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 (The folder “experimental paradigm” includes the experiment presentation scripts and stimuli). 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. EEG analyses scripts are included in the folder “analyses scripts”.