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Teija Kujala
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Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2010) 22 (7): 1465–1478.
Published: 01 July 2010
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An ongoing debate is whether and to what extent access to cortical representations is automatic or dependent on attentional processes. To address this, we modulated the level of attention on auditory input and recorded ERPs elicited by syllables completing acoustically matched words and pseudowords. Under nonattend conditions, the word-elicited response (peaking at ∼120 msec) was larger than that to pseudowords, confirming early activation of lexical memory traces. However, when attention was directed toward the auditory input, such word–pseudoword difference disappeared. Whereas responses to words seemed unchanged by attentional variation, early pseudoword responses were modulated significantly by attention. Later on, attention modulated a positive deflection at ∼230 msec and a second negativity at ∼370 msec for all stimuli. The data indicate that the earliest stages of word processing are not affected by attentional demands and may thus possess certain automaticity, with attention effects on lexical processing accumulating after 150–200 msec. We explain this by robustness of preexisting memory networks for words whose strong internal connections guarantee rapid full-scale activation irrespective of the attentional resources available. Conversely, the processing of pseudowords, which do not have such stimulus-specific cortical representations, appears to be strongly modulated by the availability of attentional resources, even at its earliest stages. Topography analysis and source reconstruction indicated that left peri-sylvian cortices mediate attention effects on memory trace activation.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2009) 21 (8): 1511–1522.
Published: 01 August 2009
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We examined the attentional modulation of semantic priming and the N400 effect for spoken words. The aim was to find out how the semantics of spoken language is processed when attention is directed to another modality (passive task), to the phonetics of spoken words (phonological task), or to the semantics of spoken words (word task). Equally strong behavioral priming effects were obtained in the phonological and the word tasks. A significant N400 effect was found in all tasks. The effect was stronger in the word and the phonological tasks than in the passive task, but there was no difference in the magnitude of the effect between the phonological and the word tasks. The latency of the N400 effect did not differ between the tasks. Although the N400 effect had a centroparietal maximum in the phonological and the word tasks, it was largest at the parietal recording sites in the passive task. The effect was more pronounced at the left than right recording sites in the phonological task, but there was no laterality effect in the other tasks. The N400 effect in the passive task indicates that semantic priming occurs even when spoken words are not actively attended. However, stronger N400 effect in the phonological and the word tasks than in the passive task suggests that controlled processes modulate the N400 effect. The finding that there were no differences in the N400 effect between the phonological and the word tasks indicates that the semantics of attended spoken words is processed regardless of whether semantic processing is relevant for task performance.