RP and N400 ERP components reflect semantic violations in visual processing of human actions
Open accessAbstract
Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the visual processing of actions belonging to the typical human repertoire. Two hundred and sixty coloured pictures representing persons differing in number, age and gender, engaged in simple actions, were presented to 23 right-handed students. Perception of meaningful actions (e.g., young woman trying shoes in shop) was contrasted with perception of actions lacking an understandable goal (e.g., businesswoman balancing on one foot in desert). The results indicated early recognition of comprehensible behaviour in the form of an enhanced posterior "recognition potential" (RP) (N250), which was followed by a larger negativity (N400) in response to incongruent actions. The results suggest that incoming visual information regarding human gestures is processed similarly to linguistic inputs from a conceptual point of view, thus eliciting a posterior RP when the action code is visually recognized and comprehended, and a later N400 when the action is not recognized or is difficult to integrate with previous knowledge.
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More negative N450 amplitudes were reported for incongruent set-ups and unexpected actions.
“More negative N450 amplitudes were reported for incongruent set-ups and unexpected actions (Proverbio & Riva, 2009;Wu & Coulson, 2005; see also Amoruso et al., 2013).”
From Interplay of self-other distinction and cognitive control mechanisms in a social automatic imitation task: An ERP study (2021) · cites this paper as Proverbio & Riva, 2009
The results passage (page not provided) reports a more negative N400 for incongruent than congruent actions (−3.35 versus −1.84 µV). The paper measures this response at 350–500 ms and also calls it an action-related N420, but it does not report an N450 or a separate finding for incongruent set-ups. (LLM, conf=0.86)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe N450 is not only tied to cognitive conflict/action monitoring, but has also been associated with congruency processing during action observation and unexpected socially inappropriate actions.
“Importantly, the N450 is not only tied to cognitive conflict/ action monitoring, but has also been associated with congruency processing during action observation (e.g., whether gestures and a given context match or not, Wu & Coulson, 2005), and unexpected socially inappropriate actions (Proverbio & Riva, 2009).”
From Interplay of self-other distinction and cognitive control mechanisms in a social automatic imitation task: An ERP study (2021) · cites this paper as Proverbio & Riva, 2009
In “RP and N400 ERP components reflect semantic violations in visual processing of human actions” (page unavailable), the authors report a response to incongruent actions, some of which were socially inappropriate. That supports the portion attributed to Proverbio and Riva, but the paper identifies the response as N400 or action-related N420, not N450. The gesture–context example is attributed to Wu and Coulson, not to this source. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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References 37 · Cited by 142
- Authors
- Proverbio, A. M., & Riva, F.
- Affiliations
- University of Milano-Bicocca (IT)
- Corresponding author
- Proverbio, Alice Mado
- Venue
- Neuroscience Letters
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2009-08
- Volume
- 459
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 142-146
- ISSN
- 0304-3940 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1973751534
- Cited by
- 142
- References
- 37
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 16 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 4.34
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-nd
- www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
- Locations
- Neuroscience Letters (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- BOA (University of Milano-Bicocca) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Keywords
- action perception, semantic violation, N400, N250, event-related potentials, visual word recognition
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Analysis of Variance, Brain, Cognition, Electroencephalography, Evoked Potentials, Female, Humans, Male, Photic Stimulation, Semantics, Social Perception, Visual Perception, Young Adult
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