Marta Kutas
Biographic Data
| ID | 811433 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marta Kutas |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marta |
| FAMILY NAME | Kutas |
| SIGNATURE | KUTAS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California San Diego |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3689-5825 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 30 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
N400 event-related potential indices of induced mood effects on access to category-based world knowledge in central and lateralized visual fields
To catch a Snitch
Emanuel Donchin (1935–2018)
This article memorializes Emanuel Donchin (1935-2018). Emanuel's greatest scientific impact was to pioneer the field of cognitive electrophysiology. He was an early practitioner of cognitive science, bringing together cognitive event-related potentials (ERPs) and investigators from other disciplines at twelve "Carmel" workshops from 1979 to 1992. Donchin foresaw the uses of scalp-recorded electrical activity to analyze cognition and as a mental p…
Pre-Processing in Sentence Comprehension
For more than a decade, views of sentence comprehension have been shifting toward wider acceptance of a role for linguistic pre-processing - that is, anticipation, expectancy, (neural) pre-activation, or prediction - of upcoming semantic content and syntactic structure. In this survey, we begin by examining the implications of each of these 'brands' of predictive comprehension, including the issue of potential costs and consequences to not encoun…
Subject/object processing asymmetries in Korean relative clauses
Subject/object processing asymmetries in Korean relative clauses
Subject relative (SR) clauses have a reliable processing advantage in VO languages like English in which relative clauses (RCs) follow the head noun. The question is whether this is also routinely true in OV languages like Japanese and Korean, in which RCs precede the head noun. We conducted an event-related brain potential (ERP) study of Korean RCs to test whether the SR advantage manifests in brain responses, and to tease apart the typological …
Thirty Years and Counting
We review the discovery, characterization, and evolving use of the N400, an event-related brain potential response linked to meaning processing. We describe the elicitation of N400s by an impressive range of stimulus types—including written, spoken, and signed words or pseudowords; drawings, photos, and videos of faces, objects, and actions; sounds; and mathematical symbols—and outline the sensitivity of N400 amplitude (as its latency is remarkab…
Multiple effects of sentential constraint on word processing
One Lesson Learned
What research is conducted on language processing and how that research is conducted are largely determined by researchers' assumptions about the functional organization of mental processes. These have changed significantly since the 1970s when the brain's role in language processing—although acknowledged—was practically inconsequential to psycholinguistic research or theory; this change is due in large part to considerable growth in knowledge of…
Looking back
We describe the space structuring model, a model of language comprehension inspired by ideas in cognitive linguistics, focusing on its capacity to explain the sorts of inferences needed to understand one-line jokes. One process posited in the model is frame-shifting, the semantic and pragmatic reanalysis in which elements of the existing message-level representation are mapped into a new frame retrieved from long-term memory. To test this model, …
Probabilistic word pre-activation during language comprehension inferred from electrical brain activity
Anticipating Words and Their Gender
Recent studies indicate that the human brain attends to and uses grammatical gender cues during sentence comprehension. Here, we examine the nature and time course of the effect of gender on word-by-word sentence reading. Event related brain potentials were recorded to an article and noun, while native Spanish speakers read medium to high-constraint Spanish sentences for comprehension. The noun either fit the sentence meaning or not, and matched …
Switching Languages, Switching Palabras (Words)
