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Electrophysiological Evidence for Sentence Comprehension - Wings

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The participant had to press one of the two buttons of the Response Box, one <strong>for</strong> each<br />

experimental condition (violation and non-violation) as soon as he/she decided whether<br />

the target word (the last word in a sentence, the second word in word pair experiments)<br />

was correct or not. The data were collected on a recording computer in a <strong>for</strong>mat suitable<br />

<strong>for</strong> statistical analysis.<br />

b. The behavioral measures (verbal and non-verbal abilities) were tested in the Clinical<br />

Research Unit. Each child was tested by a language and speech pathologist and a<br />

psychologist who administrated the WISC and Raven Progressive Matrices Test. The<br />

testing was completed in two sessions (i.e. verbal and non-verbal abilities were measured<br />

separately) due to fatigue and loss of concentration inevitable when the tests took more<br />

than 45 minues. A child and the test administrator were alone in the room, but the one-<br />

way mirror allowed <strong>for</strong> monitoring the test procedure.<br />

All ERP recordings were per<strong>for</strong>med in the Laboratory <strong>for</strong> Psycholinguistic Research,<br />

University of Zagreb. The recordings were per<strong>for</strong>med in a darkened room with the<br />

participants sitting in an armchair in front of the computer screen. All recordings were<br />

per<strong>for</strong>med on a 40 channel NeuroScan NuAmps amplifier. The system consists of the<br />

amplifier, Stim II device <strong>for</strong> precise presentation of the stimuli (with 1 ms precision),<br />

stimulus computer and a recording computer with software <strong>for</strong> on-line and off-line<br />

analysis (Acquire and Edit, respectively). NeuroScan QuickCaps with 30 Ag/AgCl<br />

recording electrodes, 4 ocular (HEOL, HEOR, VEOU, VEOL) and 2 mastoid electrodes<br />

(M1 and M2) were used in all recordings. For statistical analysis SPSS 13.0 (2004)<br />

83

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