A Sampler of Event-Related Brain Potential (ERP) Analyses of Language Processing

In large part, language comprehension and production occur quickly and unavailable to conscious reflection. Electrophysiological methods — eventrelated brain potentials (ERPs) and other measures of electrical brain activity — afford a view of the brain in action as it supports these language processes as they unfold in real time. Moreover, ERPs can be utilized even when a comprehender's only task is to understand a word, phrase or sentence or to produce names or more elaborate utterances. Recording electrical brain activity in response to written and spoken words (as well as smaller and larger linguistic units) thus provides a means of tracking the brain's sensitivity to various linguistic inputs, revealing which factors are important to processing and the time course of their influence. As a continuous measure of processing, ERPs allow simultaneous looks at brain activity at the multiple time scales at which language processing transpires, from the first milliseconds of processing a word to the seconds required to comprehend a sentence, or even longer for a discourse. One of the greatest advantages to using ERPs, then, is that this combination of methodological features allows for investigations of aspects of language processing that are otherwise difficult if not impossible to detect via other measures. In this chapter, we will examine such instances, outlining five very different groups of ERP studies which exemplify some of the unique insights made possible by use of the methodology in the study of language-related neural processes. In particular, we will discuss the paradigms and the kinds of information that can be gathered from using ERPs to look at language processing outside the focus of attention, during language learning (before explicit knowing), for individuals in unconscious states, in determining the nature of predictive processing, and for testing how specific contextual cues may activate information in semantic memory. Our examination of these specific experimental examples makes clear the important role that ERPs have to play in studying language processing, both traditionally and as the number of neuroimaging techniques continues to grow.