Electrophysiological correlates of semantic relationships in the elderly

• Grant number: 18/03703-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2018
• End date: July 15, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Júlio César Coelho de Rose
• Grantee: Guilherme Sbrocco
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 18/25502-2 - Electrophysiological correlates of semantic relationships in the elderly, BE.EP.IC

Abstract

Investigations on electrophysiological correlates of equivalence relations have been advancing in recent years. These studies generally observed electrophysiological patterns known as N400 when participants performed tasks involving stimuli of the same equivalence class compared to stimuli that did not involve the same class. This effect is typically found when comparing stimuli with and without semantic relationship learned over the lifetime of individuals. The literature shows, however, that this effect is reduced or non-existent in the elderly. Rezende (2017) observed the absence of the N400 effect in participants between 60 and 71 years old, which performed tasks of semantic categorization between pairs of abstract stimuli that might or might not be of the same class of equivalence learned previously during the experiment. This project is an integrate part of Rezende research (2017) 20 elderly people between 60 and 70 years old will perform similar tasks and semantic categorization as Rezende (2017) however using words of the Portuguese language. The objective is to observe whether the same electrophysiological patterns of response will be similar in both experiments. (AU)