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Event-related brain potentials in lexical processing with Chinese characters show effects of contextual diversity but not word frequency

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Abstract

The diversity of contexts in which a word occurs, operationalized as CD, is strongly correlated with response times in visual word recognition, with higher CD words being recognized faster. CD and token word frequency (WF) are highly correlated but in behavioral studies when other variables that affect word visual recognition are controlled for, the WF effect is eliminated when contextual diversity (CD) is controlled. In contrast, the only event-related potential (ERP) study to examine CD and WF Vergara-Martínez et al., Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 17, 461–474, (2017) found effects of both WF and CD with different distributions in the 225- to 325-ms time window. We conducted an ERP study with Chinese characters to explore the neurocognitive dynamics of WF and CD. We compared three groups of characters: (1) characters high in frequency and low in CD; (2) characters low in frequency and low in CD; and (3) characters high in frequency and high in CD. Behavioral data showed significant effects of CD but not WF. Character CD, but not character frequency, modulated the late positive component (LPC): high-CD characters elicited a larger LPC, widely distributed, with largest amplitude at the posterior sites compared to low-CD characters in the 400-to 600-ms time window, consistent with earlier ERP studies of WF in Chinese, and with the hypothesis that CD affects semantic and context-based processes. No WF effect on any ERP components was observed when CD was controlled. The results are consistent with behavioral results showing CD but not WF effects, and in particular with a “context constructionist” framework.

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Data availability

The data and materials are available at https://www.scidb.cn/anonymous/ajZqcVFy.

Code availability

The analysis code is available at https://www.scidb.cn/anonymous/ajZqcVFy.

Notes

  1. Yan et. al. formalized the context constructivist account as:

    $$\boldsymbol P\mathbf{\left(w\right)}\boldsymbol=\mathbf\Sigma^{\mathbf C}\boldsymbol P\mathbf{\left({w\vert c}\right)}\boldsymbol\ast\boldsymbol P\mathbf{\left(c\right)}$$

    where \(P(w|c)\) is the need probability of a word in specific contexts).

  2. An example of a broad (weakly) constraining context and a narrow (strongly) constraining context from Chen, Yan, Mollica, and Tanenhaus (in preparation). In broad contexts CD but not WF affect fixation durations, whereas in narrow contexts, there are WF but not CD effects. The context constructive model predicts this pattern because in a constrained context, need probability is determined by the frequency of the word in that context. Data and materials for this study are available in the Science Data Bank (ScienceDB) data repository: https://www.scidb.cn/s/BJfmM3.

    Target sentence frame

    Broad context

    Narrow context

    远处的影星引起了大家的注意。

    The star in the distance drew everyone's attention.

    在本次海选现场的入口处, 主持人下车后向粉丝们招手致意。突然, 一阵阵尖叫声从人群的边缘传来。

    At the entrance to the audition, the host got off the bus and waved to fans. Suddenly, screams came from the edge of the crowd.

    据说这部贺岁片的主角都来参加首映礼, 在座的粉丝们十分激动。突然, 一阵阵尖叫声从人群的边缘传来。

    It is said that the main characters of the New Year film came to the premiere, and the fans present were very excited. Suddenly, screams came from the edge of the crowd.

  3. Perea et al.’s (2013) study was conducted with children, in which participants were asked to make a go/no-go lexical decision task on Portuguese words. Plummer et al. (2014) is a study conducted in an adult population, in which participants were asked to complete a "yes/no" lexical decision task on English words.

  4. RT analysis: lmer (RT ~ condition + (1 | item) + (1 + condition | subject), control = lmerControl (optCtrl = list (maxfun = 1000)), data); ACC analysis: glmer (ACC ~ condition + (1 | item) + (1 + condition | subject), family = binomial, control = glmerControl (optCtrl = list (maxfun = 1000)), data).

  5. Midline analysis: lmer (avg ~ condition * location + (1 | item) + (1 + condition | subject), control = lmerControl (optCtrl = list (maxfun = 1000)), data); Lateral analysis: lmer (avg ~ condition * hemisphere * region + (1 | item) + (1 + condition | subject), control = lmerControl (optCtrl = list (maxfun=1000)), data).

  6. We conducted a regression analysis in which the mean amplitude of the ERP in the 400- to 600-ms time window was the dependent variable. Predictors, which were simultaneously entered into the regression, were: log10 transformed CD and character frequency (both from SUBTLEX-CH-CHR database), number of strokes, number of radicals, orthographic neighborhood size, semantic polysemy, regularity, consistency, concreteness, familiarity, imageability, age of acquisition, valence, arousal, and dominance. The regression analysis found a significant facilitative effect of CD in both the midline electrodes (t = 5.19, p < 0.001, β = 1.68) and the lateral electrodes (t = 4.65, p < 0.001, β = 1.30), but not of CF (|t|s < 1.37, ps > 0.17, |β|s < 0.40).

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Funding

This work was supported by the Major Project of the National Social Science Foundation of China [grant number 21&ZD288] to Qingrong Chen.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, Nan**g Normal University, Nan**g, 210097, China

    **g**g Zhang, Yixiao Zhou, Guoxia Zhao & Qingrong Chen

  2. Human Communication, Development, and Information Sciences, Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, SAR, China

    **n Wang

  3. Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Language Ability, School of Linguistic Sciences and Arts, Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou, China

    Qingrong Chen

  4. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA

    Michael K. Tanenhaus

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Correspondence to Qingrong Chen.

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Zhang, J., Zhou, Y., Zhao, G. et al. Event-related brain potentials in lexical processing with Chinese characters show effects of contextual diversity but not word frequency. Psychon Bull Rev (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-024-02533-0

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