The time course of semantic richness effects in visual word recognition

The richness of semantic representations associated with individual words has emerged as an important variable in reading. In the present study we contrasted different measures of semantic richness and explored the time course of their influences during visual word processing as reflected in event-r...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Frontiers in human neuroscience 2012-01, Vol.6, p.11-11
Main Authors: Rabovsky, Milena, Sommer, Werner, Abdel Rahman, Rasha
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Decision making
ERPs
Event-related potentials
Information processing
Language
Mental task performance
N400
Neuroscience
Pattern recognition
Semantic Richness
Semantics
visual word recognition
Word meaning
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The richness of semantic representations associated with individual words has emerged as an important variable in reading. In the present study we contrasted different measures of semantic richness and explored the time course of their influences during visual word processing as reflected in event-related brain potentials (ERPs). ERPs were recorded while participants performed a lexical decision task on visually presented words and pseudowords. For word stimuli, we orthogonally manipulated two frequently employed measures of semantic richness: the number of semantic features generated in feature-listing tasks and the number of associates based on free association norms. We did not find any influence of the number of associates. In contrast, the number of semantic features modulated ERP amplitudes at central sites starting at about 190 ms, as well as during the later N400 component over centro-parietal regions (300-500 ms). Thus, initial access to semantic representations of single words is fast and word meaning continues to modulate processing later on during reading.
ISSN:1662-5161
1662-5161
DOI:10.3389/fnhum.2012.00011