Toward the understanding of the functional significance of language-sensitive P600 effect

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K02755
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Ritsumeikan University
• Principal Investigator: OISHI Hiroaki 立命館大学, 総合心理学部, 准教授 (40469896)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 安永 大地 金沢大学, 歴史言語文化学系, 准教授 (00707979) ; 荒生 弘史 大正大学, 心理社会学部, 准教授 (10334640) ; 矢野 雅貴 九州大学, 人文科学研究院, 助教 (80794031)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: P600 / 文処理 / 統語的逸脱 / 機能的意義

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study aimed to clarify the functional significance of P600 effects, and revealed that (i) the sample size of 2o to 30 participants are required to stably observe P600 effects, (ii) the amplitude of P600 effects gradually decrease as the number of syntactically anomalous sentence which participants read increase, and (iii) a large and widely distributed P600 effect was found when the participants were induced to have neutral emotion, on the one hand, and a small P600 effect was observed only in a limited region when they were induced to have positive emotion, on the other hand. At present, it is unclear whether this is because the state of emotion influences the cognitive processes which underly P600 effects or because the P600 effects were canceled out by the negativities which was elicited by the change of emotional states.

Free Research Field

心理言語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究を開始する前では、同様の統語的逸脱を含む文であってもP600が観察される場合もあればされない場合もあったり、理論的には異なる種類のものとされる複数の認知的処理に伴う負荷が表面的には同一の形態的特徴を持つP600に反映されるなど、P600の機能的意義は不明瞭なものであった。本研究の成果はP600の惹起条件について大きな示唆を与えるものであり、P600を指標としたこれまでの、そしてこれからの研究の成果を評価する際に役立つものとなるであろう。