Process / pipelineNeurocognitive Linguistics
N400/P600 Analysis
N400/P600 Analysis is a neurocognitive method using electroencephalography (EEG) to measure event-related potentials (ERPs) that reflect brain responses to linguistic stimuli. The N400 component (a negative deflection at 400 ms) indexes semantic processing and surprise; the P600 component (a positive deflection at 600 ms) reflects syntactic processing and reanalysis. Discovered by Marta Kutas and Steven Hillyard in 1980, these components reveal the neural basis of language comprehension in real time.
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Sources
- Kutas, M., & Hillyard, S. A. (1980). Reading senseless sentences: Brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity. Science, 207(4427), 203-205. DOI: 10.1126/science.7350657 ↗
- Osterhout, L., & Holcomb, P. J. (1992). Event-related brain potentials elicited by syntactic anomaly. Journal of Memory and Language, 31(6), 785-806. DOI: 10.1016/0749-596X(92)90039-Z ↗
- Luck, S. J. (2014). An Introduction to the Event-Related Potential Technique (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/9029.001.0001 ↗