The cognitive neuroscience of word comprehension

词语理解的认知神经科学

基本信息

批准号：
7599711
负责人：
PHILLIP J HOLCOMB
金额：
$ 30.8万
依托单位：
TUFTS UNIVERSITY MEDFORD
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
财政年份：
1989
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
1989-07-01 至 2011-03-31
项目状态：
已结题

项目摘要

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The primary goal of the proposed research is the study of language comprehension from a cognitive neuroscience perspective. The experiments outlined in the current proposal are focused on providing answers to questions about the sequence and timing of neural events that underlie the perceptual and cognitive processes involved in visual word comprehension. The proposed approach entails the recording of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) while subjects perform tasks designed to tap specific aspects of visual word processing. The proposed research has three specific aims. The first is to test and elaborate on predictions of the Bi-modal Interactive Activation Model (BIAM) of word comprehension in competent adult users of language. While models like the BIAM have been touted as neurally plausible, relatively little work using cognitive neuroscience methods has actually attempted to test the predictions of such models. The second complementary aim focuses on improving the precision of ERP measures of word processing by providing a better understanding of their relationship with the perceptual, cognitive and linguistic processes they are hypothesized to reflect. The third aim seeks to improve our understanding of word comprehension by examining how comprehension processes develop over time. The 25 experiments that are proposed to achieve these aims are organized into three groups of studies. The first group, which includes 18 masked priming experiments to be conducted in young adults, uses our short interval repetition priming paradigm. In pilot work this paradigm has allowed us to isolate four temporally overlapping ERP effects that we have hypothesized are sensitive to a cascade of word comprehension processes. The experiments outlined in this section of the proposal will test predictions about the processing nature and timing of these ERP effects and use these ERP effects to test predictions generated by the BIAM. The second group includes four single word experiments, also in young adults, where a number of variables will be manipulated that have previously been suggested to influence early visual word comprehension processes. We hypothesize that previous failures to see effects with these variables were due to lack of power. We will increase the power of our designs and determine if effects early in the time-course of word processing can be obtained. The final group of studies will include three word comprehension experiments modeled on those proposed in the young adult subjects but run in five groups of children between 7 and 11 years of age. These experiments will allow us to examine the development of visual word comprehension over time and thus better characterize changes in some of the neural/cognitive processes involved in reading. One long term goal is to extend these studies to children and adults with word processing and other language/cognitive deficits.

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议研究的主要目标是从认知神经科学的角度研究语言理解。当前提案中概述的实验重点是提供有关视觉词理解中涉及的知觉和认知过程的神经事件的序列和时机问题的答案。所提出的方法需要记录与事件相关的大脑电位（ERP），而受试者执行旨在利用视觉文字处理特定方面的任务。拟议的研究具有三个具体目标。首先是测试并详细说明在有能力的成人语言用户中对单词理解的双模式互动激活模型（BIAM）的预测。尽管像Biam这样的模型被吹捧为神经合理的，但使用认知神经科学方法的工作相对较少，实际上已经尝试测试此类模型的预测。第二个互补目的是通过更好地理解其与感知，认知和语言过程的关系来改善ERP文字处理的精确度，假设它们反映了它们。第三个目标旨在通过研究理解过程如何随着时间的流逝而发展，以提高我们对单词理解的理解。提出实现这些目标的25种实验分为三组研究。第一组包括在年轻人中进行的18个掩盖启动实验，它使用了我们短时的间隔重复启动范式。在试点工作中，这种范式使我们能够分离出我们假设的四个时间重叠的ERP效应对一系列单词理解过程敏感。该提案本节中概述的实验将测试有关这些ERP效应的处理性质和时机的预测，并使用这些ERP效应来测试BIAM产生的预测。第二组包括四个单词实验，也包括在年轻人中，这些变量将被操纵，这些变量以前被建议影响早期的视觉词理解过程。我们假设以前的变量未能看到效果，这是由于缺乏权力所致。我们将提高设计的力量，并确定是否可以在文字处理的时间初期效果。最终的研究将包括三个单词理解实验，该实验是对年轻成人受试者提出的型号建模的，但在7至11岁之间的五组儿童中进行。这些实验将使我们能够随着时间的推移研究视觉词理解的发展，从而更好地表征了阅读中一些神经/认知过程的变化。一个长期目标是将这些研究扩展到具有文字处理和其他语言/认知缺陷的儿童和成人。