JSLHR
HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS
QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced]


     

Journal of Speech and Hearing Research Vol.39 1071-1080 October 1996.
© American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow My Folders
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow reprints & permissions
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Rubin, S. S.
Right arrow Articles by Shapiro, L. P.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Rubin, S. S.
Right arrow Articles by Shapiro, L. P.

Electrophysiological Indices of Lexical Processing

The Effects of Verb Complexity and Age

Scott S. Rubin 1
Marilyn Newhoff 1
Richard K. Peach 2

Lewis P. Shapiro 3
1 Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Neurophysiologic Research Laboratory The University of Georgia Athens
2 Department of Communication Disorders and Sciences Rush University Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center Chicago, IL
3 Department of Communicative Disorders San Diego State University San Diego, CA

rubin{at}moe.coe.uga.edu

To further investigate the effects that argument structure can have on language processing, reaction-time (RT) and event-related potential (ERP) data were collected for 14 younger subjects (M = 23 years) and 13 older subjects (M = 66 years). A cross-modal lexical decision (CMLD) task, involving online processing of high- and low-complexity verbs embedded in sentences, was used. Results of a baseline nonlinguistic visual ERP task indicated that the older group of subjects demonstrated significantly longer P300 latencies and significantly lower P300 amplitudes than the younger subjects. In the sentence task, younger subjects exhibited significantly higher P300 amplitudes when processing high- versus low-complexity verbs, with a similar pattern noted for the older subjects. P300 latencies were significantly shorter for the older group than the younger group. Neither P300 latencies nor RTs were significantly related to verb complexity, although medium to large effect sizes were present. Overall, these findings support earlier notions of argument structure effects.

KEY WORDS: event-related potentials, verb complexity, age, lexical processing, P300

Submitted on March 17, 1995
Accepted on April 24, 1996






HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS
All ASHA Journals AJA AJSLP JSLHR LSHSS
Copyright © 1996 by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.