Linguistics Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Linguistics, including details on human language, phonetics, syntax, phonology.

Concreteness effects in the processing of Chinese words.

Zhang Q, Guo CY, Ding JH, Wang ZY

Department of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing, PR China. zhqian@mail.cnu.edu.cn

The present study examined the relationship between word concreteness and word frequency using event-related potential (ERP) measurements during a lexical decision task. Potential effects of concreteness in the processing of verbs were also examined. ERPs were recorded from 119 scalp electrodes in 23 right-handed participants. The results showed that concrete nouns were associated with a more negative ERP than abstract nouns at 200-300 and 300-500 ms after stimulus onset, regardless of word frequency. Between 300 and 500 ms, concrete nouns and abstract nouns produced differentiated scalp distributions, respectively. In terms of verbs, concreteness only produced small difference in ERP primarily in the central-parietal sites of the left hemisphere.

Published 22 November 2005 in Brain Lang, 96(1): 59-68.
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