Automatic processing of grammar in the human brain as revealed by the mismatch negativity". NeuroImage. 20: 159–172. doi:10.1016/S1053-8119(03)00261-1. PMID 14527578.
  2. ^ a b c Pulvermüller, Friedemann; Shtyrov, Yury; Hasting, Anna S.; Carlyton, Robert P. (2008). "Syntax as a reflex: Neurophysiological evidence for the early automaticity of syntactic processing". Brain and Language. 104 (3): 244–253. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2007.05.002. PMID 17624417.
  3. ^ a b Phillips, Colin et al. (2001). "Auditory Cortex Accesses Phonological Category: An MEG Mismatch Study." Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12:6. 1038-1055.
  4. ^ Shtyrov, Yury; Hauk, Olaf; Pulvermüller, Friedemann (2004). "Distributed neuronal networks for encoding category-specific semantic information: the mismatch negativity to action words". European Journal of Neuroscience. 19 (4): 1083–1092. doi:10.1111/j.0953-816X.2004.03126.x. PMID 15009156.
  5. ^ Näätänen, Risto et al. (1997). "Language-specific phoneme representations revealed by electric and magnetic brain responses." Nature 385, pp. 432–434.}}
  6. ^ Kazanina, Nina; Phillips, Colin; Idsardi, William (2006). "The influence of meaning on the perception of speech sounds". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 103 (30): 11381–11386. doi:10.1073/pnas.0604821103. PMC 3020137. PMID 16849423.
  7. ^ Hasing, Anna S.; Kotz, Sonja; Friederici, Angela (2007). "Setting the Stage for Automatic Syntax Processing: The Mismatch Negativity as an Indicator of Syntactic Priming". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 19 (3): 386–400. doi:10.1162/jocn.2007.19.3.386. PMID 17335388.
  8. ^ Example from Frisch et al. (2004: 195).
  9. ^ a b Frisch, Stefan; Hahne, Anja; Friederici, Angela D. (2004). "Word category and verb–argument structure information in the dynamics of parsing". Cognition. 91 (3): 194. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2003.09.009. PMID 15168895.
  10. ^ Kutas, M.; Hillyard, S. A. (1980). "Reading senseless sentences: brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity". Science. 207 (4427): 203–205. doi:10.1126/science.7350657. PMID 7350657.
  11. ^ Embick, David; Marantz, Alec; Miyashita, Yasushi; O'Neil, Wayne; Sakai, Kuniyoshi L. (2000). "A Syntactic Specialization for Broca's Area". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 97 (11): 6150–6154. doi:10.1073/pnas.100098897. PMC 18573. PMID 10811887.
  12. ^ Frisch, Stefan; Hahne, Anja; Friederici, Angela D. (2004). "Word category and verb–argument structure information in the dynamics of parsing". Cognition. 91 (3): 195. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2003.09.009. PMID 15168895.
  13. ^ a b Zheng Ye, Yue-jia Luo, Angela D. Friederici, and Xiaolin Zhou (2006). "Semantic and syntactic processing in Chinese sentence comprehension: Evidence from event-related potentials." Brain Research 1071, pp. 186-196.
  14. ^ Frisch, Stefan; Hahne, Anja; Friederici, Angela D. (2004). "Word category and verb–argument structure information in the dynamics of parsing". Cognition. 91 (3): 213. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2003.09.009. PMID 15168895.
  15. ^ One common exception to this is studies using the mismatch paradigm, in which subjects are often instructed to watch a silent movie or otherwise not pay attention actively to the stimuli. See, for example:
    • Pulvermüller, Friedemann (2007). "Grammar or Serial Order?: Discrete Combinatorial Brain Mechanicsms Reflected by the Syntactic Mismatch Negativity". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 19 (6): 971–980. doi:10.1162/jocn.2007.19.6.971. PMID 17536967. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
    • Pulvermüller, Friedemann (2003). "Automatic processing of grammar in the human brain as revealed by the mismatch negativity". NeuroImage. 20 (1): 159–172. doi:10.1016/S1053-8119(03)00261-1. PMID 14527578. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  16. ^ a b c Hahne, Anja (2002). "Differential task effects on semantic and syntactic processes as revealed by ERPs". Cognitive Brain Research. 13 (3): 339–356. doi:10.1016/S0926-6410(01)00127-6. PMID 11918999. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  17. ^ "Experiment Description: Lexical Decision and Semantic Priming". Athatbasca University. 27 June 2005. Retrieved 14 December 2008.
  18. ^ Fiorentino, Robert (2007). "Processing of compound words: An MEG study". Brain and Language. 103 (1–2): 8–249. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2007.07.009. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  19. ^ a b c Friederici, Angela D. (1999). "Lexical integration: Sequential effects of syntactic and semantic information". Memory & Cognition. 27 (3): 438–453. doi:10.3758/BF03211539. PMID 10355234. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  20. ^ a b c Frisch, Stefan (2004). "Word category and verb–argument structure information in the dynamics of parsing". Cognition. 91 (3): 200–201. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2003.09.009. PMID 15168895. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  21. ^ Osterhout, Lee (1997). "On the Brain Response to Syntactic Anomalies: Manipulations of Word Position and Word Class Reveal Individual Differences". Brain and Language. 59 (3): 500. doi:10.1006/brln.1997.1793. PMID 9299074.
  22. ^ Hagoort, Peter (2003). "Interplay between Syntax and Semantics during Sentence Comprehension: ErP Effects of Combining Syntactic and Semantic Violations". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 15 (6): 883–899. doi:10.1162/089892903322370807. PMID 14511541.
  23. ^ Gordon, Peter. "10". In D. McDaniel, C. McKee, H. Cairns (ed.). The Truth-Value Judgment Task (PDF). Cambridge: MIT Press. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
  24. ^ Crain, Stephen, Luisa Meroni, and Utako Minai. "[http://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/~scrain/papers/GALA%2704.pdf If Everybody Knows, then Every Child Knows." University of Maryland at College Park. Retrieved on 14 December 2008.
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