title: Concreteness effects in the processing of Chinese words.
abstract: The present study examined the relationship between word concreteness and word frequency using event-related potential (ERP) measurements during a lexical decision task. Potential effects of concreteness in the processing of verbs were also examined. ERPs were recorded from 119 scalp electrodes in 23 right-handed participants. The results showed that concrete nouns were associated with a more negative ERP than abstract nouns at 200-300 and 300-500 ms after stimulus onset, regardless of word frequency. Between 300 and 500 ms, concrete nouns and abstract nouns produced differentiated scalp distributions, respectively. In terms of verbs, concreteness only produced small difference in ERP primarily in the central-parietal sites of the left hemisphere.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing, PR China. zhqian@mail.cnu.edu.cn
authors.forename: Qin
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Chun-yan
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Jin-hong
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.forename: Zheng-yan
authors.initials: ZY
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology*