Timecourse of bottom-up and top-down language processing during a picture-based semantic priming task

Abstract

Understanding spoken language requires rapid analysis of incoming information at multiple levels. Information at lower levels (e.g. acoustic/phonetic) cascades forward to affect processing at higher levels (e.g. lexical/semantic), and higher-level information may feed back to influence lower-level processing. Most studies have sought to examine a single stage of processing in isolation. Consequently, there is a poor understanding of how different stages relate temporally. In the present study, we characterise multiple stages of linguistic processing simultaneously as they unfold. Listeners (N = 30) completed a priming task while we collected their EEG, where a picture (e.g. of a peach) biased them to expect a target word from a minimal pair (e.g. beach/peach). We examine the processes of perceptual gradiency, semantic integration, and top-down feedback, to yield a more complete understanding of how these processes relate in time. Then, we discuss how the results from simplified priming paradigms may compare to more naturalistic settings.