Previous studies have found a late frontal-central audiovisual interaction during the time period about 150-220 ms post-stimulus. However, it is unclear to which process is this audiovisual interaction related: to processing of acoustical features or to classification of stimuli? To investigate this question, event-related potentials were recorded…

Apraxic patients are known for deficits in producing and comprehending skilled movements. Two experiments tested their implicit and explicit knowledge about manipulable objects in order to examine whether such deficits accompany impairment in the conceptual representation of manipulation features. An eyetracking method was used to test implicit…

Goals: Research with lateralized word presentation has suggested that strong ("close") and weak ("remote") semantic associates are processed differently in the left and right cerebral hemispheres [e.g., Beeman, M. j., & Chiarello, C. (1998). Complementary right- and left-hemisphere language comprehension. "Current Directions in Psychological…

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read and made acceptability judgments about sentences containing three types of adjective sequences: (1) normal sequences--e.g., "Jennifer rode a huge gray elephant"; (2) reversed sequences that violate grammatical-semantic constraints on linear order--e.g., *"Jennifer rode a…

Recent research in lexical semantics has suggested that verbs such as begin and enjoy semantically select for a complement that denotes an activity or an event. When no such activity or event is specified in the form of a progressive or infinitival complement, as in John began (to read/reading) the book, the verb is said to ''coerce'' the NP…

We examined the influence of semantic transparency on morphological facilitation in English in three lexical decision experiments. Decision latencies to visual targets (e.g., CASUALNESS) were faster after semantically transparent (e.g., CASUALLY) than semantically opaque (e.g., CASUALTY) primes whether primes were auditory and presented…

Models of speech production disagree on whether or not homonyms have a shared word-form representation. To investigate this issue, a picture-naming experiment was carried out using Dutch homonyms of which both meanings could be presented as a picture. Naming latencies for the low-frequency meanings of homonyms were slower than for those of the…

We examined the contribution of semantic similarity to morphological priming effects, using the immediate (Exp. 1 and 3) and the delayed variant (Exp. 2) of picture-word interference. Distractor words were either compounds morphologically related to the picture name, but differing with respect to their semantic transparency (hummingbird, jailbird…