scholarly journals Limits on prediction in language comprehension: A multi-lab failure to replicate evidence for probabilistic pre-activation of phonology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mante Nieuwland ◽  
Stephen Politzer-Ahles ◽  
Evelien Heyselaar ◽  
Katrien Segaert ◽  
Emily Darley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Replication Study ◽  
Single Trial ◽  
Pattern Of Failure ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Bayesian Analyses ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
Trial Analysis ◽  
Phonological Form ◽  
Nature Neuroscience

In current theories of language comprehension, people routinely and implicitly predict upcoming words by pre-activating their meaning, morpho-syntactic features and even their specific phonological form. To date the strongest evidence for this latter form of linguistic prediction comes from a 2005 Nature Neuroscience landmark publication by DeLong, Urbach and Kutas, who observed a graded modulation of article- and noun-elicited electrical brain potentials (N400) by the pre-determined probability that people continue a sentence fragment with that word ('cloze'). In a direct replication study spanning 9 laboratories (N=334), we failed to replicate the crucial article-elicited N400 modulation by cloze, while we successfully replicated the commonly-reported noun-elicited N400 modulation. This pattern of failure and success was observed in a pre-registered replication analysis, a pre-registered single-trial analysis, and in exploratory Bayesian analyses. Our findings do not support a strong prediction view in which people routinely pre-activate the phonological form of upcoming words, and suggest a more limited role for prediction during language comprehension.

scholarly journals Large-scale replication study reveals a limit on probabilistic prediction in language comprehension

eLife ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mante S Nieuwland ◽  
Stephen Politzer-Ahles ◽  
Evelien Heyselaar ◽  
Katrien Segaert ◽  
Emily Darley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Bayes Factor ◽  
Replication Study ◽  
Factor Analyses ◽  
Single Trial ◽  
Probabilistic Prediction ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Phonological Form ◽  
Nature Neuroscience

Do people routinely pre-activate the meaning and even the phonological form of upcoming words? The most acclaimed evidence for phonological prediction comes from a 2005 Nature Neuroscience publication by DeLong, Urbach and Kutas, who observed a graded modulation of electrical brain potentials (N400) to nouns and preceding articles by the probability that people use a word to continue the sentence fragment (‘cloze’). In our direct replication study spanning 9 laboratories (N=334), pre-registered replication-analyses and exploratory Bayes factor analyses successfully replicated the noun-results but, crucially, not the article-results. Pre-registered single-trial analyses also yielded a statistically significant effect for the nouns but not the articles. Exploratory Bayesian single-trial analyses showed that the article-effect may be non-zero but is likely far smaller than originally reported and too small to observe without very large sample sizes. Our results do not support the view that readers routinely pre-activate the phonological form of predictable words.

scholarly journals Somatosensory spatial attention modulates amplitudes, latencies, and latency jitter of laser-evoked brain potentials

2015 ◽  
Vol 113 (7) ◽  
pp. 2760-2768 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Franz ◽  
Moritz M. Nickel ◽  
Alexander Ritter ◽  
Wolfgang H. R. Miltner ◽  
Thomas Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Attention ◽  
Brain Dynamics ◽  
Single Trial ◽  
Attentional Modulation ◽  
Laser Evoked Potentials ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Trial Analysis ◽  
Latency Jitter ◽  
Electrical Stimuli

Several studies provided evidence that the amplitudes of laser-evoked potentials (LEPs) are modulated by attention. However, previous reports were based on across-trial averaging of LEP responses at the expense of losing information about intertrial variability related to attentional modulation. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of somatosensory spatial attention on single-trial parameters (i.e., amplitudes, latencies, and latency jitter) of LEP components (N2 and P2). Twelve subjects participated in a sustained spatial attention paradigm while noxious laser stimuli (left hand) and noxious electrical stimuli (right hand) were sequentially delivered to the dorsum of the respective hand with nonnoxious air puffs randomly interspersed within the sequence of noxious stimuli. Participants were instructed to mentally count all stimuli (i.e., noxious and nonnoxious) applied to the attended location. Laser stimuli, presented to the attended hand (ALS), elicited larger single-trial amplitudes of the N2 component compared with unattended laser stimuli (ULS). In contrast, single-trial amplitudes of the P2 component were not significantly affected by spatial attention. Single-trial latencies of the N2 and P2 were significantly smaller for ALS vs. ULS. Additionally, the across-trial latency jitter of the N2 component was reduced for ALS. Conversely, the latency jitter of the P2 component was smaller for ULS compared with ALS. With the use of single-trial analysis, the study provided new insights into brain dynamics of LEPs related to spatial attention. Our results indicate that single-trial parameters of LEP components are differentially modulated by spatial attention.

scholarly journals The BOLD correlates of the visual P1 and N1 in single-trial analysis of simultaneous EEG-fMRI recordings during a spatial detection task

NeuroImage ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 824-835 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Novitskiy ◽  
J.R. Ramautar ◽  
K. Vanderperren ◽  
M. De Vos ◽  
M. Mennes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Detection Task ◽  
Single Trial ◽  
Single Trial Analysis ◽  
Trial Analysis ◽  
Spatial Detection

Single-trial analysis of oddball event-related potentials in simultaneous EEG-fMRI

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 602-613 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian-G. Bénar ◽  
Daniele Schön ◽  
Stephan Grimault ◽  
Bruno Nazarian ◽  
Boris Burle ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Single Trial ◽  
Single Trial Analysis ◽  
Trial Analysis ◽  
Related Potentials

A System for Single-trial Analysis of Simultaneously Acquired EEG and fMRI

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Sajda ◽  
Robin I. Goldman ◽  
Marios G. Philiastides ◽  
Adam D. Gerson ◽  
Truman R. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Single Trial ◽  
Single Trial Analysis ◽  
Trial Analysis
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