Schedule of Events | Symposia

N400 Evidence for Rapid Semantic Integration Through Fast Mapping

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Patric Meyer^1,2 (patric.meyer@srh.de), Ann-Kathrin Zaiser¹, Lisa Festag³, Regine Bader³; ¹SRH University Heidelberg, ²Heidelberg University, ³Saarland University

Recent evidence challenges traditional theories of memory consolidation, suggesting that novel picture-label associations can be rapidly integrated into semantic memory networks through fast mapping (FM). In FM, participants infer that an unfamiliar label corresponds to an unknown item by excluding a known item presented alongside it. There is behavioral evidence that a high feature overlap between the unknown and the known item is associated with rapid semantic integration of the picture-label associations, as measured by semantic priming effects. Moreover, the perirhinal cortex (PrC), a medial temporal lobe structure specialized in distinguishing highly similar objects and facilitating semantic integration contributes to successful learning through FM if feature overlap is high. We manipulated feature overlap and assessed semantic integration using event-related potentials within a semantic priming task, in which the newly learned labels served as primes for existing words. Our study revealed a robust centro-parietal N400 semantic priming effect (i.e. less negative ERPs to words preceded by related primes as compared to unrelated primes) in a high-overlap FM condition. Moreover, the N400 semantic priming effect was significantly stronger in this high-overlap FM condition compared to a low-overlap FM condition. These findings emphasize the influence of high visuo-semantic similarity in accelerating the incorporation of novel associations into semantic memory networks. They highlight the critical role of the PrC and cortical networks in this process, offering neurofunctional evidence that challenges traditional views of memory consolidation, and provide new insights into how the brain integrates novel information into existing knowledge frameworks.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Semantic