Word class and word frequency in the MMN looking glass

Abstract

The effects of lexical meaning and lexical familiarity on auditory deviance detection were investigated by presenting oddball sequences of words, while participants ignored the stimuli. Stimulus sequences were composed of words that were varied in word class (nouns vs. functions words) and frequency of language use (high vs. low frequency) in a factorial design with the roles of frequently presented stimuli (Standards) and infrequently presented ones (Deviants) were fully crossed. Deviants elicited the Mismatch Negativity component of the event-related brain potential. Modulating effects of lexical meaning were obtained, revealing processing advantages for denotationally meaningful items. However, no effect of word frequency was observed. These results demonstrate that an apparently low-level function, such as auditory deviance detection utilizes information from the mental lexicon even for task-irrelevant stimuli.