Journal of Neurolinguistics最新文献

{"title":"N400 signatures of presupposition and assertion correlate with pragmatic mismatches, not with epistemic vigilance","authors":"Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri ,&nbsp;Giulia Giunta ,&nbsp;Viviana Masia ,&nbsp;Emanuele Maiorana ,&nbsp;Patrizio Campisi","doi":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101268","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101268","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates the N400 component, first identified in response to the presupposition of unshared information compared to the presupposition of shared information and the assertion of unshared information. Two hypotheses were tested: (i) the N400 only represents a pragmatic mismatch due to a less predicted informational packaging associated with some content, or (ii) it reflects variations in critical attention under different packaging conditions. Our findings support the first hypothesis. The N400 correlates with pragmatic mismatches between the linguistic encoding of content and its previous cognitive status, namely (1a) presupposition vs assertion of unshared information and (1b) presupposition of shared vs unshared information; and (2a) assertion vs presupposition of shared information and (2b) assertion of shared vs unshared information. The N400 is absent in equally matching conditions, i.e., the presupposition of shared content vs the assertion of unshared content (both matching) and the presupposition of unshared content vs the assertion of shared content (both mismatching). These conclusions offer insights into one of the key ERP components of language processing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neurolinguistics","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101268"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144124129","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Who is ziji or ta-ziji ? An ERP study on the processing mechanism of Chinese bare and compound reflexives","authors":"Ruoxuan Zhu,&nbsp;Xingsan Chai","doi":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101267","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101267","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Previous studies have shown that the constructed representations in online comprehension process are content-addressable, allowing the parser to retrieve dependencies between non-adjacent linguistic elements, such as reflexives and their antecedents, with syntactic and semantic cues serving as retrieval tools operating at distinct temporal stages. However, current research has not effectively addressed the retrieval patterns of Chinese <em>ziji</em> and <em>ta-ziji</em> in the binding of antecedents. This study employed event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore the roles of syntactic cues and animacy cues in the retrieval processes of <em>ziji</em> and <em>ta-ziji</em> using the sentence structure “P-NP1+VP1+P-NP2+ADV+VP2+<em>ziji</em>/<em>ta-ziji</em>+VP3+ADV+VP4+NP.” By constructing where reflexives could reference NP1, NP2, or both, the study examined cue effects. The results showed that <em>ta-ziji</em> elicited P300 and P600 effects when referencing out-of-domain antecedent NP1, reflecting the dominant role of syntactic cues in processing. In contrast, <em>ziji</em> did not produce significant electrophysiological responses but instead elicited P300 and P600 components when it could refer to both NP1 and NP2, indicating that animacy cues can guide the retrieval of <em>ziji</em> alongside syntactic cues during processing. These results suggest that the locality effect of <em>ta-ziji</em> is greater than that of <em>ziji</em>, with the former favoring the structure-favoring cue-based retrieval model, while the latter aligns with the standard cue-based retrieval model.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neurolinguistics","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101267"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144090430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rapid automatized naming neural networks in children and adults: Connections to reading and arithmetic fluency","authors":"Ningxin Zhao ,&nbsp;Jie Chen ,&nbsp;Yinan Wei ,&nbsp;Jia Zhang ,&nbsp;Guosheng Ding ,&nbsp;George Georgiou ,&nbsp;Xiangzhi Meng ,&nbsp;Xiujie Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101266","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101266","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Emphasizing the rapid transition from written symbols to phonological information, rapid automatized naming (RAN) serves as a robust predictor of proficiency in both reading and arithmetic. The current study aimed to uncover the neural mechanism underlying RAN from childhood to adulthood and how its maturity contributes to the development of reading and arithmetic. Using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 34 children (mean age = 11.82 years, <em>SD</em> = 1.13) and 29 adults (mean age = 23.47 years, <em>SD</em> = 2.41), we examined the relationship between RAN and the intrinsic whole-brain functional connectome. The findings revealed a thalamus-centric RAN network in children, whereas adults exhibited a distinct network dominated by left cortical regions. Additionally, two development-related indices were computed: the ‘adult-like’ network maturity, which assesses the degree of similarity between each child's RAN network pattern and the averaged adult network pattern; the ‘child-unique’ network strength, which measures the strength of connections within the RAN network specific to children. Significant positive correlations were observed between the adult-like maturity index and reading and arithmetic fluency in children, alongside the segregation of the reading and arithmetic networks. Notably, a validation analysis confirmed that these correlations were not attributed to the overall brain maturation. By shedding light on the specific contribution of neural mechanisms underlying RAN, this study offers insightful perspectives on the neural underpinnings of the developmental covariance between reading and arithmetic.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neurolinguistics","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101266"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143942876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Attention moderates the AoA effect on second language vowel perception","authors":"Yuanyuan Li ,&nbsp;Jing Lu ,&nbsp;Haibo Zhang ,&nbsp;Cuicui Wang ,&nbsp;Vesa Putkinen ,&nbsp;Sha Tao","doi":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101264","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101264","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Age of acquisition (AoA) may have long-lasting effects on second language learning, such as vowel perception, especially in immersion contexts. However, it's important to note that an earlier start of second language learning may not be equally important for all learners. Identifying the key individual characteristics that moderate the AoA effect is essential to elucidate the nature of the AoA effect. This study aimed to investigate the significance of the AoA effect in a non-immersion second language learning context and examine whether individual characteristics, such as second language