[Spatio-Temporal Bioelectrical Brain Activity Organization during Reading Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic Collocations...

Texts or words/pseudowords are often used as stimuli for human verbal activity research. Our study pays attention to decoding processes of grammatical constructions consisted of two-three words--collocations. Russian and English collocation sets without any narrative were presented to Russian-speaking students with different English language skill. Stimulus material had two types of collocations: paradigmatic and syntagmatic. 30 students (average age--20.4 ± 0.22) took part in the study, they were divided into two equal groups depending on their English language skill (linguists/nonlinguists). During reading brain bioelectrical activity of cortex has been registered from 12 electrodes in alfa-, beta-, theta-bands. Coherent function reflecting cooperation of different cortical areas during reading collocations has been analyzed. Increase of interhemispheric and diagonal connections while reading collocations in different languages in the group of students with low knowledge of foreign language testifies of importance of functional cooperation between the hemispheres. It has been found out that brain bioelectrical activity of students with good foreign language knowledge during reading of all collocation types in Russian and English is characterized by economization of nervous substrate resources compared to nonlinguists. Selective activation of certain cortical areas has also been observed (depending on the grammatical construction type) in nonlinguists group that is probably related to special decoding system which processes presented stimuli. Reading Russian paradigmatic constructions by nonlinguists entailed increase between left cortical areas, reading of English syntagmatic collocations--between right ones.