In this ITEC seminar, it will be discussed how EEG measures have the potential to address questions related to both emotional and cognitive processing.
After a brief introduction into how EEG data are obtained through the Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) technique and a presentation of its assets and limitations for experimental research, two talks will exemplify how EEG has been used in recent research.
An electrophysiological and multidimensional approach to emotional face processing between childhood and adolescence.
Mariana R. Pereira
Facial expressions of emotions are one of the most prevalent and relevant stimuli across our lifetime. The importance of facial expressions is manifested by (a) their special perceptual significance in comparison with the rest of the visual world, (b) their unique neural processing and (c) their important role in social interactions. Across development, a group of neural, cognitive, contextual, emotional, and social changes may impact or be impacted by the processing of facial expressions of emotion. For example, a progressive discrimination of an array of negative facial expressions starts to occur in school-aged children. However, the presence of a violent environment in early childhood may increase these discriminative abilities early in development and change the relevance of these expressions, leading to differential brain processing. The present talk will uncover how this process develops in children between 4 and 15 years old, by the use of EEG and Event-related potential methodologies, and how inherent developmental aspects such as attachment, clinical symptomatology, and specific personality traits, play a role in this process across these ages. The goal is to provide knowledge and discussion on the utility of a multidimensional and electrophysiological approach to study emotional processing in developmental samples.
Mariana R. Pereira is currently a researcher and PhD student in the Laboratory of Neuropsychophysiology (University of Porto, Portugal) and Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (University College London, United Kingdom). Her work focuses on the brain mechanisms that underly the processing of facial expressions of emotion in others, aiming to cover this process from infancy to adulthood, and associating it with a range of cognitive, social, and psychological variables such as attachment, psychopathic and callous-unemotional traits, and clinical symptomatology. Mariana has been working with EEG/ERP methodology for the last 10 years. She also worked with fMRI (University of Minho, Braga, Portugal) and Steady-States Visual Evoked Potentials (Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium).
Exploring the potential of EEG indices for measuring the effects of meaning- and word-focused instruction on the acquisition of L2 vocabulary.
Bert Vandenberghe – Maribel Montero Perez – Bert Reynvoet – Piet Desmet.
Second language (L2) vocabulary studies have traditionally used measures that allow for conscious thinking and attentional control. Yet, few studies have used measures that are sensitive enough to tap into knowledge that is not consciously accessible. Therefore, this EEG study will use Event-Related Potentials (ERPs, i.e., brain responses elicited by experimental stimuli) in order to measure lexical learning gains. Provided that ERPs reflect cognitive processing (e.g., N400 indicates semantic processing and P600 indicates combinatorial processing), they may account for form-, meaning-, and use-related vocabulary knowledge aspects.
So far, few ERP studies have focused on L2 vocabulary learning. Moreover, the bulk of previous ERP research has been conducted in controlled laboratory settings. Consequently, it has been suggested to further investigate the impact of instruction on neurocognitive processing in more ecologically valid learning contexts. Therefore, this study investigates the differential effects of word- and meaning-focused L2 vocabulary classroom instruction by means of ERPs. Intermediate-level participants (N=55, age=15/16, L1=Dutch, L2=French) performed computer-based meaning-oriented or word-focused reading and writing activities containing 20 unknown French verbs (i.e., the targets). Subsequently, ERPs were recorded during three tasks that focused on form-, meaning-, and use-related aspects of the targets, i.e., a lexical decision task, a semantic relatedness task and a grammatical judgement task.
Preliminary findings of this classroom-based ERP study suggest that word-focused instruction is more conducive to semantics-related N400 and use-related P600 effects than meaning-focused instruction.
We will discuss results in light of previous lab-controlled ERP vocabulary research and highlight the assets and limitations of ERPs in L2 vocabulary research.
Venue: IICK 00.29 (remote participation possible)
Time: 12-1.30pm
More info will follow soon.