A Study of Event-Related Brain Potentials in Children s Korean Sentence Comprehension Graduate School of Social Welfare, Myongji University Assistant Professor : Inhwa Choi Department of Child Development and Family Studies, Seoul National University Professor : Soon Hyung Yi <Abstract> The present study investigated the semantic and syntactic processes in Korean children s sentence comprehension by measuring event-related brain potentials(erps). The subjects were 18 right-handed, healthy native Korean children(1st graders), who were free from any hearing problems. While the children listened to the auditory sentence stimuli, ERPs were recorded with the electrodes mounted in a Quik-Cap on the subject s head. The ERP data were recorded and analyzed using the NeuroScan 4.3 and EEGLABv6.03b programs. For statistical analyses, descriptive statistics, three-way repeated measures ANOVA, and t-tests were performed using a SPSS 15.0 PC program. The results indicated that semantic violations elicited a negativity (N400) ranging from 300 to 500 msec. For syntactic violations, children displayed a positivity (P600) ranging from 900 to 1,100 msec. The discovery of N400 and P600 in semantic and syntactic processes respectively, confirmed the suggestion that Indo-European and Korean languages share a common mechanism for sentence comprehension. (sentence comprehension), (event-related brain potentials), (semantic process), (syntactic process) Corresponding Author : Soon Hyung Yi, Department of Child Development & Family Studies, Seoul National University, 599 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, 151-742, Korea Tel: +82-2-880-6826 Fax: +82-2-873-8517 E-mail: ysh@snu.ac.kr *. - 37 -
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