On the Nonautomaticity of Visual Word Processing: Electrophysiological Evidence That Word Processing Requires Central Attention

The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to determine the degree to which people can process words while devoting central attention to another task. Experiments 1-4 measured the N400 effect, which is sensitive to the degree of mismatch between a word and the current semantic context. E...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance 2008-06, Vol.34 (3), p.751-773
Main Authors: Lien, Mei-Ching, Ruthruff, Eric, Cornett, Logan, Goodin, Zachary, Allen, Philip A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Attention
Automatism
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Brain
Brain Hemisphere Functions
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive Processes
College Students
Dual Task Performance
Electrophysiology
Event related brain potentials
Evoked Potentials, Visual - physiology
Experimental Psychology
Eye movements
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Language
Male
Production and perception of written language
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reaction Time
Semantics
Stimulus
Studies
Visual Discrimination
Visual Evoked Potentials
Visual Perception
Visual Stimuli
Visual task performance
Vocabulary
Word Frequency
Word Recognition
Words (Phonetic Units)
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Summary:The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to determine the degree to which people can process words while devoting central attention to another task. Experiments 1-4 measured the N400 effect, which is sensitive to the degree of mismatch between a word and the current semantic context. Experiment 5 measured the P3 difference between low- and high-frequency words. Because these effects can occur only if a word has been identified, both ERP components index word processing. The authors found that the N400 effect (Experiments 1, 3, and 4) and the P3 difference (Experiment 5) were strongly attenuated for Task 2 words presented nearly simultaneously with Task 1. No such attenuation was found when the Task 1 stimulus was presented but required no response (Experiment 2). Strong attenuation was also evident when the Task 2 word was presented before the Task 1 stimulus (Experiment 4), suggesting that central resources are not allocated to stimuli first-come, first-served but rather are strategically locked to Task 1. The authors conclude that visual word processing is not fully automatic but rather requires access to limited central attentional resources.
ISSN:0096-1523
1939-1277
DOI:10.1037/0096-1523.34.3.751