The N400 reveals how personal semantics is processed: Insights into the nature and organization of self-knowledge

NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA

卷:84

Article

Coronel, Jason C.¹  Federmeier, Kara D.^2,3,4 

[1] Ohio State Univ, Sch Commun, 154 N Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210 USA

[2] Univ Illinois, Dept Psychol, 603 E Daniel St, Champaign, IL 61820 USA

[3] Univ Illinois, Beckman Inst Adv Sci & Technol, 603 E Daniel St, Champaign, IL 61820 USA

[4] Univ Illinois, Program Neurosci, 603 E Daniel St, Champaign, IL 61820 USA

关键词: Personal semantics;    Semantic memory;    Self-knowledge;    N400;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.01.029

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

There is growing recognition that some important forms of long-term memory are difficult to classify into one of the well-studied memory subtypes. One example is personal semantics. Like the episodes that are stored as part of one's autobiography, personal semantics is linked to an individual, yet, like general semantic memory, it is detached from a specific encoding context. Access to general semantics elicits an electrophysiological response known as the N400, which has been characterized across three decades of research; surprisingly, this response has not been fully examined in the context of personal semantics. In this study, we assessed responses to congruent and incongruent statements about people's own, personal preferences. We found that access to personal preferences elicited N400 responses, with congruency effects that were similar in latency and distribution to those for general semantic statements elicited from the same participants. These results suggest that the processing of personal and general semantics share important functional and neurobiological features. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

Free