Effects of additional tasks on language perception: an event-related brain potential investigation

The authors investigated effects of task and overlapping processing load on semantic processing. In 3 experiments the brain potential component N400 was elicited by synonymous and nonsynonymous spoken noun pairs that were to be classified according to semantic relatedness. The time course of the N400 component to the nouns was delayed, and its amplitude was reduced when additional tasks had to be performed. The delay increased with temporal overlap and was more pronounced for language-related than for spatial additional tasks. Delays of N400 were also caused by a compatibility manipulation in the additional tasks. Theoretical accounts of the observed interference of overlapping tasks with language perception in terms of attentional shifts were discarded. Explanations in terms of resource sharing and single channel processing are discussed.