Event-related brain potentials elicited by linguistic anomalies in the Persian language

Background and Aim: Over the past century, there has been a dramatic increase in psycholinguistic studies, which explores the relationship between the human mind and language. However, far too little attention has been paid to different languages such as Persian, which has some special features that make it flexible in syntax and semantics. This essay critically examines how the brain works to process and comprehend Persian sentences in different syntactic conditions. Methods: Subjects: ۱۰ right-handed and monolingual (Persian) individuals between ۱۸-۴۰ years old attended in this study. Stimuli: ۱۰۰ Persian simple sentences (subject, verb, object) and ۱۰۰ filler sentences were used in this study. The sentences were in four experimental conditions: ۱. syntactically correct sentences ۲. semantically anomalous sentences ۳. syntactically incorrect sentences and ۴. both syntactically and semantically incorrect sentences. Procedure: All sentences were displayed word-by-word with ۳۵۰ms and ۳۰۰ ms interval blank screen under a standard condition. Continuous EEG were recorded from ۶۴ electrodes (۱۰-۲۰ system). Results: In this study, we used an event-related potential to record and analyse brain activities when processing sentences, which resulted in ERP components (N۴۰۰ and P۶۰۰). The central question in this study was how the sentence structures affected ERP components functionally. Conclusion: When comprehending the sentence, the violation of syntactic rules (subjects and verbs did not AGREE with one another in number) causes an eventual negative state in the output-dependent potential of the event in most electrodes to be observed in the interval of ۵۰ to ۱۵۰ milliseconds after the stimulus was presented. And there was no significant difference in the control group between ۵۰۰ and ۸۰۰ milliseconds (P۶۰۰), which indicates that the positive affinity of the ERPs is significant compared to the control sentences. Graph of Grand means displayed ERP waveforms for syntactically correct sentences in comparison with incorrect sentences in P۶۰۰ time window (۵۵۰-۸۰۰ms). Channel locations affect significantly on the mean amplitude of P۶۰۰ in four types of sentences in the Persian. Conclusion: The results demonstrated that all experimental conditions in the Persian language immediately altered ERPs component in each anomalies, within early negative state after the syntactic anomaly. Taken together, these results suggest that there is an association between the mean amplitude of P۶۰۰ during linguistic processing and more dependent on task designing; also, syntactic processing occurs prior to semantic processing and is independent in the Persian language comprehension.

کلیدواژه ها:

linguistics ، event related potentials ، cognitive ، semantic ، syntax