The DOI matches its Crossref record; 105 of the 106 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Thirty years and counting: finding meaning in the N400 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP).
Open accessAbstract
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 remarkably constant) to linguistic and nonlinguistic manipulations. We emphasize the effectiveness of the N400 as a dependent variable for examining almost every aspect of language processing and highlight its expanding use to probe semantic memory and to determine how the neurocognitive system dynamically and flexibly uses bottom-up and top-down information to make sense of the world. We conclude with different theories of the N400's functional significance and offer an N400-inspired reconceptualization of how meaning processing might unfold.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The cited source says what the claim attributes to it.
In the citing paper
“N400 is related to semantic processing that is elicited by various kinds of stimuli, such as words, speech, and pictures (for a review, see Kutas and Federmeier, 2011).”
From Advantage of Handwriting Over Typing on Learning Words: Evidence From an N400 Event-Related Potential Index (2021) · cites this paper as Kutas and Federmeier, 2011
In the citing paper
“We draw on evidence from an electrophysiological measure that has been shown to be extremely useful for studying the timeline of semantic processing: the N400 (already mentioned in Section 2; for reviews see Hagoort & van Berkum, 2007;Kutas and Federmeier, 2011;van Berkum et al., 2005).”
From Grounding the neurobiology of language in first principles: The necessity of non-language-centric explanations for language comprehension (2018) · cites this paper as Kutas and Federmeier, 2011
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Reading Senseless Sentences: Brain Potentials Reflect Semantic Incongruity
Marta Kutas, A., & Hillyard, S. A. (1980) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.7350657 · Cited by 5,029
Electrophysiology reveals semantic memory use in language comprehension.
Kutas, M., & Federmeier, K. D. (2000) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/s1364-6613(00)01560-6 · Cited by 2,124
Self-citationA cortical network for semantics: (de)constructing the N400
Lau, E. F., Phillips, C., & Poeppel, D. (2008) · Nature reviews. Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn2532 · Cited by 1,779
Augmenting mental chronometry: The P300 as a measure of stimulus evaluation time
Kutas, M., McCarthy, G., & Donchin, E. (1977) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.887923 · Cited by 1,714
The Handbook of Psycholinguistics
(2017) · Wiley eBooks · doi:10.1002/9781118829516 · Cited by 1,615
Integration of word meaning and world knowledge in language comprehension
Hagoort, P., Hald, L., Bastiaansen, M., & Petersson, K. M. (2004) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1095455 · Cited by 1,396
Event-related potentials and recognition memory
Rugg, M. D., & Curran, T. (2007) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2007.04.004 · Cited by 1,283
DeLong, K. A., Urbach, T. P., & Marta Kutas, A. (2005) · Nature Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nn1504 · Cited by 1,236
Event-related potential studies of attention.
Luck, S., Woodman, G., & Vogel, E. (2000) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/s1364-6613(00)01545-x · Cited by 1,209
The E-Z Reader model of eye-movement control in reading: Comparisons to other models
Reichle, E. D., Rayner, K., & Pollatsek, A. (2003) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x03000104 · Cited by 1,130
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Items 1,001–1,008 of 1,008
Implicit attitudes and the perception of sociolinguistic variation
Loudermilk, B. C. (2015) · IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society · doi:10.1075/impact.39.06lou · Cited by 19
Gendron, M., Mesquita, B., & Barrett, L. F. (2020) · Culture, Mind, and Brain · doi:10.1017/9781108695374.010 · Cited by 20
Emotional responses to mortality salience: Behavioral and ERPs evidence
Huang, S., Du, H., & Qu, C. (2021) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0248699 · Cited by 15
Osugi, K., Ihara, A. S., Nakajima, K., Kake, A., Ishimaru, K., Yokota, Y., & Naruse, Y. (2019) · Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · doi:10.3389/fnhum.2019.00275 · Cited by 15
Food Perception and Categorization
Foroni, F., & Rumiati, R. I. (2017) · Handbook of Categorization in Cognitive Science · doi:10.1016/b978-0-08-101107-2.00012-9 · Cited by 13
Rethinking Predictive Processing
Furutachi, S., & Hofer, S. B. (2026) · Annual Review of Neuroscience · doi:10.1146/annurev-neuro-102124-031410 · Cited by 3
Evidence and implications of abnormal predictive coding in dementia
Kocagoncu, E., Klimovich-Gray, A., Hughes, L. E., & Rowe, J. B. (2021) · Brain · doi:10.1093/brain/awab254 · Cited by 3
Cross-modal symbolic processing can elicit either an N2 or a protracted N2/N400 response
Griffiths, O., Le Pelley, M. E., Jack, B. N., Luque, D., & Whitford, T. J. (2016) · Psychophysiology · doi:10.1111/psyp.12649 · Cited by 3
Metadata
- Authors
- Kutas, M., & Federmeier, K. D.
- Affiliations
- Departments of Cognitive Science and Neurosciences, Center for Research in Language, Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind, University of California, San Diego, California 92093;
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
- ORCID
- Federmeier, Kara D.
- Venue
- Annual Review of Psychology
- Publisher
- Annual Reviews
- Published
- 2011-01-10
- Volume
- 62
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 621-647
- ISSN
- 0066-4308 (ISSN-L)
- 1545-2085
- PMC
- PMC4052444
- OpenAlex
- W2141138276
- Cited by
- 4,377
- References
- 106
- Citations by year
- 2026: 317 · 2025: 354 · 2024: 323 · 2023: 302 · 2022: 312 · 2021: 358 · 2020: 434 · 2019: 346 · 2018: 276 · 2017: 274 · 2016: 237 · 2015: 266 · 2014: 220 · 2013: 166 · 2012: 136
- FWCI
- 8.31
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Annual Review of Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute on Aging (R01AG008313, AG26308, R01AG026308, AG83013)
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD022614, R01HD022614)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Categorization, perception, and language
- Keywords
- N400, event-related potentials, semantic processing, semantic memory, language processing, meaning processing, top-down processing, bottom-up processing, word recognition, pseudowords, mathematical symbols
- MeSH terms
- Brain, Brain Mapping, Electroencephalography, Evoked Potentials, Humans, Language, Memory
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
