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Context Effects in a Category Verification Task as Assessed by Event-Related Brain Potential (ERP) Measures | Heinze et al. 

science•research paper•View Source
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Importance
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Date Added
8.28.26
TLDR
There is a neural signal for meaning that depends on typicality but ignores how carefully the participant is responding. Response time is contaminated because it mixes conceptual representation with decision strategy.
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Tags
  • Task: participants saw a category followed by an item and answered yes or no—for example, “Is a crow a bird?”
  • The researchers varied:
    • how typical true items were, such as blue jay versus ostrich
    • how sneaky false items were, such as bat versus hammer, which changed how carefully participants responded
  • Response time changed with both manipulations, but neural activity changed only with typicality.
  • This separates conceptual representation from response strategy: if a decoder’s output shifts between easy and sneaky contexts, it may depend on decision or behavior rather than the concept itself.