Switching languages has often been associated with a processing cost. In this study, the authors used event-related potentials to compare switches between two languages with within-language lexical switches as bilinguals read for comprehension. Stimuli included English sentences and idioms ending either with the expected English words, their Spanish translations (code switches), or English synonyms (lexical switches). As expected, lexical switche…
Electrophysiology reveals semantic memory use in language comprehension
A Rose by Any Other Name
Expect the Unexpected
Arguments about the existence of language-specific neural systems and particularly arguments about the independence of syntactic and semantic processing have recently focused on differences between the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by violations of syntactic structure (e.g. the P600) and those elicited by violations of semantic expectancy (e.g. the N400). However, the scalp distribution of the P600 component elicited by syntactic viola…
An Electrophysiological Measure of Priming of Visual Word-Form
Who Did What and When? Using Word- and Clause-Level ERPs to Monitor Working Memory Usage in Reading
ERPs were recorded from 24 undergraduates as they read sentences known to differ in syntactic complexity and working memory requirements, namely Object and Subject Relative sentences. Both the single-word and multiword analyses revealed significant differences due to sentence type, while multiword ERPs also showed that sentence type effects differed for Good and Poor comprehenders. At the single-word level, ERPs to both verbs in Object Relative s…
Subjacency as a processing phenomenon
In this study we investigated the hypothesis that standard subjacency effects in so-called “wh-islands” are not necessarily due to an innate syntactic constraint, i.e. a problem of language competence, but rather to limits on the human Sentence processor, i.e. a problem of performance. We did so by gathering global acceptability judgements and by measuring event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in response to both yes/no- and wh-questions containi…
Brain potentials during reading reflect word expectancy and semantic association
Reading Senseless Sentences
In a sentence reading task, words that occurred out of context were associated with specific types of event-related brain potentials. Words that were physically aberrant (larger than normal) elicited a late positive series of potentials, whereas semantically inappropriate words elicited a late negative wave (N400). The N400 wave may be an electrophysiological sign of the "reprocessing" of semantically anomalous information.
Subject/object processing asymmetries in Korean relative clauses
Subject relative (SR) clauses have a reliable processing advantage in VO languages like English in which relative clauses (RCs) follow the head noun. The question is whether this is also routinely true in OV languages like Japanese and Korean, in which RCs precede the head noun. We conducted an event-related brain potential (ERP) study of Korean RCs to test whether the SR advantage manifests in brain responses, and to tease apart the typological …
Looking back
We describe the space structuring model, a model of language comprehension inspired by ideas in cognitive linguistics, focusing on its capacity to explain the sorts of inferences needed to understand one-line jokes. One process posited in the model is frame-shifting, the semantic and pragmatic reanalysis in which elements of the existing message-level representation are mapped into a new frame retrieved from long-term memory. To test this model, …
Pre-Processing in Sentence Comprehension
For more than a decade, views of sentence comprehension have been shifting toward wider acceptance of a role for linguistic pre-processing - that is, anticipation, expectancy, (neural) pre-activation, or prediction - of upcoming semantic content and syntactic structure. In this survey, we begin by examining the implications of each of these 'brands' of predictive comprehension, including the issue of potential costs and consequences to not encoun…
Reading Senseless Sentences
In a sentence reading task, words that occurred out of context were associated with specific types of event-related brain potentials. Words that were physically aberrant (larger than normal) elicited a late positive series of potentials, whereas semantically inappropriate words elicited a late negative wave (N400). The N400 wave may be an electrophysiological sign of the "reprocessing" of semantically anomalous information.