proficiency, general auditory processing, and attention switching abilities may moderate this effect. Fifty-eight native Chinese-speaking university students, with over ten years of non-immersion English learning, participated in tasks assessing English vowel perception, non-linguistic sound perception, and attention switching ability. The results showed that the AoA effect remained significant among non-immersion Chinese English learners. Moreover, stronger individual attention switching and higher English listening proficiency, but not auditory processing ability, buffered the AoA effect. The moderating effect of attention switching remained significant even after controlling for the moderating effect of English listening proficiency. Earlier start of second language learning may be particularly important for learners with a slower attention switch (indicated by a longer P3 latency) to learn speech perception, while not so much for those with a quicker attention switch (indicated by a shorter P3 latency). The findings were the first empirical evidence highlighting that the AoA effect on second language learning in non-immersive contexts may differ by learners' cognitive ability. The present study expanded the knowledge of the complexity of the AoA effect to more specific individual characteristics.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neurolinguistics","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101264"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143935160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"ERP evidence on the regulation of negative emotions by verbal humor in subthreshold depression individuals","authors":"Xueyan Li ,&nbsp;Bo Zhao ,&nbsp;Han Wang ,&nbsp;Huili Wang ,&nbsp;Yue Hu ,&nbsp;Bin Long ,&nbsp;Xiao Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101263","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101263","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Verbal humor, which integrates both cognitive and affective aspects, has been shown to effectively regulate negative emotions. However, there is limited temporal evidence regarding the underlying mechanisms of this regulation in individuals with subthreshold depression. In light of the three stages involved in verbal-humor processing, this study aims to explore group differences in the neural mechanisms of negative emotion regulation through verbal humor between individuals with subthreshold depression and healthy controls. Thirty-nine participants provided two emotion ratings after exposure to negative priming words and after viewing either humorous or neutral regulating stimuli. Behavioral results indicated distinct differences in emotion ratings between conditions in both groups, with larger differences observed in the humorous condition, suggesting that verbal humor plays a significant role in regulating negative emotions. The ERP results revealed that activation of the N400 and LPP components was significantly enhanced under humorous conditions, reflecting the joint regulation of cognitive and affective aspects in verbal-humor processing. Compared to healthy controls, the subthreshold depression group exhibited overall less N400 activation in the right central region. The LPP evoked in individuals with subthreshold depression was significantly lower compared to controls in neutral conditions, with no significant difference observed in the humorous condition. ERO results further demonstrated the effect of subthreshold depression on oscillatory changes in the regulation of negative emotions through verbal humor, showing that the subthreshold depression group exhibited lower activation in the theta and beta bands. Collectively, these results affirm that verbal humor can regulate negative emotions in individuals with subthreshold depression, albeit to a somewhat lesser extent within this group. Regarding the cognitive aspect of verbal humor, individuals with subthreshold depression exhibited a diminished ability to detect incongruities. Additionally, concerning the affective aspect of verbal humor, individuals with subthreshold depression showed a reduced tendency to engage with positive emotions. Future research could further explore the neural mechanisms by which individuals with subthreshold depression utilize verbal humor to regulate negative emotions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neurolinguistics","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101263"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143922820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The dissociation of grammatical category from multiple levels in the neural representation of words: stress typicality effect among Chinese EFL learners","authors":"Yaxuan Meng ,&nbsp;Juan Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101265","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101265","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study aimed to dissociate grammatical category from multiple levels during the processing of stress typicality, with a focus on understanding how class information is represented among Chinese speakers who learn English as a foreign language (EFL). Disyllabic English words were used as stimuli and three event-related potentials (ERPs) components, including P200, N400, and LPC (late positive component), were analyzed across two tasks that varied in their direct utilization of grammatical cue: lexical decision task in Experiment 1 and grammatical classification task in Experiment 2. Our findings indicate differences between words exhibiting distinct stress and grammatical patterns, suggesting that prosodic and grammatical cues are dissociated early around 200 ms, and continue to influence lexical access into later time windows. Additionally, the direct tapping of grammatical cues appears to impact how classes are processed, as differences between tasks were observed. In summary, our results reveal that grammatical class could be represented at the orthographic level and dissociated from prosody at an early stage. Furthermore, the representation of grammatical class among Chinese EFL learners may be independent of semantics.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neurolinguistics","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101265"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143922818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What's the point of talking? Auditory targets and communicative goals","authors":"Sophie Meekings ,&nbsp;Sophie K. Scott","doi":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101262","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101262","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Human speech production is a complex action requiring minute control over the articulators and sensitivity to the surrounding environment. Computational and empirical work has attempted to identify the specific neural mechanisms and cognitive processes that allow us to reliably produce speech sounds. This work has established that humans can use their perception of the auditory and somatosensory consequences of their actions to guide subsequent speech movements. However, speech predominantly takes place in a communicative context, and this context is also known to modulate the way that people speak: human voices are highly flexible. In this paper, we try to unite the traditional motor control conception of internally defined acoustic and somatosensory goals with linguistic research showing that talkers respond and entrain to their conversational partners. We provide an overview of the theoretical and empirical work surrounding the use of sensory feedback monitoring in speech production and discuss practical constraints that have limited more naturalistic investigations into dyadic interaction. To conclude, we argue that the variability of results seen in the speech motor control literature reflects a more complex underlying neural architecture, and an overarching communicative goal that supersedes specific phonetic targets.