Name: A Semantic Priming Event-related Potential (ERP) Task to Study Lexico-semantic and Visuo-semantic Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder (Video) | JoVE Journal
Uploaded: 2018-04-12T14:30:00.000+00:00
Duration: 8 min 17 s
Description: Learn semantic priming ERP methodology to compare lexico-semantic and visuo-semantic processing in autism spectrum disorder using EEG. This technique reveals subtle cognitive differences between ASD and typically-developing individuals.

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Development of this paradigm was supported by the Therapeutic Cognitive Neuroscience Fund and the Benjamin and Adith Miller Family Endowment on Aging, Alzheimer's, and Autism Research.

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The author has nothing to disclose.

The present paper has reported critical steps in developing a semantic priming ERP paradigm with picture and word stimuli for exploring semantic processing deficits in individuals with ASD. Major steps include creating the stimuli, programming the task, and performing EEG testing and analyses. The most time-consuming part of this procedure is likely to be the creation of stimuli, as this requires careful matching both between and within stimulus pairs, conditions, and modalities on variables such as length, frequency, an...

Researchers in cognitive psychology have long been interested in how people understand the meaning of language. Language processing involves a sequence of steps of increasing complexity, from letter and word recognition, to semantic processing, to syntactic parsing. Semantic processing refers to accessing the meaning of a stimulus, be it a word, picture, or sound. Following early steps of initial word recognition, access of a word&#39;s meaning, or semantics, is a crucial step in language processing. Semantic integration refers to the process of integrating the meaning of stimuli to understand their relationships, and is crucial for higher-level language processing such as understanding sentences. Not only does the meaning of each word in a sentence need to be accessed, but the meanings of each individual word need to be integrated to form a coherent understanding of sentence meaning, or &#34;gist&#34;.
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have significant deficits in language comprehension1. There is some evidence suggesting that these difficulties stem from deficits in semantic processing and integration2,3,4. However, other studies have suggested that individuals with ASD do not show semantic processing deficits when materials are presented in non-linguistic (e.g., visual or auditory) modalities3,5,6. Such findings suggest that semantic processing deficits in ASD may be restricted to linguistic (i.e., written or spoken) modalities. As such, approaches that contrast different modalities may provide insight into the extent to which semantic processing deficits are domain-specific or indicative of a pervasive processing style. The purpose of this paper is to describe a methodology for comparing semantic processing between different modalities using a semantic priming task during concurrent electrophysiological recording.
The semantic priming paradigm has a long history in research investigating how semantic processing influences lower-level word recognition7,8. In traditional semantic priming tasks, a prime word is presented (e.g., cat) followed by a target word that is either semantically related (e.g., dog) or unrelated (e.g., book) to the prime. Such a task is often done in the context of a lexical decision task, such that participants are asked to determine whether the target word is a real word or not. Other paradigms may have participants perform a semantic categorization task on the target word, or judge whether the two stimuli are related or not. Regardless of the specific task, decades of evidence have established that reaction times (RTs) are faster to target words that are semantically related to the prime compared to those that are unrelated.
This &#34;semantic priming effect&#34; has been attributed to a number of mechanisms in theoretical accounts7,8. One is that the priming effect is due to automatic spreading activation through the semantic network, such that the retrieval of the prime word&#39;s meaning activates the meaning of other semantically related words, including the target word. This then reduces the time needed for semantic activation of the target word. A second theoretical mechanism is that of expectancy, which posits that upon seeing the prime word, participants generate an expected set of potential targets. Target words that are included in this set are then recognized more quickly. Finally, others have postulated the existence of a post-lexical mechanism of semantic matching, which establishes the existence of a semantic relationship between the prime and target word. Regardless of the specific mechanism underlying the effect, semantic priming can be a useful index of semantic processing and integration. This paradigm is also not limited to lexical stimuli, and can also be used to investigate semantic priming of non-language stimuli like pictures9 as well as cross-modal semantic priming (e.g., between words and pictures)3.
Semantic priming effects have been well-studied in the psycholinguistic literature, and have been investigated with regards to the type of prime-target relations, the timing of prime and target presentation, and many other manipulations8. The electrophysiological correlates of this effect have also been well-characterized10. Electroencephalography (EEG) is a method of recording neural activity via changes in electrical activity measured at the scalp. EEG is a useful choice of methodology for a semantic priming paradigm because it has very good temporal resolution (on the order of milliseconds, ms) and can thereby provide subtle differences in semantic processing between conditions or groups even in the absence of behavioral effects or responses.
Event-related potentials (ERPs) are time-locked changes in the EEG that arise in response to a specific stimulus or behavior. Depending on the timing and polarity of the response, different components of the ERP are reflective of different aspects of cognitive processing. The N400 component is a well-established marker of semantic processing and semantic integration11,12 (although several other interpretations exist10,13). The N400 amplitude is reduced when semantic integration is easier (such as when the prime and target in a semantic priming paradigm are semantically related) compared to when semantic integration is more difficult (such as when two words are unrelated). Importantly, the amplitude difference between related and unrelated conditions (i.e., the &#34;N400 effect&#34;) is not specific to language. N400 effects are also observed in non-language modalities, such as in response to pairs of semantically-related and unrelated pictures or environmental sounds14,15,16,17. The N400 is thus a useful ERP component for the purposes of the current paradigm because it can be used as a modality-independent estimate of semantic processing and integration abilities.
Individuals with ASD show reduced or absent semantic priming effects and N400 effects in response to language stimuli2,3,4, suggesting impairments in semantic processing. Such effects have been found in response to visuo-semantic and audio-semantic stimuli3,5,6, lending support to the claim that semantic processing is selectively impaired for language stimuli. However, most previous studies comparing modalities have used cross-modal priming, such that the prime-target pair contains a lexical stimulus. Given the proposal that individuals with ASD have deficits in semantic processing of language stimuli, such cross-modal stimuli may have affected results. To truly investigate whether semantic processing of language is selectively impaired in individuals with ASD, within-modality pairs of lexical and non-lexical stimuli must be used. In a recent study, Coderre et al.6 provided the first direct comparison of within-modality word and picture semantic priming to investigate semantic processing deficits in adults (ages 18-68) with ASD. Participants with ASD and typically-developing (TD) participants viewed pairs of pictures and words and were asked to judge whether the stimuli were related or not. During this semantic priming task, their brain activity was recorded using EEG. By comparing N400 effects between groups and modalities, this paradigm provided insight into the nature of semantic processing in individuals with ASD.
The purpose of this paper is to describe the semantic priming ERP methodology employed by Coderre et al.6. Although this paradigm was initially implemented to study semantic processing in adults with ASD, it may prove useful for any experimenters wishing to explore the neural correlates of lexico-semantic and visuo-semantic processing, either in TD individuals or in specific clinical populations.

