EVENT-RELATED POTENTIALS IN THE ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE

In this overview recent developments of the analysis of language perception by means of event-related potentials (ERP) are highlighted. Some of the more popular designs, including the sentence reading and lexical decision paradigms are described and their respective benefits and shortcomings are pointed out. The questions that can be addressed with ERPs are exemplified in two cases: 1) The current trend towards the analysis of syntactic processes has yielded several ERP components that appear to be sensitive to the syntactic representation of a sentence. This research has revealed - aside from late positive effects - a frontal negativity in response to syntactic errors. This finding has been interpreted as being supportive of modular models of language processing. 2) The degree to which certain subroutines of language processing are shared with other cognitive domains (e.g. memory) can be addressed by comparing ERP findings from repetition and recognition paradigms using word and pictorial material with other language experiments. Some of the current lines of interpretation are reiterated with special emphasis on the N400 being a marker of a context-integration process. New possibilities of the analysis of ERPs such as fine grain topographical analysis and dipole localization methods are illustrated. Applications of language related ERPs in patients are outlined. Data from brain-injured patients show a delayed and reduced N400 component in a sentence reading task and an absent N400 component in a lexical decision task.