Are the anterior negativities to grammatical violations indexing working memory?

1. Are the anterior negativities to grammatical violations indexing working memory? Manuel Martin-Loeches, Francisco munoz, Pilar Casado, A. Melcon, C. Fernandez-frias, Psychophysiology 42, 2005, 508-519. Presented by Dora Lu, 09/13/2006

3. ERP Component: N400 Kutas & Hillyard. (1980).

4. Osterhout & Nicol (1999) ERP Component: P600

5. Anterior Negativities Neville et al (1991): Semantic anomaly: The scientist criticized Max’s event of the theorem. Phrase structure violation: The scientist criticized Max’s of proof the theorem. Specificity constraint violation: What did the scientist criticize Max’s proof of? Subjacency Constraint violation: What was a proof of criticized by the scientist?

6. Neville et al (1991) N125 N400 N125 P500

7. Neville et al (1991): difference wave

8. (early) (left) Anterior Negativities • A negative component that peaks between 150-600ms after stimulus onset, usually with anterior distribution, sometimes lateralized (e.g. Neville et al 1991)

9. When will (early) (left) Anterior Negativities appear? • Grammatical violations • Word category violations (disrupt the building of the phrase structure) – early left anterior negativity (e.g. Friederici et al 1996) Syntactic-category violation: The metal was refined by the goldsmith who was honored. The metal was for refined by the goldsmith who was honored. Syntactic-category ambiguity: The metal was for refining melted by the goldsmith who was honored. The metal was/became refining melted by the goldsmith who was honored. • Morphosyntactic violations (gender/number agreement, verb inflection violations) – anterior negativity (e.g. Vos et al. 2001) The tourist have a busy schedule and visit the theater that very famous is. The tourist have a busy schedule and visits the theater that very famous is. The tourist that a busy schedule have, visit the theater that very famous is. The tourist that a busy schedule have, visits the theater that very famous is. • Working memory demand (Kluender & Kutas 1993)

10. What these anterior negativities represent for? • Reflect automatic first-pass parsing process, such as detecting morphosyntactic mismatch, inability to build the phrase structure (e.g. Hagoort 2003) • Reflecting working memory operation or working memory load. • AN have been found in grammatically well-formed sentences that demand large amount of working memory resources. (e.g. Kluender & Kutas 1993) • The amplitude of LAN to morphosyntactic violations was affected by the working memory span of the subjects. (e.g. Vos et al 2001)

11. Unsettled issues about AN: • When will you see AN? • Grammatical violations: morphosyntactic and word category violations • Do these two grammatical violations reflect the same process? (Friederici 2002: word category >> morphosyntactic process, but Hagoort 2003: artifacts of the moment when the violation appears) • Different distribution of AN: because of different grammatical violations are used • Whether it is related to working memory operations? • Controversial – some studies failed to elicit it, effects are small, distribution is not consistent

12. Current Study • Directly compare responses caused by working memory with those caused by grammatical manipulations. • Two grammatical violations: word category & morphosyntactic violations • Working memory load: relative clauses vs short, SR vs OR (structural difficulties)

13. Experimental stimuli • Short sentence: (The composer edited the opera.) • Correct: El compositor edito la opera. • Category violation: El compositor edicion la opera. • Morphosyntactic violation: El compositor edite la opera. • Center embedded subject relative clause: (The composer [that hated the singer] edited the opera.) • El compositor [que odio al cantante] edito la opera. • El compositor [que odio al cantante] edicion la opera. • El compositor [que odio al cantante] edite la opera. • Center embedded object relative clause: (The composer [that the singer hated] edited the opera.) • El compositor [que el cantante odio] edito la opera. • El compositor [que el cantante odio] edicion la opera. • El compositor [que el cantante odio] edite la opera.

