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New insights into name category-related effects: is the Age of Acquisition a possible factor?

BACKGROUND: Electrophysiological, hemodynamic and neuropsychological studies have provided evidence of dissociation in the way words belonging to different semantic categories (e.g., animals, tools, actions) are represented in the brain. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether a word...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Adorni, Roberta, Proverbio, Alice Mado
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2009
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2726156/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19640289
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1744-9081-5-33
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author Adorni, Roberta
Proverbio, Alice Mado
author_facet Adorni, Roberta
Proverbio, Alice Mado
author_sort Adorni, Roberta
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Electrophysiological, hemodynamic and neuropsychological studies have provided evidence of dissociation in the way words belonging to different semantic categories (e.g., animals, tools, actions) are represented in the brain. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether a word's semantic domain may affect the amplitude and latency of ERP components, independently of any other factor. METHODS: EEGs were recorded from 16 volunteers engaged in a lexical decision task (word/non-word discrimination) involving 100 words (flora and fauna names). This task allowed us to evaluate differences in processing between words belonging to different categories (fauna vs. flora) independently of task demands. All stimuli were balanced in terms of length, frequency of occurrence, familiarity and imageability. Low Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography (LORETA) was performed on ERP difference waves of interest. RESULTS: Our findings showed that the two categories were discriminated as early as 200 ms post-stimulus, with larger responses to flora names over the left occipito-temporal areas, namely BA37 and BA20. Category-related ERP differences were also observed in the amplitudes of the later centro-parietal N400, posterior P300 and anterior LP components. Behavioral responses to words denoting fauna were more accurate than to words denoting flora. CONCLUSION: Overall, it seems that it was easier to access the lexical properties of fauna, probably because of their biologically relevant status. The results are discussed in the light of the possible role played by different factors.
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spelling pubmed-27261562009-08-13 New insights into name category-related effects: is the Age of Acquisition a possible factor? Adorni, Roberta Proverbio, Alice Mado Behav Brain Funct Research BACKGROUND: Electrophysiological, hemodynamic and neuropsychological studies have provided evidence of dissociation in the way words belonging to different semantic categories (e.g., animals, tools, actions) are represented in the brain. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether a word's semantic domain may affect the amplitude and latency of ERP components, independently of any other factor. METHODS: EEGs were recorded from 16 volunteers engaged in a lexical decision task (word/non-word discrimination) involving 100 words (flora and fauna names). This task allowed us to evaluate differences in processing between words belonging to different categories (fauna vs. flora) independently of task demands. All stimuli were balanced in terms of length, frequency of occurrence, familiarity and imageability. Low Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography (LORETA) was performed on ERP difference waves of interest. RESULTS: Our findings showed that the two categories were discriminated as early as 200 ms post-stimulus, with larger responses to flora names over the left occipito-temporal areas, namely BA37 and BA20. Category-related ERP differences were also observed in the amplitudes of the later centro-parietal N400, posterior P300 and anterior LP components. Behavioral responses to words denoting fauna were more accurate than to words denoting flora. CONCLUSION: Overall, it seems that it was easier to access the lexical properties of fauna, probably because of their biologically relevant status. The results are discussed in the light of the possible role played by different factors. BioMed Central 2009-07-29 /pmc/articles/PMC2726156/ /pubmed/19640289 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1744-9081-5-33 Text en Copyright © 2009 Adorni and Proverbio; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Adorni, Roberta
Proverbio, Alice Mado
New insights into name category-related effects: is the Age of Acquisition a possible factor?
title New insights into name category-related effects: is the Age of Acquisition a possible factor?
title_full New insights into name category-related effects: is the Age of Acquisition a possible factor?
title_fullStr New insights into name category-related effects: is the Age of Acquisition a possible factor?
title_full_unstemmed New insights into name category-related effects: is the Age of Acquisition a possible factor?
title_short New insights into name category-related effects: is the Age of Acquisition a possible factor?
title_sort new insights into name category-related effects: is the age of acquisition a possible factor?
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2726156/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19640289
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1744-9081-5-33
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