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Canonical ERP effects do not depend on spoken language experience but vary in deaf signers
Poster Session D, Thursday, October 1, 4:30 - 6:30 pm, Wangari Maathai
Zed Sehyr1, Erin Campbell2; 1Chapman University, 2Boston University
The goal of much research on the neurobiology of language is to identify neural signatures that reliably index perceptual, cognitive, or linguistic processes. Many widely cited neural markers, particularly event‑related potential (ERP) components, are treated as canonical indices of visual cognition, cognitive control, and semantic processing. However, these signatures are overwhelmingly derived from hearing individuals with full auditory access who acquire a spoken language from birth. As a result, ERP research predominantly reflects neural profiles shaped by a narrow range of sensory and linguistic experiences. An open question is whether these neural profiles reflect invariant properties of linguistic and cognitive processes, or whether they are shaped by lifelong perceptual and communicative experience. We examined whether, and how, neural signatures of well‑characterized ERP components spanning early perception, attention, cognitive control, motor preparation, and semantic processing change as a function of lifelong deafness and sign language use. We also examined whether baseline ERP markers covary across tasks, which would suggest shared underlying processing mechanisms, and whether these signatures are associated with individual differences in language and reading skill. Participants were drawn from an ongoing dataset that currently includes 23 deaf ASL signers and 27 hearing non‑signers (target Ns = 40). Critically, subsamples were matched on standardized measures of written language proficiency, including reading fluency, vocabulary, and spelling, as well as ASL proficiency in the deaf group, allowing us to dissociate effects of sensory and language experience. Using tasks adapted from the ERP‑CORE battery (Kappenman et al., 2021), we measured the N170, N2pc, P3, lateralized readiness potential (LRP), error‑related negativity (ERN), and the N400 elicited by both written words and ASL signs. EEG was recorded from 32 scalp electrodes using a BrainVision actiCHamp system, and data were processed using EEGLAB and ERPLAB. Preliminary results indicate that both deaf and hearing participants exhibit canonical ERP components, including clear N170, N2pc, P3, and N400 effects, confirming shared functional architecture across groups. ERPs from hearing participants largely replicate established patterns reported in prior work (Kappenman et al., 2021). In contrast, deaf signers show reliable and systematically altered profiles across multiple components, with differences in amplitude, timing, and topography that persist after matching on language proficiency. Specifically, visual–spatial attention in deaf signers is characterized by a later but larger N2pc, error monitoring and motor preparation by attenuated and less lateralized ERN and LRP responses, and attentional updating by a reduced differentiation in the P3 between rare and frequent stimuli. Early visual responses indexed by the N170 show enhanced responses to objects and sensitivity to faces. In contrast, language‑related processing indexed by the N400 is robust and scales with language proficiency rather than sensory experience. These findings suggest that ERP components indexing basic cognitive processes reflect experience‑dependent adaptations in visual–spatial attention, motor planning, error monitoring, memory updating, and early visual recognition, potentially shaped by lifelong perceptual and communicative experience. Establishing normed ERP baselines from diverse populations may therefore be critical for avoiding the conflation of experience‑driven neural architectures with invariant properties of visual and cognitive processing.
Topic Areas: Control, Selection, and Executive Processes, Multisensory or Sensorimotor Integration