The cognitive neuroscience of word comprehension

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议研究的主要目标是从认知神经科学的角度研究语言理解。在目前的提案中概述的实验集中在提供有关神经事件的顺序和时间的问题的答案，这些神经事件是视觉单词理解中涉及的感知和认知过程的基础。所提出的方法需要记录事件相关脑电位（ERP），而受试者执行任务，旨在挖掘视觉文字处理的特定方面。拟议的研究有三个具体目标。第一个是测试和阐述预测的双模态交互激活模型（BIAM）的文字理解能力的成年语言使用者。虽然像BIAM这样的模型被吹捧为在神经上是合理的，但实际上很少有使用认知神经科学方法的工作试图测试这些模型的预测。第二个互补的目标侧重于提高ERP措施的文字处理的精度，通过提供更好地理解他们的关系与知觉，认知和语言过程，他们假设反映。第三个目标是通过研究理解过程如何随着时间的推移而发展，以提高我们对单词理解的理解。为实现这些目标而提出的25个实验被分为三组研究。第一组，其中包括18掩蔽启动实验进行的年轻人，使用我们的短间隔重复启动范式。在试点工作中，这种模式使我们能够隔离四个时间重叠的ERP效应，我们假设是敏感的级联词的理解过程。本节中概述的实验将测试关于这些ERP效应的处理性质和时间的预测，并使用这些ERP效应来测试BIAM生成的预测。第二组包括四个单字实验，也是在年轻人中进行的，其中一些变量将被操纵，这些变量以前被认为会影响早期的视觉单词理解过程。我们假设，以前未能看到这些变量的影响是由于缺乏权力。我们将增加我们设计的能力，并确定是否可以在文字处理的时间过程中获得早期效果。最后一组研究将包括三个单词理解实验，该实验以年轻成人受试者中提出的实验为模型，但在五组7至11岁的儿童中进行。这些实验将使我们能够检查视觉单词理解随时间的发展，从而更好地表征阅读中涉及的一些神经/认知过程的变化。一个长期目标是将这些研究扩展到有文字处理和其他语言/认知缺陷的儿童和成人。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The primary goal of the proposed research is the study of language comprehension from a cognitive neuroscience perspective. The experiments outlined in the current proposal are focused on providing answers to questions about the sequence and timing of neural events that underlie the perceptual and cognitive processes involved in visual word comprehension. The proposed approach entails the recording of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) while subjects perform tasks designed to tap specific aspects of visual word processing. The proposed research has three specific aims. The first is to test and elaborate on predictions of the Bi-modal Interactive Activation Model (BIAM) of word comprehension in competent adult users of language. While models like the BIAM have been touted as neurally plausible, relatively little work using cognitive neuroscience methods has actually attempted to test the predictions of such models. The second complementary aim focuses on improving the precision of ERP measures of word processing by providing a better understanding of their relationship with the perceptual, cognitive and linguistic processes they are hypothesized to reflect. The third aim seeks to improve our understanding of word comprehension by examining how comprehension processes develop over time. The 25 experiments that are proposed to achieve these aims are organized into three groups of studies. The first group, which includes 18 masked priming experiments to be conducted in young adults, uses our short interval repetition priming paradigm. In pilot work this paradigm has allowed us to isolate four temporally overlapping ERP effects that we have hypothesized are sensitive to a cascade of word comprehension processes. The experiments outlined in this section of the proposal will test predictions about the processing nature and timing of these ERP effects and use these ERP effects to test predictions generated by the BIAM. The second group includes four single word experiments, also in young adults, where a number of variables will be manipulated that have previously been suggested to influence early visual word comprehension processes. We hypothesize that previous failures to see effects with these variables were due to lack of power. We will increase the power of our designs and determine if effects early in the time-course of word processing can be obtained. The final group of studies will include three word comprehension experiments modeled on those proposed in the young adult subjects but run in five groups of children between 7 and 11 years of age. These experiments will allow us to examine the development of visual word comprehension over time and thus better characterize changes in some of the neural/cognitive processes involved in reading. One long term goal is to extend these studies to children and adults with word processing and other language/cognitive deficits.