Electrophysiological manifestations of typicality judgment.
Ten male subjects participated in an event-related potential study of typicality judgment of words that were of either high or low frequency of usage. The amplitude of a negative wave with an average peak latency of 490 msec (N400) correlated with the goodness-of-fit of a word to a particular category independent of frequency, with poor examples of the category evoking a significantly more negative waveform. The relative insensitivity of the N400 to word frequency suggests that the N400 reflects some postlexical evaluation rather than lexical access.
Stuss
D T
DT
School of Medicine (Neurology), University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Picton
T W
TW
Cerri
A M
AM
D000328:Adult; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D009778:Occipital Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D012660:Semantics