Abstract
The brain’s processing of synonymity and antonymy was explored by examining the cortical evoked responses to correct judgments that a test word was a synonym or an antonym of a standard word presented 1 sec previously. Each of five subjects judged 256 pairs of words in each of two sessions. The evoked response to the second word was averaged separately for synonym and antonym pairs. Presentation of each test word as a synonym or an antonym, the order of presentation of each pair, and the side of the “synonym” response key were counter-balanced within subjects. The difference between the averaged response to antonym test words and that to synonym test words differed biphasically over the interval 250-650 msec after the stimulus. The demonstration of an evoked response difference between synonyms and antnyms extends the applicability of evoked potentials from attributes of individual word meaning to the semantic relationships between words.
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A preliminary report of this work was given at the 1981 meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association.
The work was supported by a grant to the first author from the Hamilton College Faculty Research Fund. The paper was completed while the first author was supported by National Institute of Mental Health National Research Service Award MH-08716 at the Psychology Department of the University of Oregon.
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Vaughan, J., Sherif, K., O’sullivan, R.L. et al. Cortical evoked responses to synonyms and antonyms. Memory & Cognition 10, 225–231 (1982). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197633
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197633