Human brain potentials to reading syntactic errors in sentences of different complexity

• Published in: Neuroscience letters Vol. 235; no. 3; pp. 105 - 108
• Main Authors: Münte, Thomas F., Szentkuti, Andras, Wieringa, Bernardina M., Matzke, Mike, Johannes, Sönke
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Shannon Elsevier Ireland Ltd 17.10.1997; Elsevier
• Subjects: Adult; Behavioral psychophysiology; Biological and medical sciences; Brain - physiology; Electrophysiology; Event-related potentials; Evoked Potentials, Visual - physiology; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; N400; P600; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reading; Reference Values; Syntactic violation; Syntactic violation; Event-related potentials; N400; P600; Human; Task complexity; Language; Information processing; Electrophysiology; Cognition; German; Syntax; Event evoked potential; Brain (vertebrata)
• ISSN: 0304-3940; 1872-7972
• DOI: 10.1016/S0304-3940(97)00719-2

In order to determine if an event-related brain potential (ERP) effect described for syntactic violations (P600/SPS) varies with the amount of reprocessing entailed by a violation, number incongruencies were presented either within simple declarative or within subordinate clauses. ERPs were recorded while 12 German subjects read the stimulus materials presented word by word on a video monitor. The ERPs showed a P600/SPS effect for all sentence types, which was smallest in amplitude and earliest in latency for simple declarative sentences. This effect therefore qualifies as a metric for the amount and timing of syntactic reprocessing entailed by a syntactic error. In addition, a late frontal negativity (1000–1400 ms range) was found for the simple declarative sentences.