The Role of the Sentence Constraint in New Word Acquisition While Reading in Adolescents: The ERP N400 and P600 and Reading-Related Skills.

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Vocabulary acquisition is a lifelong process, with the most rapid growth occurring from early childhood to school age. Different contextual factors influence how new vocabulary is acquired across various age groups during reading.

METHODS

We studied the process of new word acquisition in different constraining contexts in adolescents aged 11-17 years old and how individual differences in reading comprehension, vocabulary, and verbal working memory affect word acquisition. In the learning stage, the new words were presented in sentences with low and high contextual constraints, and word acquisition was assessed in a word recognition test where behavioral measures and the N400 and P600 components of the event-related potentials (ERPs) were examined.

RESULTS

Our study reveals that while the accuracy of word recognition was at a chance level, adolescents had faster responses to words learned in high-constraining contexts compared to words from low-constraining contexts. Neural responses were influenced by context, with explicit recollection processes reflected in the P600 being modulated by the type of sentence constraint, while implicit familiarity related to the N400 did not show this effect. Higher reading comprehension, vocabulary, and verbal working memory scores improved accuracy, while reaction times were improved by just vocabulary. Additionally, reading comprehension and vocabulary impacted the implicit N400 old/new effect, and reading comprehension correlated with explicit recognition processes (P600 old/new effect).

CONCLUSIONS

Therefore, the present study showed that the type of constraint of new word learning and individual skills affected the word acquisition process in adolescents.