An auditory ERP study of gender concord and semantic processing in French children

Abstract

We report on an event-related potential (ERP) study showing that gender processing can be tapped in young children. Our experiment was designed to study agreement (concord) between the noun and determiner, or adjective, as well as semantic processing in the French determiner phrase (DP). Previous studies have described language production for similar structures in French children, but have never investigated the cognitive processing underlying agreement processes.
During two ERP recording sessions, we presented auditory sentences concurrently with images that to 52 French children aged 4;6 to 8;9 years. Stimuli included grammatically correct forms matching with images, semantic auditory-visual mismatches, and sentences with agreement errors on the determiner or the adjective.
Results show that children elicit distinct ERPs for the tree types of errors. In the case of visual-auditory semantic mismatches, children show N400s similar to those of adults. Gender agreement violations on the determiner show a positive wave type similar to the P600 and the agreement violations in the adjectives elicits a N400-like centro-parietal negativity. Differences between ERPs of children and adults in the same conditions reflect developmental patterns reported in the scientific literature.