Abstract
A growing body of scientific literature investigated the difference between general and personal semantic knowledge. In contrast to general world knowledge, personal semantics comprises highly individual knowledge about oneself. The present study aimed to differentiate processes of integration into personal as opposed to general semantic knowledge. For that purpose, participants were presented with pictures of themselves (Self-condition) or unknown persons (Other-condition) superimposed on a congruent or incongruent background. We hypothesized that self-referential processing is based on automatic retrieval of personal information as opposed to the processing of unknown persons, which requires voluntary, i.e., strategic, attention demanding processing. The topography of the N400 effect varied as a function of the type of semantic knowledge. We found a centro-parietal N400 effect within the Self-condition and a posterior effect within the Other-condition. The voluntary integration of facial expressions of unknown persons within the Other-condition was, furthermore, indexed by an N170 effect. The unresolved tension in personal semantics was reflected by the N500. Our study thus provides new impulses for interpretation of the N400’s functional properties and extends our knowledge about the N500. Implications for the functional properties of the self as an organizational structure are discussed.
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Notes
We tested 14 female participants and presented them with pictures of themselves and pictures of models taken from fashion catalogs superimposed either on congruent or an incongruent background. The pictures were rated according to their congruence on a scale from one to six. The data were analyzed with a 2 × 2 rmANOVA with factors REFERENCE (Self/Other) and CONGRUENCE (congruent/incongruent). As a result we found a significant main effect for factor CONGRUENCE, F(1,13) = 184.42, p < .001, ηp2 = 0.934, with congruent pictures rated higher with respect to congruence (M = 4.70, SD = 0.63) compared to incongruent pictures (M = 2.63, SD = 0.48).
We interviewed participants after the experiment how they approached the pictures. The interviews were not analyzed systematically, but anecdotal evidence suggests that they discarded the pictures containing themselves simply as being congruent or incongruent. Speculatively, when presented with pictures of unknown persons, they tried to generate an explanation for the incongruent pictures. They engaged in conflict resolution processes, trying to construct a semantic relation and integrating fore- and background in a congruent visual scene. Considering example stimulus # 1 (Fig. 1), the smiling women in front of a car crash, you could come up with a story in which the car was completely wrecked, but the women miraculously survived and now can hardly believe her luck.
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We thank Matthias Berg, Mareike Harms, Maren-Jo Kater, Leonardo Steenbock and Roberta Schröter for their help in stimulus design and data acquisition.
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221_2018_5324_MOESM1_ESM.tiff
Baseline-corrected grand average waveforms (ERPs) for all conditions at sensor sites from FDR analysis: (a) Posterior cluster from N170/Other, (b) Posterior cluster from N400/Other, (c) Central cluster from N400/Self (d) Mid-frontal clusters from N500/Self, (e) Frontal cluster from N500/Other, (f) Frontal cluster from N500/Other (TIFF 12289 KB)
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Schöne, B., Köster, M. & Gruber, T. Coherence in general and personal semantic knowledge: functional differences of the posterior and centro-parietal N400 ERP component. Exp Brain Res 236, 2649–2660 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-018-5324-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-018-5324-1