Abstract
Recent behavioural studies with toddlers have demonstrated that simply viewing a picture in silence triggers a cascade of linguistic processing which activates a representation of the picture’s name (Mani and Plunkett, 2010, 2011). Electrophysiological studies have also shown that viewing a picture modulates the auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) triggered by later speech, from early in the second year of life (Duta et al., 2012; Friedrich and Friederici, 2005; Mani et al., 2011) further supporting the notion that picture viewing gives rise to a representation of the picture’s name against which later speech can be matched. However, little is known about how and when the implicit name arises during picture viewing, or about the electrophysiological activity which supports this linguistic process.We report differences in the visual evoked potentials (VEPs) of fourteen-month-old infants who saw photographs of animals and objects, some of which were name-known (lexicalized), while waiting for an auditory label to be presented. During silent picture viewing, lateralized neural activity was selectively triggered by lexicalized items, as compared to nameless items. Lexicalized items generated a short-lasting negative-going deflection over frontal, left centro-temporal, and left occipital regions shortly after the picture appeared (126–225ms). A positive deflection was also observed over the right hemisphere (particularly centro-temporal regions) in a later, longer-lasting window (421–720ms). The lateralization of these differences in the VEP suggests the possible involvement of linguistic processes during picture viewing, and may reflect activity involved in the implicit activation of the picture’s name.
Highlights
Viewing a picture sets in train a series of perceptual and cognitive processes that can trigger an automatic cascade of linguistic processing (Cutting and Ferriera, 1999; Morsella and Miozzo, 2002), including information about the phonology of a picture’s label (Schriefers et al, 1990)
We report an event-related potential (ERP) study which targets short-lasting effects which may emerge over the infant visual evoked potential (VEP), comparing responses to lexicalized versus nameless pictures, in a context known to induce implicit naming in infants: we present previously unpublished data collected during the visual presentation period of an infant picture-speech matching study for 14-month-olds (Duta et al, 2012)
2 Artefact rejection routines for the current investigation were run over the timing of the VEP, rather than the auditory evoked potentials (AEPs), as in Duta et al (2012). This resulted in a different sample of trials from a group of participants which was partially overlapping with, but substantially different from, the previously reported study. These findings demonstrate that lexical status modulates infants' processing of pictures presented in a silent, pre-labelling context, with lateralized effects differentiating lexicalized from nameless items
Summary
Viewing a picture sets in train a series of perceptual and cognitive processes that can trigger an automatic cascade of linguistic processing (Cutting and Ferriera, 1999; Morsella and Miozzo, 2002), including information about the phonology of a picture’s label (Schriefers et al, 1990) These phonological representations can arise even in the absence of direct fixation (Morgan and Meyer, 2005) or attention (Meyer and Damian, 2007; Morsella and Miozzo, 2002; Navarette and Costa, 2005), highlighting the automaticity of ‘implicit name’ generation. Viewing a picture of a banana inhibits recognition of the word bird, but not car in 24-month-olds (Mani and Plunkett, 2011) These findings demonstrate that viewing a picture in silence induces linguistic processing of the picture’s label for young children, even when there is no requirement to produce the picture’s name. The process of implicit naming is not yet well understood, and the neural correlates of this process have yet to be documented
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