Effects of type of agreement violation and utterance position on the auditory processing of subject-verb agreement: An ERP study
Previous ERP studies have often reported two ERP components—LAN and P600—in response to subject-verb (S-V) agreement violations (e.g., the boys *runs). However, the latency, amplitude and scalp distribution of these components have been shown to vary depending on various experiment-related factors....
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2016-08-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
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| Online Access: | http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01276/full |
| _version_ | 1818694550271557632 |
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| author | Sithembinkosi Dube Carmen Kung Varghese Peter Jon Brock Katherine Demuth |
| author_facet | Sithembinkosi Dube Carmen Kung Varghese Peter Jon Brock Katherine Demuth |
| author_sort | Sithembinkosi Dube |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Previous ERP studies have often reported two ERP components—LAN and P600—in response to subject-verb (S-V) agreement violations (e.g., the boys *runs). However, the latency, amplitude and scalp distribution of these components have been shown to vary depending on various experiment-related factors. One factor that has not received attention is the extent to which the relative perceptual salience related to either the utterance position (verbal inflection in utterance-medial vs. utterance-final contexts) or the type of agreement violation (errors of omission vs. errors of commission) may influence the auditory processing of S-V agreement. The lack of reports on these effects in ERP studies may be due to the fact that most studies have used the visual modality, which does not reveal acoustic information. To address this gap, we used ERPs to measure the brain activity of Australian English-speaking adults while they listened to sentences in which the S-V agreement differed by type of agreement violation and utterance position. We observed early negative and positive clusters (AN/P600 effects) for the overall grammaticality effect. Further analysis revealed that the mean amplitude and distribution of the P600 effect was only significant in contexts where the S-V agreement violation occurred utterance-finally, regardless of the type of agreement violation. The mean amplitude and distribution of the negativity did not differ significantly across types of agreement violation and utterance position. These findings suggest that the increased perceptual salience of the violation in utterance-final position (due to phrase-final lengthening) influenced how S-V agreement violations were processed during sentence comprehension. Implications for the functional interpretation of language-related ERPs and experimental design are discussed. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-17T13:31:21Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-fd5e2aa84dc046388dc57b1ddd64d129 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-17T13:31:21Z |
| publishDate | 2016-08-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-fd5e2aa84dc046388dc57b1ddd64d1292022-12-21T21:46:33ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782016-08-01710.3389/fpsyg.2016.01276186280Effects of type of agreement violation and utterance position on the auditory processing of subject-verb agreement: An ERP studySithembinkosi Dube0Carmen Kung1Varghese Peter2Jon Brock3Katherine Demuth4Macquarie UniversityMacquarie UniversityWestern Sydney UniversityMacquarie UniversityMacquarie UniversityPrevious ERP studies have often reported two ERP components—LAN and P600—in response to subject-verb (S-V) agreement violations (e.g., the boys *runs). However, the latency, amplitude and scalp distribution of these components have been shown to vary depending on various experiment-related factors. One factor that has not received attention is the extent to which the relative perceptual salience related to either the utterance position (verbal inflection in utterance-medial vs. utterance-final contexts) or the type of agreement violation (errors of omission vs. errors of commission) may influence the auditory processing of S-V agreement. The lack of reports on these effects in ERP studies may be due to the fact that most studies have used the visual modality, which does not reveal acoustic information. To address this gap, we used ERPs to measure the brain activity of Australian English-speaking adults while they listened to sentences in which the S-V agreement differed by type of agreement violation and utterance position. We observed early negative and positive clusters (AN/P600 effects) for the overall grammaticality effect. Further analysis revealed that the mean amplitude and distribution of the P600 effect was only significant in contexts where the S-V agreement violation occurred utterance-finally, regardless of the type of agreement violation. The mean amplitude and distribution of the negativity did not differ significantly across types of agreement violation and utterance position. These findings suggest that the increased perceptual salience of the violation in utterance-final position (due to phrase-final lengthening) influenced how S-V agreement violations were processed during sentence comprehension. Implications for the functional interpretation of language-related ERPs and experimental design are discussed.http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01276/fullERPsperceptual saliencemorphosyntactic processingUtterance positiontype of violation |
| spellingShingle | Sithembinkosi Dube Carmen Kung Varghese Peter Jon Brock Katherine Demuth Effects of type of agreement violation and utterance position on the auditory processing of subject-verb agreement: An ERP study Frontiers in Psychology ERPs perceptual salience morphosyntactic processing Utterance position type of violation |
| title | Effects of type of agreement violation and utterance position on the auditory processing of subject-verb agreement: An ERP study |
| title_full | Effects of type of agreement violation and utterance position on the auditory processing of subject-verb agreement: An ERP study |
| title_fullStr | Effects of type of agreement violation and utterance position on the auditory processing of subject-verb agreement: An ERP study |
| title_full_unstemmed | Effects of type of agreement violation and utterance position on the auditory processing of subject-verb agreement: An ERP study |
| title_short | Effects of type of agreement violation and utterance position on the auditory processing of subject-verb agreement: An ERP study |
| title_sort | effects of type of agreement violation and utterance position on the auditory processing of subject verb agreement an erp study |
| topic | ERPs perceptual salience morphosyntactic processing Utterance position type of violation |
| url | http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01276/full |
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