Developing and validating a Canadian French N400 event-related potential paradigm

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Nancy Azevedo
  • Stefanie Blain-Moraes
  • Kathleen Berkun
  • Alexandra Papathanasopoulos
  • Leen Yamani
  • Alexander Rokos
  • Eva Kehayia

• A typical N400 event-related potential (ERP) component occurs when the brain detects a semantic contradiction and can be elicited by the canonical experiment where the final word of a sentence contradicts what a listener is expecting to hear. In the absence of an N400 elicitation paradigm in Canadian French, our study sought to develop and validate a Canadian French N400 ERP component elicitation paradigm. To achieve this, we proceeded in two phases. In Phase 1, we created and normed 100 French sentences and obtained the cloze probability and semantic plausibility rating for each sentence through two surveys. In Phase 2, we selected the 80 best sentences. These sentences, having been validated to elicit the N400, constitute the N400 elicitation paradigm. Having a valid N400 elicitation protocol in Canadian French opens new avenues for both research and practice and allows for comparative studies across different populations.

• Date created

  2019-03-26

• Subjects / Keywords

  • semantic plausibility rating
  • N400 ERP component
  • cloze probability
  • Canadian French N400 elicitation paradigm
  • Canadian French

• Type of Item

  Article (Published)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-7mn9-j444

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International