Early ERP processing of self-referential language processing in voluntary and involuntary action contexts: N170 and EPN

Understanding how the brain differentiates self from others through language represents an important topic in psychology, linguistics, and social cognition. Within an embodied cognition framework, the present EEG study investigated early neural responses to isolated German pronouns varying in self-relatedness (self-, other-, and self/other-related) and grammatical type (personal vs. possessive). Forty right-handed native German speakers silently read visually presented pronouns while EEG activity was recorded. Two task contexts were employed, involving voluntary and involuntary keypress responses following stimulus presentation. Event-related potential (ERP) analyses revealed significant modulations of the N170 and Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) components. N170 amplitudes varied as a function of pronoun type and self-relatedness, with self-related and other-related pronouns eliciting different responses from ambiguous second-person forms. EPN amplitudes differed across self-reference categories, with additional interactions involving hemisphere and pronoun type. Together, these findings suggest that even minimal linguistic stimuli such as pronouns engage early neural processes sensitive to self-relatedness and linguistic context. Task conditions also differed in early ERP amplitudes; because responses in the immediate-response condition overlapped the ERP measurement intervals, these differences are reported without functional attribution.