A Study of Event-Related Brain Potentials in Children's Korean Sentence Comprehension |
Inhwa Choi1, Soon Hyung Yi2 |
1Graduate School of Social Welfare, Myongji University 2Department of Child Development and Family Studies, Seoul National University |
Corresponding Author:
Soon Hyung Yi ,Tel: +82-2-880-6826, Fax: +82-2-873-8517, Email: ysh@snu.ac.kr |
Received: April 30, 2010; Revised: May 7, 2010 Accepted: December 4, 2010. |
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ABSTRACT |
The present study investigated the semantic and syntactic processes in Korean children's sentence comprehension by measuring event-related brain potentials(ERPs). The subjects were 18 right-handed, healthy native Korean children(1st graders), who were free from any hearing problems. While the children listened to the auditory sentence stimuli, ERPs were recorded with the electrodes mounted in a 'Quik-Cap' on the subject's head. The ERP data were recorded and analyzed using the NeuroScan 4.3 and EEGLABv6.03b programs. For statistical analyses, descriptive statistics, three-way repeated measures ANOVA, and t-tests were performed using a SPSS 15.0 PC program. The results indicated that semantic violations elicited a negativity (N400) ranging from 300 to 500 msec. For syntactic violations, children displayed a positivity (P600) ranging from 900 to 1,100 msec. The discovery of N400 and P600 in semantic and syntactic processes respectively, confirmed the suggestion that Indo-European and Korean languages share a common mechanism for sentence comprehension. |
Keywords:
sentence comprehension, event-related brain potentials, semantic process, syntactic process |
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