title: Early print-tuned ERP response with minimal involvement of linguistic processing in Japanese Hiragana strings.
abstract: The act of reading leads to the development of specific neural responses for print, the most frequently reported of which is the left occipitotemporal N170 component of event-related potentials. However, it remains unclear whether this electrophysiological response solely involves print-tuned neural activities. The present study examined an early print-tuned event-related potential response with minimal involvement of linguistic processing in a nonalphabetic language. Japanese Hiragana words, nonwords, and alphanumeric symbol strings were presented rapidly and the task was to detect the change in color of a fixation cross to restrict linguistic processing. As a result, Hiragana words and nonwords elicited a larger posterior N1 than alphanumeric symbol strings bilaterally, irrespective of intercharacter spacing. The fact that this N1 was enhanced specifically for rapidly presented Hiragana strings suggests the existence of print-tuned neural processes that are relatively independent of the influence of linguistic processing.
authors.affiliation: aGraduate School of Education bFaculty of Education, Hokkaido University, Sapporo cResearch Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Yasuko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Okumura
authors.forename: Tetsuko
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kasai
authors.forename: Harumitsu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Murohashi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011932:Reading; D055815:Young Adult