TY - JOUR
T1 - The processing difference between person names and common nouns in sentence contexts
T2 - an ERP study
AU - Wang, Lin
AU - Verdonschot, Rinus G.
AU - Yang, Yufang
PY - 2016/1/1
Y1 - 2016/1/1
N2 - Person names and common nouns differ in how they are stored in the mental lexicon. Using event-related potentials, this study compared the integration of names and nouns into sentence contexts. Both person names and common nouns were highly related in meaning and either congruent or incongruent within the previous contexts. Name incongruence elicited an N400 effect, suggesting that people were able to rapidly retrieve the semantic meaning of names from long-term memory even when this process was mediated by person identification. Conversely, participants showed a “good enough” processing of the nouns due to their low specificity level and, thus, rich semantic associations, leading to a P600 effect. These distinctive ERP effects provide clear evidence for the distinctive semantic representations of these word categories by showing that the activation of a name’s meaning is mediated by a single connection between identity-specific information and person identity, whereas multiple connections exist between nouns and their meanings.
AB - Person names and common nouns differ in how they are stored in the mental lexicon. Using event-related potentials, this study compared the integration of names and nouns into sentence contexts. Both person names and common nouns were highly related in meaning and either congruent or incongruent within the previous contexts. Name incongruence elicited an N400 effect, suggesting that people were able to rapidly retrieve the semantic meaning of names from long-term memory even when this process was mediated by person identification. Conversely, participants showed a “good enough” processing of the nouns due to their low specificity level and, thus, rich semantic associations, leading to a P600 effect. These distinctive ERP effects provide clear evidence for the distinctive semantic representations of these word categories by showing that the activation of a name’s meaning is mediated by a single connection between identity-specific information and person identity, whereas multiple connections exist between nouns and their meanings.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84954415029&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84954415029&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s00426-014-0645-6
DO - 10.1007/s00426-014-0645-6
M3 - Article
C2 - 25575756
AN - SCOPUS:84954415029
VL - 80
SP - 94
EP - 108
JO - Psychologische Forschung
JF - Psychologische Forschung
SN - 0340-0727
IS - 1
ER -