BRAIN POTENTIALS DURING READING REFLECT WORD EXPECTANCY AND SEMANTIC ASSOCIATION
BRAIN POTENTIALS DURING READING REFLECT WORD EXPECTANCY AND SEMANTIC ASSOCIATION
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DOI：
10.1038/307161a0
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发表时间：
1984-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
HILLYARD, SA
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
KUTAS, M;HILLYARD, SA
人类大脑中伴随语言处理的神经电活动可以通过记录头皮上的事件相关电位（e.r.p.成分）来研究。由言语刺激触发的e.r.ps与语言处理的几个不同方面有关。例如，N400成分在刺激后400 ms左右达到峰值，似乎是一个词与其出现的上下文之间的语义关系的敏感指标。以无意义的方式完成句子的单词引起的N400波要比文本中语义适当的单词或非语义不规则的单词大得多2，3。在本研究中，e.r.ps被记录在响应的话，完成有意义的句子。研究发现，e.r.p.的N400分量的振幅是受试者对终结词期望的反函数，该期望通过其“完形填空概率”来衡量。此外，意想不到的话，语义相关的高度预期的话引起较低的N400振幅。这些结果表明，N400可能反映了语义启动或激活的过程。
The neuroelectric activity of the human brain that accompanies linguistic processing can be studied through recordings of event-related potentials (e.r.p. components) from the scalp. The e.r.ps triggered by verbal stimuli have been related to several different aspects of language processing1. For example, the N400 component, peaking around 400 ms post-stimulus, appears to be a sensitive indicator of the semantic relationship between a word and the context in which it occurs. Words that complete sentences in a nonsensical fashion elicit much larger N400 waves than do semantically appropriate words or non-semantic irregularities in a text2,3. In the present study, e.r.ps were recorded in response to words that completed meaningful sentences. The amplitude of the N400 component of the e.r.p. was found to be an inverse function of the subject's expectancy for the terminal word as measured by its ‘Cloze probability’. In addition, unexpected words that were semantically related to highly expected words elicited lower N400 amplitudes. These findings suggest N400 may reflect processes of semantic priming or activation.