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Semantic Processing in Deaf Readers: An EEG Study on Verb Constraint and Contextual Integration
Poster Session B, Friday, October 25, 10:00 - 11:30 am, Great Hall 3 and 4
Yan Wu1, Yunxiao Bai1, Jie Chen1, Suiping Wang2; 1Northeast Normal University, 2South China Normal University
This study utilized electroencephalography to investigate verb constraint and sentence context processing in deaf readers. The verb constraint conditions involved verb-object congruency or violation, while the contextual situation included critical words’ congruence or violation with prior context. ERP analyses indicated that hearing participants displayed N400 and P600 responses to contextual violation, whereas deaf participants exhibited only N400 responses. Time-frequency analyses showed increased theta power in hearing participants in responses to contextual violation, which was absent in deaf readers. Both groups, however, demonstrated similar N400 responses to verb constraint violation. Furthermore, correlation analysis revealed N400 response to contextual violation significantly correlated to text reading fluency in deaf individuals. These findings imply deaf readers, despite challenges in integrating sentence context, possess comparable abilities to hearing individuals in processing content words, i.e. verb-imposed semantic constraints. Notably, the online semantic processing of deaf readers predicts their reading proficiency, highlighting the importance of semantic processing.
Topic Areas: Disorders: Developmental, Reading