Interpreting dissociations between regular and irregular past-tense morphology: Evidence from event-related potentials

Neuropsychological dissociations between regular and irregular English past-tense morphology have been reported using a lexical decision task in which past-tense primes immediately precede present-tense targets. We present N400 event-related potential data from healthy participants using the same de...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognitive, affective, & behavioral neuroscience affective, & behavioral neuroscience, 2008-06, Vol.8 (2), p.178-194
Main Authors: Justus, Timothy, Larsen, Jary, de Mornay Davies, Paul, Swick, Diane
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation - methods
Adult
Behavioral psychophysiology
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Biological and medical sciences
Brain damage
Brain Mapping
Cognitive Psychology
Electroencephalography
Electrophysiology
Evoked Potentials - physiology
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Male
Mental Processes - physiology
Morphology
Neuropsychological Tests
Neuropsychology
Neurosciences
Phonology
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reaction Time - physiology
Semantics
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Neuropsychological dissociations between regular and irregular English past-tense morphology have been reported using a lexical decision task in which past-tense primes immediately precede present-tense targets. We present N400 event-related potential data from healthy participants using the same design. Both regular and irregular past-tense forms primed corresponding present-tense forms, but with a longer duration for irregular verbs. Phonological control conditions suggested that differences in formal overlap between prime and target contribute to, but do not account for, this difference, suggesting a link between irregular morphology and semantics. Further analysis dividing the irregular verbs into two categories (weak irregular and strong) revealed that priming for strong verbs was reliably stronger than that for weak irregular and regular verbs, which were statistically indistinguishable from one another. We argue that, although we observe a regular-irregular dissociation, the nature of this dissociation is more consistent with single- than with dual-system models of inflectional morphology.
ISSN:1530-7026
1531-135X
DOI:10.3758/CABN.8.2.178