Abstract

This application uses human event-related potentials and reaction time to address several issues concerning linguistic processing. These include: 1) assessing the rate at which passive decay of automatic spreading activation occurs, using a paradigm devised by Neely to disentangle semantic priming due to expectations on the part of the subject and from that which is due to automatic spreading activation; 2) testing an hypothesis of Degenbach, Carr and Wihelmsen that under certain circumstances a center-surround attentional mechanism dampens activation that spreads from a prime to neighboring words; 3) testing the hypothesis that automatic spreading activation is terminated by the presentation of a word that is unrelated to a previous word; 4) obtaining electrophysiological evidence that would converge with RT data in supporting the hypothesis of Meyer, Schvanevelt and Ruddy that semantic priming may affect stimulus encoding; 5) locating the level of processing at which automatic spreading activation is initiated and the direction in which it spreads; 6) ascertaining whether semantic as well as lexical processing contributes to the elicitation of the N4OO component of human ERPs.

  Funding Agency

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
2R01DC000895-04A1
Application #
2126085
Study Section
Sensory Disorders and Language Study Section (CMS)
Project Start
1991-04-01
Project End
1997-01-31
Budget Start
1994-02-01
Budget End
1995-01-31
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
1994
Total Cost
Indirect Cost

  Institution

Name
City College of New York
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
603503991
City
New York
State
NY
Country
United States
Zip Code
10031

  Publications

Deacon, Diana; Shelley-Tremblay, John F; Ritter, Walter et al. (2013) Electrophysiological evidence for the action of a center-surround mechanism on semantic processing in the left hemisphere. Front Psychol 4:936
Deacon, Diana; Grose-Fifer, Jillian; Hewitt, Sean et al. (2004) Physiological evidence that a masked unrelated intervening item disrupts semantic priming: implications for theories of semantic representation and retrieval models of semantic priming. Brain Lang 89:38-46
Grose-Fifer, Jillian; Deacon, Diana (2004) Priming by natural category membership in the left and right cerebral hemispheres. Neuropsychologia 42:1948-60
Deacon, Diana; Dynowska, Anna; Ritter, Walter et al. (2004) Repetition and semantic priming of nonwords: implications for theories of N400 and word recognition. Psychophysiology 41:60-74
Deacon, Diana; Grose-Fifer, Jillian; Yang, Chien-Ming et al. (2004) Evidence for a new conceptualization of semantic representation in the left and right cerebral hemispheres. Cortex 40:467-78
Deacon, D; Hewitt, S; Yang, C et al. (2000) Event-related potential indices of semantic priming using masked and unmasked words: evidence that the N400 does not reflect a post-lexical process. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res 9:137-46
Deacon, D; Uhm, T J; Ritter, W et al. (1999) The lifetime of automatic semantic priming effects may exceed two seconds. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res 7:465-72
Deacon, D; Nousak, J M; Pilotti, M et al. (1998) Automatic change detection: does the auditory system use representations of individual stimulus features or gestalts? Psychophysiology 35:413-9
Deacon, D; Hewitt, S; Tamney, T (1998) Event-related potential indices of semantic priming following an unrelated intervening item. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res 6:219-25
Nousak, J M; Deacon, D; Ritter, W et al. (1996) Storage of information in transient auditory memory. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res 4:305-17

Showing the most recent 10 out of 13 publications