Rajkumar, Vivek R.
(2024)
Investigating the relationships of the N400 and P600 event-related potentials to meaning integration and retrieval processes.
Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
The N400 component of the event-related potential (ERP) has long been used within the fields of reading and language comprehension to index the difficulty of semantically “integrating” newly encountered words into a reader’s current mental model of a text in a process known as word-to-text integration (WTI). However, recent research has called this understanding of the N400 into question, instead suggesting that the N400 only reflects the cognitive effort associated with retrieving the meaning of words from one’s mental lexicon, and that a different ERP known as the P600 indexes WTI. In this study, we sought to clarify the validity of using the N400 and P600 as indicators of integration and retrieval processes. We hypothesized that the research which challenged the integration account of the N400 was flawed, and that by addressing these perceived flaws in the present study, our experimental results would reaffirm the validity of this interpretation of the N400. Using electroencephalography (EEG)-based techniques, we measured the ERPs of college undergraduates who were randomly assigned to read sets of two-sentence texts split across “event-related congruent,” “event-related incongruent,” and “event-unrelated” experimental conditions. The results contradicted our hypothesis; although we observed an N400 effect between the event-unrelated condition and both event-related conditions (suggesting that the N400 is at the very least indexing retrieval processes), we failed to detect either an N400 or P600 effect between the two event-related conditions, thus providing insufficient evidence to positively identify which (if either) of these ERP components may be indexing integration processes.
Share
| Citation/Export: |
|
| Social Networking: |
|
Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
|
| ETD Committee: |
|
| Date: |
16 December 2024 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
6 December 2024 |
| Approval Date: |
16 December 2024 |
| Submission Date: |
15 December 2024 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
91 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
David C. Frederick Honors College |
| Degree: |
BPhil - Bachelor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Undergraduate Thesis |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
N400, P600, ERP, integration, retrieval |
| Date Deposited: |
16 Dec 2024 14:11 |
| Last Modified: |
16 Dec 2024 14:11 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/47286 |
Metrics
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
![[feed]](/images/feed-icon-32x32.png){kind=icon}