Abstract
A major effort in cognitive neuroscience of language is to define the temporal and spatial characteristics of the core cognitive processes involved in word production. One approach consists in studying the effects of linguistic and pre-linguistic variables in picture naming tasks. So far, studies have analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) during word production by examining one or two variables with factorial designs. Here we extended this approach by investigating simultaneously the effects of multiple theoretical relevant predictors in a picture naming task. High density EEG was recorded on 31 participants during overt naming of 100 pictures. ERPs were extracted on a trial by trial basis from picture onset to 100 ms before the onset of articulation. Mixed-effects regression models were conducted to examine which variables affected production latencies and the duration of periods of stable electrophysiological patterns (topographic maps). Results revealed an effect of a pre-linguistic variable, visual complexity, on an early period of stable electric field at scalp, from 140 to 180 ms after picture presentation, a result consistent with the proposal that this time period is associated with visual object recognition processes. Three other variables, word Age of Acquisition, Name Agreement, and Image Agreement influenced response latencies and modulated ERPs from ~380 ms to the end of the analyzed period. These results demonstrate that a topographic analysis fitted into the single trial ERPs and covering the entire processing period allows one to associate the cost generated by psycholinguistic variables to the duration of specific stable electrophysiological processes and to pinpoint the precise time-course of multiple word production predictors at once.
Highlights
The representations and processes underlying word processing for speech production have been studied extensively for more than three decades with various experimental approaches, including the analysis of speech errors (e.g., Fromkin, 1971; Garrett, 1980; Dell, 1990), chronometric paradigms (Bock, 1996), eye movements studies (e.g., Griffin, 2001), and event-related potential (ERP) approaches (Ganushchak et al, 2011)
BEHAVIORAL RESULTS (PRODUCTION LATENCIES) The dataset considered in the analyses contained the 2693 data points for which participants had produced a correct response and whose epoch was included in the ERP analysis
To ensure that the topographic template maps issued from the spatio-temporal segmentation of the group-averaged ERP were sufficiently representative of the single trials ERPs, the Global Explained Variance (GEV) of each template map was calculated in subjects and single trials
Summary
The representations and processes underlying word processing for speech production have been studied extensively for more than three decades with various experimental approaches, including the analysis of speech errors (e.g., Fromkin, 1971; Garrett, 1980; Dell, 1990), chronometric paradigms (Bock, 1996), eye movements studies (e.g., Griffin, 2001), and event-related potential (ERP) approaches (Ganushchak et al, 2011). Most chronometric studies involve picture naming tasks where the dependent variable is the time interval between picture presentation and the onset of articulation (see Johnson et al, 1996 for a review). In many of these picture naming experiments, the properties of the words (e.g., frequency, age of acquisition, length) or of the pictures (e.g., visual complexity) are manipulated. Within the framework of chronometric approaches, eye movements studies have provided information on the relation between gaze and the planning and execution of utterances, allowing to pinpoint the time course of the encoding stages involved in word production (e.g., Meyer et al, 1998; Griffin, 2001)
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