The time-course of processing of grammatical class and semantic attributes of words: Dissociation by means of ERP

• Carolina Yudes ^[1] ; Alberto Domínguez ^[2] ; Fernando Cuetos ^[3] ; Manuel de Vega ^[2]
  1. [1] Universidad Internacional de La Rioja

     Universidad Internacional de La Rioja

     Logroño, España

     
  2. [2] Universidad de La Laguna

     Universidad de La Laguna

     San Cristóbal de La Laguna, España

     
  3. [3] Universidad de Oviedo

     Universidad de Oviedo

     Oviedo, España

     

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• Localización: Psicológica: Revista de metodología y psicología experimental, ISSN-e 1576-8597, ISSN 0211-2159, Vol. 37, Nº 2, 2016, págs. 105-126
• Idioma: inglés
• Títulos paralelos:
  • El curso temporal del procesamiento de la categoría gramatical y las propiedades semánticas de las palabras: Disociación mediante potenciales evocados
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Resumen
  • español

    Esta investigación examina el curso temporal del procesamiento de palabras en función de su clase gramatical (verbos vs.

    nombres) y su significado (acción vs. no acción) mediante potenciales evocados. La morfología de palabras en español permite formar un nombre (ej. bail-e) o un verbo (ej. bail-ar) únicamente cambiando el sufijo unido a la raíz. Este hecho permitió la elaboración de un conjunto de nombres y verbos, igualados en significado y con una misma raíz, referidos a acciones y no acciones. Los resultados obtenidos ponen de manifiesto que la clase gramatical de las palabras es procesada muy pronto, alrededor de 200 ms tras la presentación de la palabra, manteniéndose sus efectos activados en regiones frontales izquierdas hasta los 800 ms. Igualmente se encontró un componente LAN sensible a esta distinción nombres-verbos, y una onda similar al N400, ampliamente distribuida, sensible al procesamiento del significado (acción-no acción). Estos diferentes componentes afectados por la gramática (P200 y LAN) y el significado (N400) parecen indicar la existencia de un procesamiento neuronal independiente de ambas propiedades lingüísticas y apoyan una especificación léxica de la clase gramatical.

  • English

    This study explores the time-course of word processing by grammatical class (verbs vs. nouns) and meaning (action vs. non-action) by means of an ERP experiment. The morphology of Spanish words allows for a noun (e.g., bail-e [a dance]) or a verb (e.g., bail-ar [to dance]) to be formed by simply changing the suffix attached to the root. This facility results in a set of nouns and verbs that are nearly matched in meaning, because of their shared root.

    The results show that grammatical class of words is processed very early, around 200 ms after the word onset, with the effects remaining activated at left frontal regions until 800 ms. Later components show a focal LAN sensitive to the noun-verb distinction, and a broadly distributed N400-like waveform sensitive to meaning. The different components affected by grammar (P200 and LAN) and meaning (N400) and their topographical dissimilarity seem to indicate an independent neural processing of these two linguistic properties and support a lexical specification of grammatical class.

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