Event-related brain potentials during natural speech processing: effects of semantic, morphological and syntactic violations

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Angela D. Friederici - , Free University of Berlin (Author)
  • Erdmut Pfeifer - , Free University of Berlin (Author)
  • Anja Hahne - , Free University of Berlin (Author)

Abstract

The present study investigated different aspects of auditory language comprehension. The sentences which were presented as connected speech were either correct or incorrect including a semantic error (selectional restriction), a morphological error (verb inflection), or a syntactic error (phrase structure). After each sentence, a probe word was presented auditorily, and subjects had to decide whether this word was part of the preceding sentence or not. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 7 scalp electrodes. The ERPs evoked by incorrect sentences differed significantly from the correct ones as a function of error type. Semantic anomalies evoked a 'classical' N400 pattern. Morphological errors elicited a pronounced negativity between 300 and 600 ms followed by late positivity. Syntactic errors, in contrast, evoked an early negativity peaking around 180 ms followed by a negativity around 400 ms. The early negativity was only significant over the left anterior electrode. The present data demonstrate that linguistic errors of different categories evoke different ERP patterns. They indicate that with using connected speech as input, different aspects of language comprehension processes cannot only be described with respect to their temporal structure, but eventually also with respect to possible brain systems subserving these processes.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)183-192
Number of pages10
JournalCognitive Brain Research
Volume1
Issue number3
Publication statusPublished - Oct 1993
Peer-reviewedYes
Externally publishedYes

External IDs

PubMed 8257874
ORCID /0000-0002-8487-9977/work/148145442

Keywords

Keywords

  • Auditory word processing, Event-related potential, N400, Semantic priming, Syntactic priming