title: Task modulation of disyllabic spoken word recognition in Mandarin Chinese: a unimodal ERP study.
abstract: Using unimodal auditory tasks of word-matching and meaning-matching, this study investigated how the phonological and semantic processes in Chinese disyllabic spoken word recognition are modulated by top-down mechanism induced by experimental tasks. Both semantic similarity and word-initial phonological similarity between the primes and targets were manipulated. Results showed that at early stage of recognition (~150-250 ms), an enhanced P2 was elicited by the word-initial phonological mismatch in both tasks. In ~300-500 ms, a fronto-central negative component was elicited by word-initial phonological similarities in the word-matching task, while a parietal negativity was elicited by semantically unrelated primes in the meaning-matching task, indicating that both the semantic and phonological processes can be involved in this time window, depending on the task requirements. In the late stage (~500-700 ms), a centro-parietal Late N400 was elicited in both tasks, but with a larger effect in the meaning-matching task than in the word-matching task. This finding suggests that the semantic representation of the spoken words can be activated automatically in the late stage of recognition, even when semantic processing is not required. However, the magnitude of the semantic activation is modulated by task requirements.
authors.affiliation: Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition and Department of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Xianjun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Center for Mind and Brain, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA.|Department of Neurology, University of California Davis, School of Medicine, Sacramento, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Jin-Chen
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition and Department of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China.|Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Ruohan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.affiliation: Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition and Department of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Chunyan
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Guo
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult