Models of language comprehension: N400, P600 and their significance during childhood and beyond

In the summer semester, I took a course on cognitive and sensorimotor development during early childhood. The topic palette was dense and wide-ranging, and I learned a lot.

My topics of choice were again the cognitive (neuro)science of language and neuroimaging as a (neural) window to the emergence of cognition. I had the chance to take a deep dive into each. I conducted interviews with professors doing exciting research in their field, read the sizeable compulsory book chapters and many additional papers, prepared materials to teach/engage and enhanced my understanding of the whole field.

For one component of the course, I had to write a scientific essay. Even before the seminar, I was intrigued by neural correlates and language comprehension. I used this chance to get myself acquainted with the latest research in adult, child and infant groups.

In the essay, I outlined the historical and current research on N400 and P600, their various interpretations, the models of language comprehension that neuroscientists build upon examining their manifestations, and the accompanying neural correlates more newly added to the models.

It was fun! You can download the whole essay here if you are interested.

Last semester I wrote a scientific essay on "multilingualism and its trauma coping potential". Maybe that's also something of interest.

Besides the cognitive (neuro)science modules, I finished one linguistics and two machine/deep learning modules. I hope to get the chance to put some of that work online too soon.

Thank you for reading!

References 

Atchley, R. A., Rice, M. L., Betz, S. K., Kwasny, K. M., Sereno, J. A., & Jongman, A. (2006). A comparison of semantic and syntactic event related potentials generated by children and adults. Brain and Language, 99(3), 236–246. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2005.08.005 

Bastiaansen, M. (2016). A Predictive Coding Perspective on Beta Oscillations during Sentence-Level Language Comprehension. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10, 6. 

Bastiaansen, M. C. M. (n.d.). Theta Responses Are Involved in Lexical–Semantic Retrieval during Language Processing. 17(3), 12. 

Brouwer, H., & Hoeks, J. C. J. (2013). A time and place for language comprehension: Mapping the N400 and the P600 to a minimal cortical network. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00758 

Calma-Roddin, N., & Drury, J. E. (2020). Music, Language, and The N400: ERP Interference Patterns Across Cognitive Domains. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 11222. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-66732-0 

DeLong, K. A., Quante, L., & Kutas, M. (2014). Predictability, plausibility, and two late ERP positivities during written sentence comprehension. Neuropsychologia, 61, 150–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.06.016 

Delong, K. A., Urbach, T. P., Groppe, D. M., & Kutas, M. (2011). Overlapping dual ERP responses to low cloze probability sentence continuations: Dual ERPs to low probability sentence continuations. Psychophysiology, 48(9), 1203–1207. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.2011.01199.x 

Friederici, A. D., Mecklinger, A., Spencer, K. M., Steinhauer, K., & Donchin, E. (2001). Syntactic parsing preferences and their on-line revisions: A spatio-temporal analysis of event-related brain potentials. Cognitive Brain Research, 19. 

Friedrich, M., & Friederici, A. D. (2004). N400-like Semantic Incongruity Effect in 19-Month-Olds: Processing Known Words in Picture Contexts. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16(8), 1465–1477. https://doi.org/10.1162/0898929042304705 

Friedrich, M., & Friederici, A. D. (2011). Word Learning in 6-Month-Olds: Fast Encoding–Weak Retention. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23(11), 3228–3240. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00002 

Friedrich, M., & Friederici, A. D. (2017). The origins of word learning: Brain responses of 3-month-olds indicate their rapid association of objects and words. Developmental Science, 20(2), e12357. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12357 

Junge, C., Boumeester, M., Mills, D. L., Paul, M., & Cosper, S. H. (2021). Development of the N400 for Word Learning in the First 2 Years of Life: A Systematic Review. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 689534. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.689534 

Kolk, H. H. J., Chwilla, D. J., van Herten, M., & Oor, P. J. W. (2003). Structure and limited capacity in verbal working memory: A study with event-related potentialsq. Brain and Language, 37. 

Kuperberg, G. R. (2007). Neural mechanisms of language comprehension: Challenges to syntax. Brain Research, 1146, 23–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2006.12.063 

Kuperberg, G. R. (2016). Separate streams or probabilistic inference? What the N400 can tell us about the comprehension of events. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 31(5), 602–616. https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2015.1130233 

Kuperberg, G. R., Brothers, T., & Wlotko, E. W. (2020). A Tale of Two Positivities and the N400: Distinct Neural Signatures Are Evoked by Confirmed and Violated Predictions at Different Levels of Representation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 32(1), 12–35. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01465 

Kuperberg, G. R., Sitnikova, T., Caplan, D., & Holcomb, P. J. (2003). Electrophysiological distinctions in processing conceptual relationships within simple sentences. Cognitive Brain Research, 13. 

Marta, K., & Van Petten, C. (1994). Psycholinguistics electrified: Event-related brain potential investigations. Handbook of psycholinguistics, ed. by Morton A. Gernsbacher, 83–143. 

Kutas, M., & Federmeier, K. D. (2011). Thirty Years and Counting: Finding Meaning in the N400 Component of the Event-Related Brain Potential (ERP). Annual Review of Psychology, 62(1), 621–647. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.131123 

Kutas, M., & Iragui, V. (1998). The N400 in a semantic categorization task across 6 decades. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology/Evoked Potentials Section, 108(5), 456–471. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-5597(98)00023-9 

Osterhout, L., & Holcomb, P. J. (1993). Event-related potentials and syntactic anomaly: Evidence of anomaly detection during the perception of continuous speech. Language and Cognitive Processes, 8(4), 413–437. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690969308407584 

Schacht, A., Sommer, W., Shmuilovich, O., Martíenz, P. C., & Martín-Loeches, M. (2014). Differential Task Effects on N400 and P600 Elicited by Semantic and Syntactic Violations. PLoS ONE, 9(3), e91226. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091226 

Schneider, J. M., & Maguire, M. J. (2019). Developmental differences in the neural correlates supporting semantics and syntax during sentence processing. Developmental Science, 22(4), e12782. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12782 

Strotseva-Feinschmidt, A., Schipke, C. S., Gunter, T. C., Brauer, J., & Friederici, A. D. (2019). Young children’s sentence comprehension: Neural correlates of syntax-semantic competition. Brain and Cognition, 134, 110–121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2018.09.003