Author:

Abstract:

We investigate the effect of word typicality -the degree of membership of a word to its superordinate category- on the N400 event-related potential (ERP) using a single-trial detection approach based on spatiotemporal beamforming. Unlike the norm in N400 studies, where mostly concrete categories are used (imaginable objects), we considered a total of 6 basic categories: three abstract and unimaginable (emotion, event, illness), one abstract yet clearly imaginable (colour), and two concrete categories, one coherent (mammals) and one incoherent (furniture). Our results show that, independently of word abstractness or concreteness, word typicality has a clear effect on N400 both in terms of amplitude and scalp localization, which in turn is indicative of differences in difficulty of word processing.