N200, N250r, and N400 event-related brain potentials reveal three loci of repetition priming for familiar names.
The authors assessed immediate repetition effects on event-related potentials (ERPs) while participants performed familiarity decisions for written personal names. For immediately repeated familiar names, the authors observed 3 distinct ERP modulations. At 180-220 ms, a posterior N200 effect occurred for names preceded by same-font primes only. In addition, an increased left temporal negativity (N250r, 220-300 ms) and a reduced central-parietal negativity (N400, 300-400 ms) were seen both for same-font and different-font repetitions. In a 2nd experiment, when names were preceded by either their corresponding face or the face of a different celebrity, only the N400 effect was preserved. These findings suggest that the N200, N250r, and N400 effects reflect facilitated processing at font-specific featural, lexical, and semantic levels of processing, respectively.
Pickering
Esther C
EC
Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland.
Schweinberger
Stefan R
SR
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology*; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology*