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The Development of Lexical Representation During the Third Year of Life: A Longitudinal EEG Study
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Poster A101 in Poster Session A, Tuesday, October 24, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
Jonas Gerards1, Nina Niggemann, Christina Kauschke1, Ulrike Domahs1,2; 1Institute of German Linguistics, University of Marburg, Germany, 2Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior
In the course of early language acquisition, the representation of lexical entries becomes increasingly differentiated depending on language experience and vocabulary growth. However, little is known about specific mental lexical representations in early childhood, how well children understand words used in their environment, and to what degree of precision word forms are specified. To address such questions, the present longitudinal EEG study investigates the segmental, prosodic and semantic specification of words in 24, 30 and 36 months old children. At these time points, a picture-word-matching task was conducted with 15 monolingual, German-speaking children. Language proficiency was assessed at each measurement to ensure typical development. 18 healthy, monolingual, German-speaking adults served as a control control. Visual stimuli were a set of prototypical pictures which were followed by auditory stimuli in one of four conditions: A control condition that matched the expected referents, a segmental violation wherein the word onsets of the target word had been altered to create pseudowords, a prosodical violation wherein the stress of the target word was altered, and a semantic violation wherein close co-hyponyms of the target word were presented. EEG was recorded during the experiment from 32 channels. After offline artifact rejection, ERP effects were investigated in consecutive 100 ms windows starting from word onset up to 900 ms thereafter. For statistical analysis, linear mixed-effects models and bonferroni-corrected post-hoc tests were used and the standardized measurement error (SME) was calculated to gauge noise levels. The adult group shows a significant negativity in response to the phonological violation in the windows from 300 to 700 ms post-stimulus onset, as well as a significant negativity from 300 to 400 ms in the semantic condition. Children at 24 months show early negativities in the phonological condition (100-200, 300-400), as well as a late negativity (600-700) in response to the prosodic manipulation. At 30 months, prolonged negativities are present in the phonological (400-700) and the semantic condition (400-900). At 36 months, the negativity in the semantic condition is similar, from 400 to 900 ms, but there is a positivity in response to the phonological condition from 100-200 ms followed by a later negativity from 500-600 ms. The SME scores indicate more noise in the recordings of children compared to those of adults, as well as an increase with distance from the prestimulus baseline. Effects at 24 months indicate the detection of phonological differences between the expected forms and the presented auditory stimuli, but adult-like patterns of lexical access were not observable before the age of 30 months. Children seem to treat close co-hyponyms as viable word candidates at 24 months, but recognize the semantic distinction with increasing age. Adults show in this condition only a small negative component, which indicates that semantic relationships are well differentiated in their mental lexicon. Prosodic violations apparently do not hinder lexical access. Our results hint at a shift in lexico-semantic processing between 24 and 30 months and warrant further investigations into the change of lexical representations during this period.
Topic Areas: Language Development/Acquisition,