Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Communication, Lawrence Technological University, 21000 West Ten Mile Road, Southfield, MI 48075-1058, USA; Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, 1151 Richmond St, London, ON N6A 3K7, Canada.
Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, 1151 Richmond St, London, ON N6A 3K7, Canada.
Brain Lang. 2022 Aug;231:105147. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2022.105147. Epub 2022 Jun 18.
The effects of semantic richness on N400 amplitudes remain unclear. Some studies have reported semantic richness evoking greater N400s, whereas others have reported the opposite effect. Moreover, N400 effects of some semantic richness variables, such as body-object interaction (BOI), have yet to be demonstrated. BOI quantifies the degree to which a word's referent is easy to interact with; words such as bicycle are high-BOI whereas words such as butterfly are low-BOI. We examined BOI effects on N400 amplitudes and decision latencies in two semantic tasks. We found that in a touchable/untouchable task, low-BOI words (e.g., butterfly) evoked greater N400s than high-BOI words (e.g., bicycle), but there was no difference in decision latencies. Conversely, in a concrete/abstract task, high and low-BOI words evoked similar N400s, but decision latencies were shorter for high-BOI than for low-BOI words. Our results show that semantic richness upstream and downstream effects are dissociable and task dependent.
语义丰富度对 N400 振幅的影响仍不清楚。一些研究报告称语义丰富度会引起更大的 N400，而另一些研究则报告了相反的效果。此外，一些语义丰富度变量（如身体-物体交互（BOI））的 N400 效应尚未得到证明。BOI 量化了一个词的指称物与其他物体交互的容易程度；像自行车这样的词是高 BOI，而像蝴蝶这样的词是低 BOI。我们在两个语义任务中检查了 BOI 对 N400 振幅和决策潜伏期的影响。我们发现，在可触摸/不可触摸任务中，低 BOI 词（如蝴蝶）比高 BOI 词（如自行车）引起更大的 N400，但决策潜伏期没有差异。相反，在具体/抽象任务中，高 BOI 和低 BOI 词引起相似的 N400，但高 BOI 词的决策潜伏期比低 BOI 词短。我们的结果表明，语义丰富度的上游和下游效应是可分离的，并且依赖于任务。
