During reading, monolingual readers actively predict upcoming words from sentence context. Here we investigated whether bilingual readers predict sentence final words when they read in their second language. We recorded event-related potentials while English monolinguals (L1 comprehenders) and late Spanish–English bilinguals (L2 comprehenders) read sentences ending in an expected or unexpected ...

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 18 normal adults as they read sentences that ended with words used literally, metaphorically, or in an intermediate literal mapping condition. In the latter condition, the literal sense of the word was used in a way that prompted readers to map conceptual structure from a different domain. ERPs measured from 300 to 500 msec after the onse...

In an ERP study we investigate the time course of the interaction between the lexically specified telic role of a noun and the contextually provided ad-hoc affordance induced by a linguistic discourse. If preceded by a neutral discourse context, a verb inconsistent with the telic role in a sentence elicits an enhanced N400 compared to a congruent verb. However, if the preceding discourse contex...

Age-related changes in the processing of sentence-embedded semantic anomalies were examined using auditory event-related potentials (ERPs). Semantically incongruous words elicited an N400 effect in middle-aged (50s: 55.6 years) and elderly (60s: 64.1 years) subjects, whereas in older elderly adults (70s: 74.9 years) this effect approached significance. N400 peak latencies were not delayed with ...

The present ERP study investigated when and how action semantics, i.e. the conceptual knowledge that we acquired over the course of our lives, is activated during the preparation of object-directed actions. Subjects were required to grasp one of two objects and were implicitly instructed to either perform a meaningful action (e.g. moving a cup towards the mouth) or a meaningless action with the...

To examine the development of recognition memory in primary-school children, 36 healthy younger children (8-9 years old) and 36 healthy older children (11-12 years old) participated in an ERP study with an extended continuous face recognition task (Study 1). Each face of a series of 30 faces was shown randomly six times interspersed with distracter faces. The children were required to make old ...

Motivated by the demonstration of similarly localized adaptation of the hemodynamic response in a first (L1) and second (L2) language, this study examined event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to spoken words in L1 and L2 in 15 English-French bilinguals. We examined whether the temporal pattern of N400 adaptation due to within-language repetitions (i.e., repetition priming) was similar in L1 an...

Studies in rodents and nonhuman primates have linked the activity of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors within the hippocampus to animals' performance on memory-related tasks. However, whether these receptors are similarly essential for human memory is still an open question. Here we present evidence suggesting that hippocampal NMDA receptors, most likely within the CA1 region, do participat...

The authors recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to picture primes and word targets (picture-name verification task) in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and in elderly and young participants. N400 was more negative to words that did not match pictures than to words that did match pictures in all groups: In the young, this effect was significant at all scalp sites; in the elderly...