ABSTRACT

Changes in word production occur across the lifespan, with adolescence representing a knot point between children’s and adults’ performance and underlying brain processes. Previous studies on referential word production using picture naming tasks have shown a completely adult-like pattern in 17-year-old adolescents and an intermediate pattern between children and adults in adolescents aged 14–16 years old, suggesting a possible involvement of visuo-conceptual processes in the transition from childhood to adulthood. Given the visual nature of the picture naming task, it is unclear whether changes in visuo-conceptual processes are specifically related to the referential word production or if overall changes in conceptual to lexical processes drive maturation. To answer this question, we turned to an inferential word production task, i.e., naming from auditory definitions, involving different conceptual to lexical processes relative to referential naming. Behavior and electroencephalographic Event-Related Potentials (ERP) in a (visual) referential word production task and an (auditory) inferential word production task were recorded and compared in three groups of adolescents (respectively, aged 10 to 13, 14 to 16, and 17 to 18). Only the youngest group displayed longer production latencies and lower accuracy than the two older groups of adolescents who performed similarly on both tasks. Crucially, ERP waveform analysis and topographic pattern analysis revealed significant intergroup differences on both tasks. Changes across ages are not merely linked to the visual-conceptual processes of a picture naming task but are rather related to lexical-semantic processes involved in word production.

摘要

单词生成的变化发生在整个生命周期中，青春期代表儿童和成人的表现与潜在的大脑过程之间的结点。先前关于使用图片命名任务产生指称词的研究表明，17 岁青少年的模式完全类似于成人，而 14-16 岁青少年的模式介于儿童和成人之间，表明可能涉及视觉概念从童年到成年的过渡过程。鉴于图片命名任务的视觉性质，尚不清楚视觉概念过程的变化是否与指称词的产生特别相关，或者概念到词汇过程的整体变化是否推动了成熟。为了回答这个问题，我们转向了一个推论性的单词生成任务，即 从听觉定义命名，涉及与指称命名相关的不同概念到词汇过程。记录并比较三组青少年（分别为 10 至 13 岁、14 至 16 岁和17 至 18）。与在两项任务上表现相似的两组年龄较大的青少年相比，只有最年轻的一组表现出更长的生产延迟和更低的准确性。至关重要的是，ERP 波形分析和地形模式分析揭示了这两项任务的显着组间差异。