ERPs of Meaning Flashcards
Kutas and Federmeier review the history of research investigating or employing an electrophysiological measure labeled the:
A. P300
B. N400
C. N100
D. P170
B. N400
Event related potentials (ERPs) are extracted by averaging:
A. Signals produced by the relaxation of magnetized protons in brain water molecules.
B. Time series, fixed relative to the occurrence of an event of interest, of changes in electrical brain activity recorded at the scalp
C. EEG waveforms recorded either during resting conditions or while subjects perform tasks
D. Time series, fixed relative to the occurrence of an event of interest, of changes in blood oxygenation
B. Time series, fixed relative to the occurrence of an event of interest, of changes in electrical brain activity recorded at the scalp
Which of the following is true of the ERP component referred to as P300 (or P3b)?
A. The latency of the P300 varies with the duration of the process of stimulus categorization.
B. The response is observed over frontal scalp locations
C. The amplitude of the component is positively correlated with the subjective probability of occurrence of the evoking stimulus.
D. The component is only observable 250 to 350 ms following onset of stimuli in the visual modality.
A. The latency of the P300 varies with the duration of the process of stimulus categorization.
When Kutas & Hillyard modified the oddball paradigm for sentences, they observed a negativity in the ERP around 400ms after the onset of the final word. This negativity was:
A. Larger for the totally anomalous final words, but equal for the sensible and improbable final words.
B. Largest for sensible ending words, smaller for improbable final words, and smallest for totally anomalous final words.
C. Smallest for sensible ending words, larger for improbable final words, and largest for totally anomalous final words.
D. Later for sensible ending words, earlier for improbable final words, and earliest for totally anomalous final words.
C. Smallest for sensible ending words, larger for improbable final words, and largest for totally anomalous final words.
Which of the following is true of the N400 as defined in the review by Kutas & Federmeier?
A. It is largest over the fronto-temporal sites.
B. It is usually observed between 200 and 400ms after stimulus onset.
C. It is measured as a difference ERP computed as a point-by-point subtraction of the ERPs from two different conditions.
D. For written words in sentences it has a slight left hemisphere bias.
C. It is measured as a difference ERP computed as a point-by-point subtraction of the ERPs from two different conditions.
In early work reviewed by Kutas and Federmeier, using anomalous sentences, it was demonstrated that the N400 effect:
A. Was larger when the sentence final word was in a different case than the preceding words.
B. Was larger when the sentence final word was a relatively high frequency word in the language.
C. Was also observed when the sentence final word was an incorrect grammatical form.
D. Was larger the lower the cloze probability of the sentence final word, that is the lower the percentage of individuals who would continue a sentence fragment with that word.
D. Was larger the lower the cloze probability of the sentence final word, that is the lower the percentage of individuals who would continue a sentence fragment with that word.
As reviewed by Kutas & Federmeier, which of the following is true about the early attempts to examine the generalization of N400 effects?
A. N400 effects occur to less primed relative to more primed words for semantic but not repetition priming paradigms.
B. N400 effects to words occur only when the words are presented in sentences.
C. N400 effects are observed when a final note is incongruent with a melody.
D. N400 effects have been demonstrated with pictures and faces as well as linguistic stimuli.
D. N400 effects have been demonstrated with pictures and faces as well as linguistic stimuli.
According to Kutas and Federmeier, which of the following characteristics of the N400 varies little across experiments and conditions?
A. amplitude
B. shape
C. scalp topography
D. latency
D. latency
What is one characteristic of the N400 that has made it a particularly powerful tool for studying language, as noted by Kutas & Federmeier?
A. Its millisecond resolution.
B. The stability of the amplitude of the component.
C. Its sensitivity to syntactic manipulations.
D. Its specificity for linguistic information.
A. Its millisecond resolution.
According to Kutas & Federmeier, in psycholinguistic experiments producing the N400:
A. the effects of semantic manipulations (e.g., the congruity effect) can be detected by 200ms into the processing of a critical word.
B. the effects of semantic manipulations (e.g., the congruity effect) can be detected by 50ms into the processing of a critical word.
C. the effects of an incongruent font can be detected by 200ms into the processing of a sentence final word.
D. only the ERP to the final word of a sentence (read one word at a time in the center of the screen) contains N400 activity.
A. the effects of semantic manipulations (e.g., the congruity effect) can be detected by 200ms into the processing of a critical word.
Kutas & Federmeier review results of studies of N400 effects in word processing. Which of the following is consistent with their summary of these studies?
A. Effects of priming, word frequency, and semantic anomaly on N400 activity have easily distinguished latencies and amplitudes.
B. When both word- and sentence- level information is available, lower-level context effects on N400 tend to override higher-level ones.
C. N400 effects produced by priming a word with a semantically related prior word are qualitatively similar to those produced by sentence final words of congruent vs. anomalous sentences.
D. Semantic incongruity and repetition priming, but not semantic priming, have been shown to produce N400 effects.
C. N400 effects produced by priming a word with a semantically related prior word are qualitatively similar to those produced by sentence final words of congruent vs. anomalous sentences.
According to Kutas & Federmeier, what do N400 studies suggest about the nature of the semantic memory system?
A. N400 effects appear to reflect the function of a common semantic system for all kinds of words but a separate one for pictures.
B. N400 effects appear to reflect the function of a semantic memory system that is modality sensitive (that is, it differs to some extent as a function of modality) but not modality specific (that is, it is not entirely separate for different modalities).
C. N400 effects appear to reflect the function of entirely separate semantic memory stores associated with different modalities (e.g., written words, auditory words, pictures, etc).
D. N400s evoked by stimuli with a wide range of sensory input types (e.g., written words, auditory words, pictures, etc) have the same topographic distribution.
B. N400 effects appear to reflect the function of a semantic memory system that is modality sensitive (that is, it differs to some extent as a function of modality) but not modality specific (that is, it is not entirely separate for different modalities).
In the Kutas & Federmeier review, they describe a study in which a title was added to a globally ambiguous passage of text. Which of the following is NOT CONSISTENT with the description of this study in the review?
A. The title increased the amplitude of the N400 effect to each content word in the passage.
B. The title decreased ambiguity by providing information about the general topic of the passage.
C. The result was consistent with dominance of higher-level over lower-level influences on the N400.
D. The title increased the amount of discourse information available to the participant.
A. The title increased the amplitude of the N400 effect to each content word in the passage.
Kutas and Federmeier describe a number of studies demonstrating N400 effects within nonlinguistic paradigms. Which of the following IS NOT among such manipulations producing an N400 effect?
A. A pictured gesture following a word incongruent with the gesture.
B. A picture showing soccer players kicking a toilet roll.
C. A pictured action after a preceding sentence describing the action.
D. A picture showing a hand in the wrong shape to grasp a preceding object.
C. A pictured action after a preceding sentence describing the action.
Kutas & Federmeier describe early (processing stage) theories of the N400 that attempt to situate its genesis within the stage (or stages) of processing that it indexes. Which of the following IS NOT characteristic of these theories?
A. They conceptualize word comprehension as a process involving dynamic construction of meaning that is influenced by states existing before the word is recognized.
B. They conceptualize word comprehension as primarily a feedforward process beginning with analysis of the word stimulus first as a perceptual object and then as a linguistic (lexical) object.
C. They conceptualize semantic processing of words as relying on the output of the preceding process of word recognition.
D. They conceptualize word recognition as a match between a phonological or orthographic input and a “meaning” representation in the mental lexicon.
A. They conceptualize word comprehension as a process involving dynamic construction of meaning that is influenced by states existing before the word is recognized.
