ABSTRACT
The present study is designed to establish how lexical frequency of Russian words influences the acoustic mismatch negativity (MMN) latency and amplitude. The event related potentials (ERP) were recorded according to the multi-deviant passive odd-ball paradigm by using Russian words with different lexical frequencies and pseudowords. We found that the high-frequency words presentation led to a significantly more pronounced MMN response relative to the low-frequency one. The high-frequency words also evoked an earlier response, indicating more rapid access to a frequently used lexical entry. We suggest that a more pronounced amplitude and an earlier latency of acoustic MMN of high-frequency versus low-frequency items is a result of the word memory traces activation as more strongly connected assemblies of neurons. The MMN amplitude and latency for words were partly matched with the MMN for pseudowords (the analog of high-frequency word evoked the most pronounced response and the analog of low-frequency word evoked the weakest response), but the MMN amplitude and latency for pseudowords were significantly more pronounced and longer. We interpret this as evidence that processing of meaningless or unknown items is longer and their discrimination is more late and inaccurate than the discrimination of meaningful and frequently activated language elements.
