Skip to main content
Log in

Semantic Processing in Children and Adults: Incongruity and the N400

  • Published:
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Semantic processing in 10-year-old children and adults was examined using event related potentials (ERPs). The N400 component, an index of semantic processing, was studied in relation to sentences that ended with congruent, moderately incongruent, or strongly incongruent words. N400 amplitude in adults corresponded to levels of semantic incongruity with the greatest amplitude occurring to strongly incongruent sentences at all midline electrodes. In contrast, children’s N400s were greater for both moderately and strongly incongruent sentences but did not differ between these levels of incongruity. This finding suggests that semantic processing may differ in adults and children.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Andrews S., Bond R. (2009) Lexical expertise and reading skill: Bottom-up and top-down processing of lexical ambiguity. Reading and Writing 22(6): 686–711

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Atchley R. A., Rice M. L., Betz S. K., Kwasny K. M., Sereno J. A., Jongman A. (2006) A comparison of semantic and syntactic event related potentials generated by children and adults. Brain and Language 99(3): 236–246

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cattell J.M. (1886) The time it takes to see and name objects. Mind 11: 53–65

    Google Scholar 

  • Cummings A., Čeponiene R., Dick F., Saygin A. P., Townsend J. (2008) A developmental ERP study of verbal and non-verbal semantic processing. Brain Research 1208: 137–149

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Deacon D., Hewitt S., Yang C. H., Nagata M. (2000) Event-related potential indices of semantic priming using masked and unmasked words: Evidence that the N400 does not reflect a post-lexical process. Cognitive Brain Research 9: 137–146

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dien, J. (1998). Issues in the application of the average reference: Review, critiques, and recommendations. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments and Computers, 30(1), 34–43. Special issue: Event-related brain potential methodology.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diependaele, K., Ziegler, J., & Grainger, J. (in press). Fast phonology and the bi-modal interactive activation model. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology.

  • Friederich M., Friederici A. D. (2004) N400-like semantic incongruity effect in 19-month-olds: Processing known words in picture contexts. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16(8): 1465–1477

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Friederici A. D., Hahne A. (2001) Developmental patterns of brain activity for semantic and syntactic processes. In: Höhle B., Weissenborn J. (eds) Approaches to bootstrapping in early language development. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 231–246

    Google Scholar 

  • Friederici A. D., Pfeifer E., Hahne A. (1993) Event-related brain potentials during natural speech processing: Effects of semantic, morphological, and syntactic violations. Cognitive Brain Research 1(3): 183–192

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Garnsey S. (1993) Event-related brain potentials in the study of language: An introduction. Language and Cognitive Processes 8: 337–356

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grainger J., Holcomb P. J. (2009) Watching the word go by: On the time-course of component processes in visual word recognition. Language and Linguistics Compass 3: 128–156

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hahne A., Eckstein K., Friederici A. D. (2004) Brain signatures of syntactic and semantic processes during children’s language development. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16(7): 1302

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hamberger M. J., Friedman D., Rosen J. (1996) Completion norms collected from younger and older adults. Behavior Research Methods. Instruments and Computers 28(1): 102–108

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Handy T. C. (2004) Event-related potentials: A methods handbook. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Hauk O., Pulvermüller F. (2004) Effects of word length and frequency on the human event-related potential. Clinical Neurophysiology 115(5): 1090–1103

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Holcomb P. J. (1993) Semantic priming and stimulus degradation: Implications for the role of the N400 in language processing. Psychophysiology 30: 47–61

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Holcomb P. J., Coffey S. A., Neville H. J. (1992) Visual and auditory sentence processing: A developmental analysis using event-related brain potentials. Developmental Neuropsychology 8(2–3): 203–241

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holcomb P. J., Grainger J. (2007) Exploring the temporal dynamics of visual word recognition in the masked repetition priming paradigm using event-related potentials. Brain Research 1180: 39–58

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Holcomb P. J., Kounios J., Anderson J. E., West W. C. (1999) Dual-coding, context-availability, and concreteness effects in sentence comprehension: An electrophysiological investigation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 25(3): 721–742

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Holcomb P. J., Neville H. J. (1991) Natural speech processing: An analysis using event-related brain potentials. Psychobiology 19: 286–300

    Google Scholar 

  • Juottonen K., Revonsuo A., Lang H. (1996) Dissimilar age influences on two ERP waveforms (LPC and N400) reflecting semantic context effect. Cognitive Brain Research 4(2): 99–107