14. Methods • Participants: 32 Spanish speakers • Stimuli: 180 sets (60 simple sentences, 60 SR, 60 OR) + 120 fillers (40 ungrammatical sentences with different violations) • Word-by word center presentation, 300ms duration, 500ms SOA, 1500ms between each sentence • Participants perform grammaticality judgment • Recordings: 29 electrodes

15. Behavioral results • Grammaticality judgment: • People did pretty good for the grammaticality judgments. 93.2% for grammatical and 97.3% for ungrammatical sentences. • People did worse for correct sentences with an object-relative clause (86.4%). • Reaction time: • People spent 100ms more to respond to correct OR clauses. (683ms for short, 792ms for OR, 618 for SR)

16. ERP results: Relative Clause region S: The composer edited the opera. SR: The composer [that hated the singer] edited the opera. OR: The composer [that the singer hated] edited the opera. 1000ms, 3rd word Onset of 1st word AN: both SR & OR

17. ERP results: Relative Clause region S: The composer edited the opera. SR: The composer [that hated the singer] edited the opera. OR: The composer [that the singer hated] edited the opera. Frontal distribution, slightly lateralized

18. ERP results: Relative Clause region SR: The composer [that hated the singer] edited the opera. OR: The composer [that the singer hated] edited the opera. 4th word, 1500ms after sentence onset, OR has increasing AN, and more centrally distributed

19. ERP results: Main verb region (short) S: El compositor edito la opera. WV: El compositor edicion la opera. MV: El compositor edite la opera. More bilateral AN P600

20. ERP results: Main verb region (SR) C: El compositor [que odio al cantante] edito la opera. WV: El compositor [que odio al cantante] edicion la opera. MV: El compositor [que odio al cantante] edite la opera. P600 larger for MV Only WC has posterior negativity!

21. ERP results: Main verb region (OR) C: El compositor [que el cantante odio] edito la opera. WV: El compositor [que el cantante odio] edicion la opera. MV: El compositor [que el cantante odio] edite la opera. No AN P600

22. ERP results:Main verb of relative clause S: The composer edited the opera. SR: The composer [that hated the singer] edited the opera. OR: The composer [that the singer hated] edited the opera. SR vs short: Long duration effect, wide frontal or frontal-central start about 200ms SR vs OR: long duration effect has parietal distribution

23. Comparing working memory related and syntactical related negativities • 4 frontal negativities related to working memory • 2 frontal negativities related to grammatical violations • Frontal negativities related to grammatical violations has narrower distribution (Fig. 2)

24. Discussion • Frontal negativities related to grammatical violation and working memory are qualitatively different in terms of topography and duration. • Left lateralization is more reliable for grammatical related negativities • Negativities related to working memory has wider distribution, involving most of the anterior part • Duration could be one criterion to dissociate the two types of negativities. Working memory related negativities display longer duration. • The syntactic operations involved in grammatical violation and working memory may not be independent. • When working memory resources are demanded, the AN that reflects grammatical violations is reduced. two types negativities are different but might from the same resource.

25. Discussion • Two types of grammatical violations do not differ significantly. No latency difference. • Found parietal negativities in SR word category violation.  probably because local structural differences. There is an ambiguity about whether the wrong noun should be an adjective or a verb. C: El compositor [que odio al cantante] edito la opera. WV: El compositor [que odio al cantante] edicion la opera Coulson et al (1998) Pronoun Case: The plane took *we to paradise and back. The plane took us to paradise and back. Verb agreement: Every Monday he *mow the lawn. Every Monday he mows the lawn.

26. Discussion • Why bilateral parietal long duration negativities rather than AN in SR and OR’s main verb region?  could be grammatical and themantic role assignment in OR • The P600 is larger in morphosyntactic violation than word category violation. Morphosyntactic violations induce reanalysis and repair operation.

27. So, are you convinced? • Negativities reflect at least two different cognitive processes. • Although processes are different, they might use the same resources. • But…will different types of grammatical violations yield the same results? Different degrees of grammatical violations. For example, verb/noun violation vs noun/preposition violations. • Can we generalize that AN functions as a grammatical mismatch detector? Or just a detector for processing difficulties? Or could it reflect attention shift?