Brain potentials during reading reflect word expectancy and semantic association
Subjacency as a processing phenomenon
In this study we investigated the hypothesis that standard subjacency effects in so-called “wh-islands” are not necessarily due to an innate syntactic constraint, i.e. a problem of language competence, but rather to limits on the human Sentence processor, i.e. a problem of performance. We did so by gathering global acceptability judgements and by measuring event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in response to both yes/no- and wh-questions containi…
Who Did What and When? Using Word- and Clause-Level ERPs to Monitor Working Memory Usage in Reading
ERPs were recorded from 24 undergraduates as they read sentences known to differ in syntactic complexity and working memory requirements, namely Object and Subject Relative sentences. Both the single-word and multiword analyses revealed significant differences due to sentence type, while multiword ERPs also showed that sentence type effects differed for Good and Poor comprehenders. At the single-word level, ERPs to both verbs in Object Relative s…
Expect the Unexpected
Arguments about the existence of language-specific neural systems and particularly arguments about the independence of syntactic and semantic processing have recently focused on differences between the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by violations of syntactic structure (e.g. the P600) and those elicited by violations of semantic expectancy (e.g. the N400). However, the scalp distribution of the P600 component elicited by syntactic viola…
An Electrophysiological Measure of Priming of Visual Word-Form
A Rose by Any Other Name
Electrophysiology reveals semantic memory use in language comprehension
Switching Languages, Switching Palabras (Words)
Switching languages has often been associated with a processing cost. In this study, the authors used event-related potentials to compare switches between two languages with within-language lexical switches as bilinguals read for comprehension. Stimuli included English sentences and idioms ending either with the expected English words, their Spanish translations (code switches), or English synonyms (lexical switches). As expected, lexical switche…
Anticipating Words and Their Gender
Recent studies indicate that the human brain attends to and uses grammatical gender cues during sentence comprehension. Here, we examine the nature and time course of the effect of gender on word-by-word sentence reading. Event related brain potentials were recorded to an article and noun, while native Spanish speakers read medium to high-constraint Spanish sentences for comprehension. The noun either fit the sentence meaning or not, and matched …
Probabilistic word pre-activation during language comprehension inferred from electrical brain activity
One Lesson Learned
What research is conducted on language processing and how that research is conducted are largely determined by researchers' assumptions about the functional organization of mental processes. These have changed significantly since the 1970s when the brain's role in language processing—although acknowledged—was practically inconsequential to psycholinguistic research or theory; this change is due in large part to considerable growth in knowledge of…
Looking back
We describe the space structuring model, a model of language comprehension inspired by ideas in cognitive linguistics, focusing on its capacity to explain the sorts of inferences needed to understand one-line jokes. One process posited in the model is frame-shifting, the semantic and pragmatic reanalysis in which elements of the existing message-level representation are mapped into a new frame retrieved from long-term memory. To test this model, …
Multiple effects of sentential constraint on word processing
Thirty Years and Counting
We review the discovery, characterization, and evolving use of the N400, an event-related brain potential response linked to meaning processing. We describe the elicitation of N400s by an impressive range of stimulus types—including written, spoken, and signed words or pseudowords; drawings, photos, and videos of faces, objects, and actions; sounds; and mathematical symbols—and outline the sensitivity of N400 amplitude (as its latency is remarkab…
Subject/object processing asymmetries in Korean relative clauses
Subject/object processing asymmetries in Korean relative clauses
Subject relative (SR) clauses have a reliable processing advantage in VO languages like English in which relative clauses (RCs) follow the head noun. The question is whether this is also routinely true in OV languages like Japanese and Korean, in which RCs precede the head noun. We conducted an event-related brain potential (ERP) study of Korean RCs to test whether the SR advantage manifests in brain responses, and to tease apart the typological …
Pre-Processing in Sentence Comprehension
For more than a decade, views of sentence comprehension have been shifting toward wider acceptance of a role for linguistic pre-processing - that is, anticipation, expectancy, (neural) pre-activation, or prediction - of upcoming semantic content and syntactic structure. In this survey, we begin by examining the implications of each of these 'brands' of predictive comprehension, including the issue of potential costs and consequences to not encoun…
Emanuel Donchin (1935–2018)
This article memorializes Emanuel Donchin (1935-2018). Emanuel's greatest scientific impact was to pioneer the field of cognitive electrophysiology. He was an early practitioner of cognitive science, bringing together cognitive event-related potentials (ERPs) and investigators from other disciplines at twelve "Carmel" workshops from 1979 to 1992. Donchin foresaw the uses of scalp-recorded electrical activity to analyze cognition and as a mental p…
To catch a Snitch
N400 event-related potential indices of induced mood effects on access to category-based world knowledge in central and lateralized visual fields
Psychology (18 works) · Cognitive psychology (17 works) · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism (17 works) · Linguistics (14 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Neuroscience (13 works) · Cognition (12 works) · Reading and Literacy Development (12 works) · Event-related potential (10 works) · N400 (10 works)