ERP markers of gender retrieval during noun production: Evidence for early processing and masculine-feminine asymmetries

IF 2.4 2区心理学 Q1 AUDIOLOGY & SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGY

Brain and Language Pub Date : 2026-03-01 Epub Date: 2025-12-29 DOI:10.1016/j.bandl.2025.105700

A.R. Sá-Leite , I. Padrón , I. Fraga , D. Pinal , C. Pinto , M. Comesaña

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

It remains unclear whether agreement contexts are essential for grammatical gender selection during lexical access to nouns. Studies using the picture-word interference (PWI) paradigm address this by asking participants to name pictures with bare nouns while ignoring distractor words and by examining the gender congruency effect (GCE: faster responses for gender-congruent target-distractor pairs). However, results are inconsistent. We propose that the paradigm masks early lexical effects, leading to erratic response time findings; therefore, we combined the PWI task with EEG. Response times showed no GCE, but ERPs revealed it for masculine nouns, with larger early (80–190 ms) and mid-latency (N400) amplitudes in the incongruent condition. A main gender effect (slower responses and larger P600 for feminine nouns) suggested a higher cognitive demand for the feminine. These results indicate early gender retrieval without agreement for gender transparent nouns, challenging the PWI’s suitability for detecting behavioral early gender effects.

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名词产生过程中性别检索的ERP标记：早期加工和男女不对称的证据

在名词词汇获取过程中，一致语境是否对语法性别选择至关重要尚不清楚。使用图片-单词干扰（PWI）范式的研究通过要求参与者在忽略干扰词的情况下用裸名词命名图片来解决这个问题，并通过检验性别一致性效应（GCE：性别一致的目标-干扰对的反应更快）。然而，结果并不一致。我们认为，范式掩盖了早期词汇效应，导致不稳定的反应时间结果；因此，我们将PWI任务与EEG相结合。反应时间不显示GCE，但erp显示阳性名词有GCE，在不一致条件下，早期（80-190 ms）和中潜伏期（N400）振幅较大。主要的性别效应（对阴性名词的反应较慢，P600较大）表明对阴性名词的认知需求较高。这些结果表明，性别透明名词的早期性别检索不一致，对PWI检测行为早期性别效应的适用性提出了挑战。

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来源期刊

Brain and Language 医学-神经科学

CiteScore

4.50

自引率

8.00%

发文量

审稿时长

20.5 weeks

期刊介绍： An interdisciplinary journal, Brain and Language publishes articles that elucidate the complex relationships among language, brain, and behavior. The journal covers the large variety of modern techniques in cognitive neuroscience, including functional and structural brain imaging, electrophysiology, cellular and molecular neurobiology, genetics, lesion-based approaches, and computational modeling. All articles must relate to human language and be relevant to the understanding of its neurobiological and neurocognitive bases. Published articles in the journal are expected to have significant theoretical novelty and/or practical implications, and use perspectives and methods from psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience along with brain data and brain measures.