What is it about?
ERP studies show that adults experience a late negative N400 response to semantic incongruities, which reflects semantic category organization in memory. This study examined whether 20-month-old children demonstrate similar responses. Using a picture–word mismatch task, toddlers exhibited an N400-like effect. Specifically, between-category violations produced earlier and larger responses than within-category ones.
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Why is it important?
These results indicate that even at this early stage, the N400 is sensitive to how toddlers organize their mental lexicon, making it valuable for studying lexical development like overextension.
Perspectives
The observed incongruity responses to between-category violations suggest that toddlers’ overextensions may not be caused just by broad conceptual categories, but also by limited vocabulary, retrieval errors, or efforts to communicate with restricted language.
Professor Lars Smith
University of Oslo
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Semantic organization of basic-level words in 20-month-olds: An ERP study, Journal of Neurolinguistics, November 2006, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2006.01.002.
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