The cognitive neuroscience of word comprehension

描述（由申请人提供）：拟进行的研究的主要目标是从认知神经科学的角度研究语言理解。当前提案中概述的实验重点是提供关于神经事件的顺序和时间的问题的答案，这些事件是视觉单词理解中涉及的感知和认知过程的基础。该方法要求受试者在执行旨在挖掘视觉文字处理特定方面的任务时，记录事件相关脑电位（ERPs）。拟议的研究有三个具体目标。首先是测试和阐述双模态交互激活模型（BIAM）对有能力的成年语言使用者单词理解的预测。虽然像BIAM这样的模型被吹捧为神经上的合理，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。第二个补充目标侧重于通过更好地理解它们与假设反映的知觉、认知和语言过程的关系来提高文字处理ERP测量的准确性。第三个目标是通过考察理解过程如何随时间发展来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，包括18个隐藏启动实验，在年轻人中进行，使用我们的短间隔重复启动范式。在试点工作中，这种范式使我们能够分离出四种暂时重叠的ERP效应，我们假设这些效应对一连串的单词理解过程很敏感。提案的这一部分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。第二组包括四个单词实验，同样是在年轻人中，其中一些变量将被操纵，这些变量之前被认为会影响早期的视觉单词理解过程。我们假设，之前未能看到这些变量的影响是由于缺乏权力。我们将提高我们设计的能力，并在文字处理的时间过程中尽早确定是否能获得效果。最后一组研究将包括三个单词理解实验，这些实验以年轻人的实验为模型，但在五组7至11岁的儿童中进行。这些实验将允许我们检查视觉单词理解的发展随着时间的推移，从而更好地描述一些与阅读有关的神经/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.