Deacon D, Uhm T J, Ritter W, Hewitt S, Dynowska A
Department of Psychology, College of the City of New York, NY 10031, USA.
Brain Res Cogn Brain Res. 1999 Mar;7(4):465-72. doi: 10.1016/s0926-6410(98)00034-2.
The N400 component of event-related potentials (ERPs) was obtained in a modified version of the Neely [J.H. Neely, Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: Roles of inhibitionless spreading activation and limited-capacity attention, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol. 106 (1977), pp. 226-254.] paradigm which permits unconfounding of semantic priming effects due to automatic and attentional processes. It was found that a short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 250 ms between the prime and the target was associated with automatic but not expectancy effects on the amplitude of N400. At a long SOA of 2000 ms between prime and target, semantic priming effects on N400 were obtained associated with both automatic and expectancy processes. Moreover, there was no significance difference in the magnitude of the automatic effects at the two SOAs, suggesting that automatic processing had not decayed within the 2000 ms interval between the prime and target. The results support the two-processing interpretation of semantic priming advanced by Posner and Synder [M.I. Posner, C.R.R. Snyder, Attention and cognitive control, in: R.L. Solso (Ed.), Information Processing and Cognition: The Loyola Symposium, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ (1975).] and concur with the results of Neely [J.H. Neely, Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: Roles of inhibitionless spreading activation and limited-capacity attention, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol. 106 (1977), pp. 226-254], with the exception of indicating a longer persistence of automatic processes.
事件相关电位（ERP）的N400成分是在Neely[J.H. Neely，语义启动与词汇记忆提取：无抑制扩散激活和有限容量注意的作用，《实验心理学杂志：总论》，第106卷（1977年），第226 - 254页。]范式的一个修改版本中获得的，该范式允许区分自动和注意过程引起的语义启动效应。研究发现，启动刺激和目标刺激之间250毫秒的短刺激起始异步（SOA）与对N400波幅的自动效应相关，但与预期效应无关。在启动刺激和目标刺激之间2000毫秒的长SOA下，获得了对N400的语义启动效应，该效应与自动和预期过程均相关。此外，在这两个SOA下自动效应的大小没有显著差异，这表明自动加工在启动刺激和目标刺激之间的2000毫秒间隔内没有衰减。这些结果支持了Posner和Synder[M.I. Posner，C.R.R. Snyder，注意与认知控制，载于：R.L. Solso（编），《信息加工与认知：洛约拉研讨会》，埃尔布拉姆，新泽西州希尔斯代尔（1975年）。]提出的语义启动的双加工解释，并且与Neely[J.H. Neely，语义启动与词汇记忆提取：无抑制扩散激活和有限容量注意的作用，《实验心理学杂志：总论》，第106卷（1977年），第226 - 254页]的结果一致，只是表明自动过程的持续时间更长。
