Detection without further processing or processing without automatic detection? Differential ERP responses to lexical-semantic processing in toddlers at high clinical risk for autism and language disorder

Dataset including the individual ERP data used in the statistical analyses.

Brain activity related to lexical-semantic processing was assessed by recording EEG during a picture-word matching paradigm. Within the experimental paradigm, each auditory stimulus had one of the three types of relationship to the picture content: (1) congruous (Match condition, M), whereby the exact label of the picture was presented; (2) incongruous, (MisMatch condition, MM), whereby a word not semantically related and/or phonologically similar to the picture label was presented; (3) incongruous Pseudo-Word, (Pseudo-Word condition, PW).

Based on previous results, we focused our analyses on three electrophysiological components. (1) The “PL priming effect” was expected to be localized on fronto-central areas in an early TW (200-400 ms); (2) The N400 component was expected in a middle TW (400-700 ms) with a broadly distributed localization; (3) The “Late Positive Component” (LPC) was expected to be localized on posterior areas in a late TW (700-1000 ms) only in the comparison between M and MM words.