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1. Co‐Registered Eye‐Movements and Brain Potentials Reveal Multiple Effects of Context Across the Visual Field in Natural Reading

   https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.70173  

   Copeland, Allyson; Payne, Brennan R (November 2025, Psychophysiology)

   ABSTRACT This study investigates how expectancy and plausibility influence behavioral and neural measures of language processing during naturalistic reading comprehension. Prior event‐related potential (ERP) studies show evidence of distinct post‐N400 positivities to violations of semantic expectancy and plausibility using artificial serial presentation but have yet to establish these phenomena during naturalistic reading. Therefore, we recorded simultaneous eye movements and EEG while participants read highly constraining sentences with expected, unexpected (but plausible), and anomalous target words. Time locked to the pre‐target word, we observed a contextually graded parafoveal N400 effect. The N400 was facilitated (i.e., reduced) when the word was subsequently fixated, suggesting trans‐saccadic integration of semantic features. At target fixation, we also observed a late anteriorly distributed positivity to unexpected target words and a posteriorly distributed positivity to anomalous target words, effects that were not clearly present when time locked to the pre‐target word. Eye‐tracking (ET) measures show that readers were sensitive to both expectancy and plausibility at target fixation. In conclusion, we show that readers can begin accessing semantic information in parafoveal vision, but higher‐level semantic processing may require the orchestration of both parafoveal and foveal representations. 

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2. Comparing Simultaneous Scalp EEG Recordings from the OpenBCI Cyton and Brain Products BrainAmp

   https://doi.org/10.3390/s26041153  

   D’Amico, Alessandro; de_Sa, Virginia R (February 2026, Sensors)

   Portable, affordable electroencephalography (EEG) amplifiers could enable neuroscience-scale data collection. The open-source OpenBCI Cyton shows promise in this regard, but remains undervalidated for cognitive neuroscience ERP experiments. We simultaneously recorded eight scalp electrodes with both Cyton and gold-standard Brain Products BrainAmp amplifiers across P3b-, ERN-, and N400-eliciting tasks. Five healthy volunteers completed visual oddball (P3b), flankers (ERN), and word association (N400) tasks. We quantified within-subject signal similarity using Pearson r2, mean absolute error (MAE), mean arctangent absolute percentage error (MAAPE), and within-component window mean and standard deviation. Cyton signals showed r2 = 97–100%, MAE ≈ 1 µV, and MAAPE ≈ 20% with BrainAmp signals at ERP sites of interest. No significant differences emerged in mean amplitudes within ERP component windows across amplifiers, though standard deviations differed significantly. These results demonstrate that the Cyton records highly similar but not identical scalp EEG as research-grade equipment. This first multi-subject, concurrent scalp EEG validation across multiple ERP components validates the Cyton for cognitive neuroscience and supports broader adoption of affordable open-source tools. 

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3. Parafoveally perceived orthographic cues facilitate foveal semantic processing: Evidence from event-related potentials

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2025.105609  

   Nestor, Brian; Elaboudi, Ayah; Milligan, Sara; Schotter, Elizabeth R (September 2025, Brain and Language)

   Readers extract information from words viewed parafoveally, but it is unclear whether this processing is limited to orthography or if it extends to lexico-semantic content. In the current ERP study, we measured the N400 responses to words that were perceived parafoveally and/or foveally using the RSVP-with-flankers paradigm and a parafoveal masking manipulation. We compared anomalous orthographically related (neighbor) and unrelated (non-neighbor) words to expected words to determine whether the N400 responses were driven by orthographic and/or semantic processing. We observed a large parafoveal N400 effect in response to the non-neighbors (versus expected), and a smaller, later parafoveal N400 for neighbors, suggesting that the parafoveal response is largely orthographic in nature. We also observed a significant reduction in foveal N400 magnitude when non-neighbor words were previously visible parafoveally (but not for the foveal N400 response to neighbors), suggesting that facilitation of foveal processing is driven by parafoveal detection of orthographic violations. 

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4. Observing gestures during L2 word learning facilitates differentiation between unfamiliar speech sounds and word meanings

   Morett, Laura M (August 2023, Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society)

   Goldwater, M; Angora, F; Hayes, B; Ong, D (Ed.)

   This study investigated how observing pitch gestures conveying lexical tones and representational gestures conveying word meanings when learning L2 Mandarin words differing in lexical tone affects their subsequent semantic and phonological processing in L1 English speakers using the N400 event-related potential (ERP). Larger N400s for English target words mismatching vs. matching Mandarin prime words in meaning were observed for words learned with pitch and representational gesture, but not no gesture. Additionally, larger N400s for Mandarin target words mismatching vs. matching Mandarin prime words in lexical tone were observed for words learned with pitch gesture, but not representational or no gesture. These findings provide the first ERP evidence that observing gestures conveying phonological and semantic information during L2 word learning enhances subsequent phonological and semantic processing of learned L2 words. 

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5. Complex span measures of working memory do not mediate the effects of age on the P3 and N400 ERPs

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbas.2025.100140  

   Joshi, Jasmin; Denaro, Chandlyr M; Hartley, Alan A; Reed, Catherine L (January 2025, Aging Brain)

   Working memory (WM), the temporary maintenance of a limited amount of information in an accessible state, is required for the performance of many tasks. Studies have shown that WM demands are related to the neural processing of tasks requiring attention: Age affects the ERP components associated with WM context updating processes in the visual oddball task (P3) and semantic processing in the word-pair judgment task (N400). This study investigated whether WM capacity measured by complex span tasks mediates the effects of age on these ERPs. Younger adults (YA, n = 44, ages 18–23 yr) and older adults (OA, n = 41, ages 69–89 yr) completed operation, reading, and symmetry complex span tasks and two ERP tasks (P3/visual oddball; N400/word-pair judgment). Results showed age-related differences for all complex span tests. Principal components analysis of these tests showed a single factor for both groups, so a combined WM capacity factor score was created. Regressions of age group and WM factor score on P3 and N400 amplitudes and latencies showed that OAs had relatively lower amplitudes and longer latencies. However complex span was not related to P3 or N400 amplitudes or latencies and that result was the same for younger and older adults; that is, complex span did not mediate the age effects. WM processes indexed by the P3 and N400 components appear to be different from those elicited by complex span tasks. Attentional control processes of WM influence oddball and semantic judgement tasks more than storage components. 

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