Shared and/or separate representations of animate/inanimate categories: An ERP study

Abstract

This paper presents an ERP experiment examining the underlying natureof semantic representation of animate and inanimate objects. Time-lockingERP signatures to the onset of visual stimuli we found topological similaritiesin animate and inanimate object processing. Moreover, when mapping moregeneral to more specific representation (auditory to visual stimuli) we found nodifference between animates and inanimates in the N400 amplitude either. Thisstudy provides further evidence for the theory of unitary semantic organization,but no support for the feature-based prediction of segregated conceptualorganization.Surprisingly, it was also found that the P600 component, which has beenthus far mostly related to syntactic processing to be a sensitive index of conceptualprocessing. The most apparent difference regarding P600 component was foundbetween animate and inanimate matches, whereby animate matches elicitedmore positive ERP signatures in comparison to inanimate matches.

Keywords

• mental representations
• animacy
• visual stimuli
• ERP
• N400