On the interplay between motor sequencing and linguistic syntax: Electrophysiological evidence

In this study, we used a paradigm combining two different sequential motor tasks, namely linear vs. non-linear self-administration of sentences, with correctness judgment of the sentences (half of them could include a morphosyntactic violation) while recording event-related potentials, ERPs. The sentences could be of either three types: subject-relative sentences, embedded PP sentences -with a displaced prepositional phrase between the subject and the verb-, or coordinate subject sentences - with two conjoined noun phrases as subject. Overall, results revealed significant modulations in the ERP components, connected to the number of different actions involved in both the motor task and the sentence (number of verbs). The motor task seemed always to hamper the occurrence of proper early syntactic processes, as no frontal negativities (LAN) could be observed. The latter were replaced by an N400 effect when motor and sentential structures matched, a component that reflects lexico-semantic processing. In turn, a mismatch in this regard seemed to completely impede the appearance of any type of early processing. The present findings extend support that syntax and motor task computations draw upon interdependent resources, in line with embodied perspectives of language processing.
Source: Journal of Neurolinguistics - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research