Effect of vocabulary skills on visual contextual priming in 24-month-olds: ERP evidence.

Effect of vocabulary skills on visual contextual priming in 24-month-olds: ERP evidence

Andrea Helo1,2, Najla Azaiez1, and Pia Rämä1

1. LPP, Université Paris Descartes, France

2. University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

We examined whether visual contextual information affects word processing in 24-months-olds. Children were presented with visual scene primes (e.g., kitchen) following by a spoken object name that either was consistent (e.g., spoon) or inconsistent (e.g., bed) with the previous scene context. Event-related potentials were recorded in response to the target words. We expected that the words presented in an inconsistent context elicit a more pronounced N400-like component. These results would suggest children have acquired knowledge about visual semantic regularities, and they are capable of integrating semantic conceptual information from visual context to object names. Thirty-one 24-month-old children participated to the study. The results showed that words that were inconsistent with the scene context exhibited larger N400-like component both in normal-to-low and normal-to-high producers. However, language groups exhibited different timing and distribution of N400 component. In low producers, the N400 effect was found over the right frontal sites while in high producers, over the left frontal sites. The component appeared earlier in high than in low producers. The results indicate that children are able of integrating context-related information from scenes to linguistic input but distinct neural resources are activated in contextual scene-word priming depending on linguistic skills.