‘Soundless answer. Firm safety.’ ERPs showing perceptual simulation since actual 160 ms (Bernabeu, Willems, &amp; Louwerse, in prep.)
Creators: name: Bernabeu, Pablo
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2016
Subjects: subject: Neuroscience and Physiological Psychology
subject: 179999 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology

description: Images: experiment overview; stimuli; EEG montage, beside standard; waveforms; difference topographies, statistical analysis; fixed effects of final models; raw data. For a detailed view of the waveforms per group and electrode, see https://pablobernabeu.shinyapps.io/export_files/.The entire data set is available at osf.io/97unm.<b>Abstract. </b>The engagement of sensory systems during word comprehension has been extensively documented, but the precise relevance of it is yet unclear. We probed into this with an event-related potential (ERP) experiment which implemented the conceptual modality switch. This paradigm works as follows. In each trial, participants judge whether a property word can describe a concept word. However, the critical manipulation is the conceptual modality of successive trials—e.g., haptic then visual—, as enabled by modality-normed stimuli. Switching across trials in different modalities, compared to maintaining a modality, incurs a switching cost. Previous experiments measured this from ERPs time-locked to the second word of target trials, and then from response times. In the current follow-up, we tackled more precisely the time frame of lexical and semantic access by time-locking ERPs to the first word of target trials, which also helped to avoid confound influence on the target word. Next, the experiment featured different types of switch—from auditory to visual, and from haptic to visual—, which were compared to the non-switch—visual to visual. Further, we had a quick response group (<i>n</i> = 21), and a self-paced group (<i>n</i> = 21), alongside a few participants with no speed instructions (<i>n</i> = 5). The results, analyzed with mixed effects models, reveal ERP effects of modality-switching in four typical time windows set between 160 and 750 ms after word onset. The overall effect, which increases over time, is broadly characterized by a negativity for modality-switching compared to not switching. It arises with both types of switch, and influences both participant groups within anterior as well as posterior brain regions. To the extent that this effect spans the time course of lexico-semantic retrieval, it suggests that perceptual simulation contributes fundamentally to the comprehension of words.ReferencesHald, L. A., Marshall, J.-A., Janssen, D. P., &amp; Garnham, A. (2011). Switching modalities in a sentence verification task: ERP evidence for embodied language processing. <i>Frontiers in Psychology, 2.</i> Hauk, O., Coutout, C., Holden, A., &amp; Chen, Y. (2012). The time-course of single-word reading: Evidence from fast behavioral and brain responses. <i>Neuroimage</i>, <i>60</i>, 2, 1462-1477.Mahon, B. Z. (2015). What is embodied about cognition? <i>Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30</i>, 4, 420-429.