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Effects of Type of Agreement Violation and Utterance Position on the Auditory Processing of Subject-Verb Agreement - An ERP Study2.72 MB
Published VersionCC BY V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
Effects of Type of Agreement Violation and Utterance Position on the Auditory Processing of Subject-Verb Agreement: An ERP Study
Frontiers in Psychology, Vol.7, pp.1-18
2016
PMID: 27625617
Abstract
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 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.
Details
- Title
- Effects of Type of Agreement Violation and Utterance Position on the Auditory Processing of Subject-Verb Agreement: An ERP Study
- Authors
- Sithembinkosi Dube (Author) - Macquarie UniversityCarmen Kung (Author) - Macquarie UniversityVarghese Peter (Author) - Western Sydney UniversityJon Brock (Author) - Western Sydney UniversityKatherine Demuth (Author) - Macquarie University
- Publication details
- Frontiers in Psychology, Vol.7, pp.1-18
- Publisher
- Frontiers Research Foundation
- Date published
- 2016
- DOI
- 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01276
- ISSN
- 1664-1078
- PMID
- 27625617
- Copyright note
- Copyright © 2016 Dube, Kung, Peter, Brock and Demuth. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
- Organisation Unit
- University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Health - Psychology; School of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Legacy
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99534307602621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web Of Science research areas
- Psychology, Multidisciplinary