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neurolinguistics","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101262"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143828964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"No evidence for dissociation of Turkish nouns and verbs in Broca's and Wernicke's areas: A transcranial magnetic stimulation study","authors":"Gülkader Temiz ,&nbsp;İrem Bağçeci ,&nbsp;N. Evra Günhan Şenol ,&nbsp;Talat Bulut","doi":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101260","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101260","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>It is not clear whether the grammatical distinction between nouns and verbs serves as an organizational principle for representation of the lexicon in the brain, or whether semantic differences between the two categories such as imageability account for any cortical segregation between them. In this study, we used repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and lexical decision tasks to test whether Broca's area would be associated with verbs and Wernicke's area with nouns, and whether imageability and lexical status (real words versus pseudowords) would modulate representation of nouns and verbs in Broca's area and Wernicke's area. We assumed that if nouns and verbs are dissociated in these regions then their suppression would lead to a selective slowdown in lexical decision times for one or the other word category, which may be modulated by imageability and lexical status. On two different days, Broca's area and Wernicke's area were suppressed using low-frequency rTMS, and lexical decision times on Turkish nouns and verbs were collected before and immediately after the stimulation sessions. Using linear mixed-effects models with item- and trial-level predictors and covariates (imageability, lemma frequency, length in letters and presentation order), we failed to find any evidence for dissociation of nouns and verbs in Broca's area and Wernicke's area, or for an effect of imageability and lexical status on such purported dissociation. The analyses revealed a significant interaction between stimulation session and lexical status (real words versus pseudowords) in Broca's area, but not in Wernicke's area, implicating Broca's area with real words more than pseudowords. In addition, several behavioral effects were observed including the word frequency effect (faster RTs for frequent than infrequent words), word superiority effect (faster RTs for real words than pseudowords) and word category effect (faster RTs for nouns than verbs). In conclusion, our findings on Turkish nouns and verbs do not provide any evidence that grammatical category is a lexical organizational principle in Broca's or Wernicke's areas.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neurolinguistics","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101260"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143704602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Incremental processing of postverbal negation: ERP evidence from Korean","authors":"Miseon Lee ,&nbsp;Hyoung Sun Kim ,&nbsp;Gayoung Lee ,&nbsp;Yuree Noh ,&nbsp;Say Young Kim","doi":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101259","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101259","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines the processing of sentential negation in Korean, a head-final language, within pragmatically felicitous contexts. Using an ERP truth-value judgment task, we found evidence suggesting that when the negator follows a clause-final verb in Korean, the negation is processed incrementally after the affirmative representation has been formed. Fifty-six Korean speakers judged true affirmatives faster and more accurately than false affirmatives, while negative sentences elicited slower and less accurate responses for both true and false trials. Notably, ERP results revealed that only negative sentences elicited enhanced neural activity during the 300–500 ms time window, indicating increased processing costs compared to affirmatives. These results suggest that postverbal negation in Korean involves two-step processing: the negative marker is processed sequentially after the verb, following the initial formation of the affirmative representation of the clause, even in pragmatically licensed contexts. This underscores the significance of language-specific attributes such as the placement of a negator relative to the verb in understanding how negation is processed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neurolinguistics","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101259"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143703975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The lexicon constrains grammar, grammar constrains composition: ERP evidence for sequential processing of morphological agreement and sentence meaning","authors":"Viktoriia Afoian,&nbsp;Mila Vulchanova,&nbsp;Giosuè Baggio","doi":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101261","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101261","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In neurolinguistics and the neurobiology of language, processing models that parallelize meaning and grammar have acquired theoretical and empirical support over more modular theories. Yet, parallel models too should account for serial, sequential, or blocking effects of one type of representation on others. In this study, we used ERPs to assess whether and how the mental lexicon restricts the applicability of morphosyntactic operations, and how those, in turn, constrain on-line meaning composition. The stimuli were Norwegian sentences with the form ‘N V Adj’. The adjective was either correctly or incorrectly inflected for gender or number relative to the noun, and the noun was either a real word or a pseudoword built around a pseudoroot. ERPs show that agreement only applies between an adjective and a noun that contains a real lexical root, and that lexical meanings are only composed for correctly inflected words. We could not find agreement effects for pseudonouns or differences between gender and number features. Our results suggest that some grammatical processes may draw from and depend on lexical storage, in particular of lexical roots, and that compositional semantic processes may depend on the well-formedness of the outputs of such grammatical processes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neurolinguistics","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101261"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143687665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}