Chwilla Dorothee J, Kolk Herman H J
Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information, Radboud University, PO Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Brain Res Cogn Brain Res. 2005 Dec;25(3):589-606. doi: 10.1016/j.cogbrainres.2005.08.011. Epub 2005 Oct 3.
How fast are we in accessing world knowledge? In two experiments, we tested for priming for word triplets that described a conceptual script (e.g., DIRECTOR-BRIBE-DISMISSAL) but were not associatively related and did not share a category relationship. Event-related brain potentials were used to track the time course at which script information becomes available. In Experiment 1, in which participants made lexical decisions, we found a facilitation for script-related relative to unrelated triplets, as indicated by (i) a decrease in both reaction time and errors, and (ii) an N400-like priming effect. In Experiment 2, we further explored the locus of script priming by increasing the contribution of meaning integration processes. The participants' task was to indicate whether the three words presented a plausible scenario. Again, an N400 script priming effect was obtained. Directing attention to script relations was effective in enhancing the N400 effect. The time course of the N400 effect was similar to that of the standard N400 effect to semantic relations. The present results show that script priming can be obtained in the visual modality, and that script information is immediately accessed and integrated with context. This supports the view that script information forms a central aspect of word meaning. The RT and N400 script priming effects reported in this article are problematic for most current semantic priming models, like spreading activation models, expectancy models, and task-specific semantic matching/integration models. They support a view in which there is no clear cutoff point between semantic knowledge and world knowledge.
我们获取世界知识的速度有多快?在两项实验中,我们测试了对描述概念脚本(例如,导演 - 贿赂 - 解雇)但没有联想关系且不共享类别关系的三元组单词的启动效应。事件相关脑电位被用于追踪脚本信息可用的时间进程。在实验1中,参与者进行词汇判断,我们发现相对于不相关的三元组,与脚本相关的三元组存在促进作用,表现为:(i)反应时间和错误减少;(ii)类似N400的启动效应。在实验2中,我们通过增加意义整合过程的贡献进一步探索了脚本启动的位置。参与者的任务是指出呈现的三个单词是否构成一个合理的场景。同样,获得了N400脚本启动效应。将注意力导向脚本关系有效地增强了N400效应。N400效应的时间进程与对语义关系的标准N400效应相似。目前的结果表明,脚本启动可以在视觉模态中获得,并且脚本信息可以立即被访问并与上下文整合。这支持了脚本信息构成单词意义核心方面的观点。本文报道的反应时间和N400脚本启动效应对于大多数当前的语义启动模型来说是有问题的,比如扩散激活模型、预期模型和特定任务的语义匹配/整合模型。它们支持一种观点,即语义知识和世界知识之间没有明确的界限。