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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 20, 2026

A Semantic Priming Event-related Potential (ERP) Task to Study Lexico-semantic and Visuo-semantic Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder

A Semantic Priming Event-related Potential (ERP) Task to Study Lexico-semantic and Visuo-semantic Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Published on: April 12, 2018

Lexical-semantic processes in children with specific language impairment.

Beate Sabisch¹, Anja Hahne, Elisabeth Glass

¹Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany. sabisch@cbs.mpg.de

|September 8, 2006

Summary

Children with specific language impairment exhibit weaker lexical-semantic processing, indicated by an absent N400 effect in event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during sentence comprehension.

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A Semantic Priming Event-related Potential (ERP) Task to Study Lexico-semantic and Visuo-semantic Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking (IPL): Investigating Language Comprehension in Typically Developing Toddlers and Young Children with Autism

Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking (IPL): Investigating Language Comprehension in Typically Developing Toddlers and Young Children with Autism

Published on: December 14, 2012

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Developmental Psychology
Linguistics

Background:

Specific language impairment (SLI) affects language development in children.
Lexical-semantic processing is crucial for understanding sentence meaning.
Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) offer insights into real-time language processing.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate lexical-semantic processing in children with SLI using ERPs.
To compare ERP responses to semantic violations in children with SLI and typically developing children.

Main Methods:

Utilized event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to measure brain activity.
Presented sentences with and without verb selectional restriction violations.
Analyzed N400 effect and late positivity components.

Main Results:

Typically developing children showed an N400 effect and late positivity to incorrect sentences.
Children with SLI lacked the N400 effect but displayed a late positivity.
A negativity in correct sentences for SLI group suggested weaker lexical-semantic representations.

Conclusions:

Children with SLI demonstrate atypical N400 responses, indicating impaired lexical-semantic processing.
Weakened verb representations may underlie comprehension difficulties in SLI.
ERPs are valuable for identifying neurophysiological differences in language disorders.