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kutas M. (1993) In the company of other words: Electrophysiological evidence for single-word and sentence context effects. Language and Cognitive Processes 8: 533–572

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kutas M., Hillyard S. A. (1980a) Reading senseless sentences: Brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity. Science 207(4427): 203

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kutas M., Hillyard S. A. (1980b) Reading between the lines: Event-related brain potentials during natural sentence processing. Brain and Language 11(2): 354–373

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kutas M., Hillyard S. A. (1980c) Event-related brain potentials to semantically inappropriate and surprisingly large words. Biological Psychology 11(2): 99–116

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kutas M., Hillyard S. A. (1984) Brain potentials during reading reflect word expectancy and semantic association. Nature 307(5947): 161–163

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lahar C. J., Wingfield A., Tun P. A. (2004) Sentence-final word completion norms for young, middle-aged and older adults. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 59(1): 7–10

    Google Scholar 

  • Luck S. (2005) An introduction to the event-related potential technique. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Neely J. J. (1977) priming and retrieval from lexical memory: Roles of inhibitionless spreading activation and limited-capacity attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 106: 226–254

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nobre A. C., McCarthy G. (1995) Language-related field potentials in the anterior-medial temporal lobe: II. Effects of word type and semantic priming. Journal of Neuroscience 15(2): 1090–1098

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Osterhout L. (1997) On the brain response to syntactic anomalies: Manipulations of word position and word class reveal individual differences. Brain and Language 59(3): 494–522

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Osterhout L., Nicol J. (1999) On the distinctiveness, independence, and time course of the brain responses to syntactic and semantic anomalies. Language and Cognitive Processes 14(3): 283–317

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Osterhout L., Holcomb P. J. (1995) Event-related brain potentials and language comprehension. In: Rugg M. D., Coles M. G. H. (eds) Electrophysiology of the mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 171–215

    Google Scholar 

  • Penolazzi B., Hauk O., Pulvermüller F. (2007) Early semantic context integration and lexical access as revealed by event-related brain potentials. Biological Psychology 74(3): 374–388

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Picton T. W., Bentin S., Berg P., Donchin E., Hillyard S. A., Johnson R. Jr., Miller G. A., Ritter W., Ruchkin D. S., Rugg M. D., Taylor M. J. (2000) Guidelines for using human event-related potentials to study cognition: Recording standards and publication criteria. Psychophysiology 37: 127–152

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rugg M. D. (1990) Event-related potentials dissociate repetition effects of high- and low-frequency words. Memory and Cognition 18: 367–379

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwantes F. M. (1985) Expectancy, integration, and interactional processes: Age differences in the nature of words affected by sentence context. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 39(2): 212–229

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simpson G. B., Burgess C. (1989) Implications of lexical ambiguity resolution for word recognition and comprehension. In: Small S., Cottrell G. W., Tanenhaus M. K. (eds) Lexical ambiguity resolution: Perspectives from psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, and artificial intelligence. Morgan Kaufman, San Mateo, CA, pp 271–288

    Google Scholar 

  • Simpson G. G., Foster M. R. (1986) Lexical ambiguity and children’s word recognition. Developmental Psychology 22: 147–154

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simpson G. B., Krueger M. A., Kang H. (1994) Sentence context and meaning frequency effects in children’s processing of ambiguous words. Journal of Research in Reading 17(1): 62–72

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stanovich K. E., West R. F. (1983) On priming by a sentence context. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 112: 1–36

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stanovich K. E., Nathan R. G., West M., Vala-Rossi R. F. (1985) Children’s word recognition in context: Spreading activation, expectancy, and modularity. Child Development 56(6): 1418–1428

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Petten C., Kutas M., Kluender R., Mictchiner M., McIsaac H. (1991) Fractionating the word repetition effect with event-related potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 3: 131–150

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • West W. C., Holcomb P. J. (2000) Imaginal, semantic, and surface-level processing of concrete and abstract words: An electrophysiological investigation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12(6): 1024–1037

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to J. W. Couperus.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Benau, E.M., Morris, J. & Couperus, J.W. Semantic Processing in Children and Adults: Incongruity and the N400. J Psycholinguist Res 40, 225–239 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-011-9167-1

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-011-9167-1

Keywords

Navigation