Words and sentences: Event-related brain potential measures

Interactions between sentences and the individual words that comprise them are reviewed in studies using the event‐related brain potential (ERP). Results suggest that, for ambiguous words preceded by a biasing sentence context, context is used at an early stage to constrain the relevant sense of a w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychophysiology 1995-11, Vol.32 (6), p.511-525
Main Author: VAN PETTEN, CYMA
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambiguity
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Electrophysiology
Event-related potential
Evoked Potentials - physiology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Language
N400
Perception
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Semantic context
Sentence processing
Word frequency
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Summary:Interactions between sentences and the individual words that comprise them are reviewed in studies using the event‐related brain potential (ERP). Results suggest that, for ambiguous words preceded by a biasing sentence context, context is used at an early stage to constrain the relevant sense of a word rather than select among multiple active senses. A study comparing associative single‐word context and sentence‐level context also suggests that sentence context influences the earliest stage of semantic analysis, but that the ability to use sentence context effectively is more demanding of working memory than the ability to use single‐word contexts. Another indication that sentence context has a dramatic effect on single‐word processing was the observation that high‐ and low‐frequency words elicit different ERPs at the beginnings of sentences but that this effect is suppressed by a meaningful sentence context.
ISSN:0048-5772
1469-8986
1540-5958
DOI:10.1111/j.1469-8986.1995.tb01228.x