The Electrophysiology of Language Comprehension: A Neurocomputational Model

Harm Brouwer

The Electrophysiology of Language Comprehension: A Neurocomputational Model

Harm Brouwer

Onderzoeksoutput: Thesis fully internal (DIV)

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Samenvatting

Ongeveer tien jaar geleden stuitten onderzoekers die gebruik maken van
elektro-encefalografie (EEG) op resultaten die leken te wijzen op een
"Semantische Illusie" bij het begrijpen van taal: Zinnen die qua betekenis
vreemd zijn, maar verder grammaticaal correct, hadden geen effect op de aan
betekenis gerelateerde "N400 component" in het EEG signaal, maar juist op de
aan structuur gerelateerde "P600 component". Op basis van deze bevindingen
zijn er maar liefst vijf nieuwe modellen van taalverwerking voorgesteld. Al
deze modellen claimen dat er niet een enkele verwerkingsroute, maar twee of
meer verwerkingroutes zijn binnen het taalverwerkingsysteem, waarvan bij één
route de structuur van een zin volstrekt niet van belang is, maar enkel de
betekenis van de woorden waaruit de zin bestaat. In dit proefschrift laat ik
zien dat er een veel simpelere uitleg is voor de 'problematische'
bevindingen en toon ik met computersimulaties aan dat deze alternatieve
uitleg alle relevante data kan verklaren.

Originele taal-2	English
Kwalificatie	Doctor of Philosophy
Toekennende instantie	Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Begeleider(s)/adviseur	Hoeks, John, Supervisor Nerbonne, John, Supervisor
Datum van toekenning	26-jun.-2014
Plaats van publicatie	[S.l.]
Uitgever	s.n.
Gedrukte ISBN's	978-90-367-6892-4
Elektronische ISBN's	978-90-367-6893-1
Status	Published - 2014

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20140626_Thesis_Minus Chapter5Final publisher's version, 2,93 MB
20140626_Chapter5Final publisher's version, 1,25 MB
20140626_Thesis_BrouwerFinal publisher's version, 3,59 MB
PropositonsFinal publisher's version, 122 KB

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title = "The Electrophysiology of Language Comprehension: A Neurocomputational Model",

abstract = "One decade ago, researchers using event-related brain potential (ERP)measurements stumbled upon what looked like a Semantic Illusion in languagecomprehension: Semantically anomalous, but otherwise well-formed sentencesdid not affect the meaning-related N400 component, but instead increased theamplitude of the structure-related P600 component. This finding spawned fivenew models of language comprehension, all of which claim that instead ofa single comprehension process, there are two or even more separateprocessing streams, one of which is not driven by structure, but by wordmeaning alone. In this thesis, I argue that there is a much simpler way toaccount for these data, and present evidence from neurocomputionalsimulations showing that this alternative explanation is able to predict allrelevant ERP patterns found in the literature.",

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M3 - Thesis fully internal (DIV)

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