Journal of Neurolinguistics最新文献

{"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}

{"title":"Consonant intelligibility in individuals with Parkinson's disease in noise: Pre-specified secondary outcome variables from a randomized control trial (RCT) comparing two intensive speech treatments (LSVT LOUD vs. LSVT ARTIC)","authors":"Geralyn Schulz ,&nbsp;Angela Halpern ,&nbsp;Jennifer Speilman ,&nbsp;Lorraine Ramig ,&nbsp;Ira Panzer ,&nbsp;Alan Sharpley ,&nbsp;Katherine Freeman","doi":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101251","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101251","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The majority of people with Parkinson's disease (PD) experience changes in speech production, most notably reduced vocal volume and imprecise articulation, that limit speech intelligibility and may contribute to significant declines in quality of life. We previously conducted a randomized control trial comparing two intensive treatments, voice (LSVT LOUD) or articulation (LSVT ARTIC) to assess single word intelligibility in the presence of background noise (babble and mall). Participants (64 PD and 20 Healthy) read words from the diagnostic rhyme test (DRT), an ANSI Standard for measuring intelligibility of speech, before and after one month (treatment or no treatment). Teams of trained listeners blindly rated the data. Previously we found that single word intelligibility in the presence of both noise conditions improved in PD participants who had LSVT LOUD compared to the groups that had LSVT ARTIC or no treatment. The current study analyzed the distinctive features (Compactness, Graveness, Sustention, Sibilation, Nasality, Voicing), of the initial consonants of words in the DRT test to determine what in particular is contributing to the differences in word intelligibility that we previously identified. The distinctive features of the DRT assess the valving nature of consonant production. Intensive treatment targeting vocal loudness (LSVT LOUD) had a greater positive effect on consonant intelligibility than treatment targeting articulation (LSVT ARTIC) for all distinctive features in background Babble noise and for 5/6 distinctive features in background Mall noise. Due to the definition of the distinctive features, we can conclude that the intelligibility gains seen following LSVT LOUD treatment are due to improved vocal tract valving.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neurolinguistics","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101251"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143628730","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":"ND250 as a prediction error signal in orthographic processing: Evidence from comparing ERPs to handwritten and printed words","authors":"Hongli Liu ,&nbsp;Jiayi Zhang ,&nbsp;Feng Gu","doi":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101249","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101249","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Our ability to recognize tens of thousands of words is attributed to a rich lexicon in our brains, referred to as the orthographic lexicon. Understanding how this lexicon is organized in the brain is key to uncovering the neural mechanisms of visual word recognition. Event-related potentials (ERPs) are an effective tool for investigating these mechanisms. A widely observed phenomenon in orthographic processing is a 250-ms ERP difference between real words and pseudowords (or between high-frequency (HF) and low-frequency (LF) words). However, this 250-ms ERP difference has been explained by competing theories—one attributing it to the activation of the orthographic lexicon, and the other suggesting it represents a prediction error signal related to orthographic processing. To resolve this controversy, the present study uses handwritten words as control stimuli alongside printed words, as the 250-ms ERP difference is not observed with handwritten words. ERPs were obtained during an implicit reading task (color decision) for printed HF words, printed LF words, handwritten HF words, and handwritten LF words. The results show that the 250-ms ERP difference is significant when comparing printed LF words to printed HF words, handwritten LF words, and handwritten HF words. This finding indicates that the 250-ms ERP difference reflects increased neural activation to printed LF words compared to printed HF words, likely representing a prediction error signal in orthographic processing. These results support the Interactive Account of orthographic processing, clarify previous ERP findings in the literature, and underscore the potential applications of the 250-ms ERP difference (labeled as ND250) in future research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neurolinguistics","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101249"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143529775","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":"tDCS over the left auditory cortex enhances working memory of nonsense auditory syllables: The role of stimulation montages","authors":"Rongjuan Zhu ,&nbsp;Xiaoliang Ma ,&nbsp;Xiaoqing Liu ,&nbsp;Xuqun You","doi":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101250","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101250","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Auditory verbal working memory (AVWM) is a crucial cognitive process that allows individuals to store and manipulate auditory information. This study investigates the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on AVWM performance using nonsense auditory syllables and examines the role of different stimulation montages. Thirty healthy participants received tDCS with three stimulation montages: anode-left auditory cortex/cathode-left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), anode-left auditory cortex/cathode-right cheek, and sham stimulation. Results showed that anodal tDCS over the left auditory cortex with concurrent cathodal stimulation over the left DLPFC improved 1-back task performance, while anodal tDCS over the left auditory cortex with cathodal stimulation over the right cheek improved both 1-back and 2-back task performance. These findings suggest that the left auditory cortex plays a critical role in AVWM and highlight the importance of considering stimulation montage in tDCS studies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neurolinguistics","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101250"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143518855","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":"Does sounding ‘Gay’ or ‘Straight’ affect how we understand language? Sentence comprehension is regulated by the speaker's perceived sexual orientation","authors":"Simone Sulpizio ,&nbsp;Fabio Fasoli ,&nbsp;Gaia Lapomarda ,&nbsp;Francesco Vespignani","doi":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101248","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jneuroling.2025.101248","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Social interactions are shaped by the way individuals communicate. Listeners form impressions based on how someone sounds, and the message conveyed can be interpreted differently depending on who the speaker is. We investigated on-line sentence processing focusing on the role of the speaker's gay- vs. heterosexual-sounding voice in the construction of meaning. Event-related brain potentials were recorded while participants listened to two gay- and two heterosexual-sounding male speakers uttering stereotypical sentences. We manipulated whether the sentences referred to professions stereotypically congruent or incongruent with the speakers' perceived sexual orientation. Results showed that the interplay between the speaker's voice and message content influenced sentence processing early after an incongruent stereotype was presented. The interaction was maximal at frontal sites, with a larger negativity for stereotypically-congruent than for stereotypically-incongruent professions when uttered by gay-sounding speakers. These results suggest that the perception of the speaker as gay- or straight-sounding is quickly used by listeners to build the message meaning. The inconsistency between vocal and linguistic information modulates a frontal negativity, potentially indicating control processes during sentence comprehension put in place to deal with the inconsistency.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50118,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neurolinguistics","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 101248"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143471419","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}