<table><tbody><tr><td>EEG system</td><td>Electrical Geodesics, Inc. (EGI)</td><td></td><td>Geodesic EEG system (GES) 400 system: Net Amps 400 amplifier, NetStation 5.3, 128-channel HydroCel Geodesic Sensor nets</td></tr><tr><td>Potassium chloride</td><td>Electrical Geodesics, Inc. (EGI)</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Plastic bucket</td><td>Electrical Geodesics, Inc. (EGI)</td><td></td><td>EGI provides a plastic bucket for mixing electrolyte but any clean container can be used</td></tr><tr><td>Baby shampoo</td><td>Johnson&#039;s</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)</td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

a semantic priming event-related potential (erp) task to study lexico-semantic and visuo-semantic processing in autism spectrum disorder

A Semantic Priming Event-related Potential (ERP) Task to Study Lexico-semantic and Visuo-semantic Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have characteristic deficits in understanding the meaning of language, or semantic processing. However, some evidence indicates that semantic processing of non-linguistic stimuli is intact, suggesting that semantic deficits may be language-specific. To appropriately characterize semantic processing deficits in individuals with ASD, comparison of within-modality linguistic (e.g., written words) and non-linguistic (e.g., pictures) stimuli is required. This paper describes such a methodology that makes use of a semantic priming paradigm during concurrent recording of electroencephalographic (EEG) data. EEG provides a dynamic measure of brain activity that is well-suited to characterize subtle differences in semantic processing that may not be observable at the behavioral level. The semantic priming paradigm presents a prime picture or word (e.g., dog) followed by a target picture or word that is either related (e.g., cat) or unrelated (e.g., pencil) to the prime. This paradigm can thus be used to evaluate semantic processing across different modalities, and to compare lexico-semantic and visuo-semantic processing abilities in individuals with ASD and how they might differ from TD individuals. The specific steps involved in creating the stimuli, performing the EEG testing, and analyzing the EEG data are discussed. Representative results illustrate how the N400 component of the event-related potential (ERP) is reduced following semantically-related prime-target pairs compared to unrelated pairs. Comparisons of the N400 between conditions, modalities, and groups can provide estimates of the success of semantic processing, and can thereby be used to characterize semantic deficits in individuals with ASD or other clinical populations.

If stimuli have been appropriately sorted into related and unrelated conditions, an N400 effect should be observed for both word and picture stimuli (Figure 2). This is identifiable as a greater negative amplitude in unrelated conditions compared to related conditions. For word stimuli, the effect should occur from 300–500 ms over central or centro-parietal scalp6,10. For picture stimuli, the effect m...

This paper describes a semantic priming ERP task using within-modality pairs of pictures and words to investigate semantic processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have characteristic deficits in understanding the meaning of language, or semantic processing. However, ...

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We present a protocol to explore the relative activation sequence of phonology and semantics in visual word recognition. The results show that consistent with interactive accounts, semantic and phonological representations may be processed interactively, and higher-level linguistic representations may affect early processing.

Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology

This protocol is designed to explore underlying learning-related electrophysiological changes in subjects with profound deafness after a short training period in audio-tactile sensory substitution by applying the event-related potential technique.

Assessment of Audio-Tactile Sensory Substitution Training in Participants with Profound Deafness Using the Event-Related Potential Technique

We demonstrate how an objective measure can be employed in the widely employed rubber hand illusion paradigm. This measure is obtained by modifying the well-established crossmodal congruency task. This task allows the investigation of multisensory processes which are critical for modulations of body representations as in the rubber hand illusion.

The Crossmodal Congruency Task as a Means to Obtain an Objective Behavioral Measure in the Rubber Hand Illusion Paradigm

This protocol describes the 5-choice serial reaction time task, which is an operant based task used to study attention and impulse control in rodents. Test day challenges, which are modifications of the standard task, increase flexibility of the task and can be combined with other manipulations to more fully characterize behavior.

The 5-Choice Serial Reaction Time Task: A Task of Attention and Impulse Control for Rodents

Learn semantic priming ERP methodology to compare lexico-semantic and visuo-semantic processing in autism spectrum disorder using EEG. This technique reveals subtle cognitive differences between ASD and typically-developing individuals.

A Semantic Priming Event-related Potential (ERP) Task to Study Lexico-semantic and Visuo-semantic Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder (Video) | JoVE Journal

A Semantic Priming Event-related Potential (ERP) Task to Study Lexico-semantic and Visuo-semantic Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder

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