Biology subjects

Bayer, M.

Publications and source records attributed to Bayer, M..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2017

Differential effects of learned associations with words and pseudowords on event-related brain potentials

Associated stimulus valence affects neural responses at an early processing stage. However, in the field of written language processing, it is unclear whether semantics of a word or low-level visual features affect early neural processing advantages. The current study aimed to investigate the role of semantic content on reward and loss associations. Participants completed a learning session to associate either words (Experiment 1, N=24) or pseudowords (Experiment 2, N=24) with different monetary outcomes (gain-associated, neutral or loss-associated). Gain-associated stimuli were learned fastest. Behavioural and neural response changes based on the associated outcome were further investigated in separate test sessions. Responses were faster towards gain- and loss-associated than neutral stimuli if they were words, but not pseudowords. Early P1 effects of associated outcome occurred for both pseudowords and words. Specifically, loss-association resulted in increased P1 amplitudes to pseudowords, compared to decreased amplitudes to words. Although visual features are likely to explain P1 effects for pseudowords, the inversed effect for words suggests that semantic content affects associative learning, potentially leading to stronger associations.\n\nHighlights- Neural mechanisms of gain/loss association to pseudowords and words were investigated\n- Loss effects can be observed for the P1 component\n- Words and pseudowords differ in the direction of loss effects\n- Semantic content may play a role during word association\n- Low-level visual features may play a role during pseudoword association

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2017

Associated valence impacts early visual processing of linguistic stimuli: Evidence from ERPs in a cross-modal learning paradigm

Emotion effects in event-related potentials (ERPs) during reading have been observed at very short latencies of around 100 to 200 ms after word onset. The nature of these effects remains a matter of debate: First, it is possible that they reflect semantic access, which might thus occur much faster than proposed by most reading models. Second, it is possible that associative learning of a words shape might contribute to the emergence of emotion effects during visual processing. The present study addressed this question by employing an associative learning paradigm on pronounceable letter strings (pseudowords). In a learning session, letter strings were associated with positive, neutral or negative valence by means of monetary gain, loss or zero-outcome. Crucially, half of the stimuli were learned in the visual modality, while the other half was presented acoustically, allowing for experimental separation of associated valence and physical percept. In a test session one or two days later, acquired letter string were presented in an old/new decision task while we recorded event-related potentials. Behavioural data showed an advantage for gain-associated stimuli both during learning and in the delayed old/new task. Early emotion effects in ERPs were limited to visually acquired letter strings, but absent for acoustically acquired letter strings. These results imply that associative learning of a words visual features might play an important role in the emergence of emotion effects at the stage of perceptual processing.

neuroscience↗