Electrophysiology Flashcards
Which aspects of language are addressed by phonology and orthography?
Sound systems of language and how you write down that sequence
Which aspects of language are addressed by syntax?
How you make sentences
Which aspects of language are addressed by semantics, pragmatic and prosody?
All about meaning and communication
What does pragmatics refer to?
Does it relate to the real world
E.g. our general knowledge
What does prosody refer to?
How you use the variation of tone in your speech
What is a grapheme?
Basic unit of written language
What is an example of alphabetic systems?
English
Uses this system where letters roughly correspond to phonemes
What is an example of syllabic systems ?
Japanese writing (Kana)
What is an example of logographic systems?
Chinese writing
With symbols at the morpheme level
What is the difference between surface and deep structure?
The surface structure stays the same but the deep structure is different (different meanings, who had the binoculars?)
Why are blood flow based brain imaging techniques not as well suited to studying “when” questions as they are to studying “where” questions?
Neurophysiological techniques study the electrical activity of the brain. These electrical events are specific to the task at hand
What have EEGs been used for?
Used extensively for studying sleep and it’s disorders
Understand The averaging process that produces ERPs (event-related potential)
To extract activity, many replications of each trial condition need to be run and waveforms need to be averaged.
As waves are averaged across trials and across subjects, only those components that occur at the same latency relative to the stimulus will aim together, becoming bigger in amplitude
ERP- When are components named N?
When they are electrically negative-going
ERP- when are components named P?
When they are electrically positive going
How are ERP waveforms plotted?
Negative goes up and positive goes down
The numbers attached refers to the latency in milliseconds (n1 means n100
When ERP components correspond…
To a higher level information-processing activities occur at greater latencies post-stimulus
What are P1, N1 and P2 related to?
Perceptual processing of stimuli
What are N2 and P3 (later components) linked to?
Higher level phenomena such as attention
ERP components linked to language?
- N400: semantic processing
- P600: syntactic/ thematic processing
When does the N400 component occur during language process?
When the brain processes a semantic anomaly
E.g. when the flow of meaning is interrupted by something that doesn’t fit the developing meaning
Does N400 occur during semantic violation?
Yes, produces a strong n400 component. Identical in amplitude and latency which suggests that violation of meaningfulness and truthfulness are related and occur simultaneously
What is thematic integration?
The story that’s being told
What component was produced when the sentence was associated with syntactic violations ?
P600
Because the system found itself in conflict
