Response retrieval and motor planning during typing

Abstract

Recent work in language production research suggests complex relationships between linguistic and motor processes. Typing is an interesting candidate for investigating further this issue. First, typing presumably relies on the same distributed left-lateralized brain network as handwriting and speech production. Second, typing has its own set of highly specific motor constraints, such as internal keystroke representations that hold information about both letter identity and spatial characteristics of the key to strike. The present study aims to further develop research on typed production, by targeting the dynamics between linguistic and motor neural networks. Specifically, we used a typed picture-naming task to examine the interplay between response retrieval and motor planning. To track processes associated with both linguistic processing and keystroke representation, we manipulated, respectively, the semantic context in which the target appeared and the side of the first keystrokes of the word. We recorded high-density electroencephalography (EEG) continuously from the presentation of a picture, to the typing of its name, and computed both event-related potentials (ERP) and beta-band power analyses. Non-parametric data-driven analysis revealed a clear pattern of response preparation over both hemispheres close to response time, in both the ERP and beta-band power modulations. This was preceded by a left-lateralized power decrease in the beta-band, presumably representing memory retrieval, and an early contrast in ERP, between left and right keystrokes’ preparation. We discuss these results in terms of a dynamic access approach for internal keystroke representations, and argue for an integrative rather than separatist view of linguistic and motor processes.