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In the present study, we conducted an event-related potentials (ERP) study to examine episodic and semantic memory. We focused on two well-known patterns: the semantic N400 and the old/new fN400. Some researchers have argued that they reflect the same neuropsychological response (Voss & Federmeier, 2011). Others have suggested that they have distinct spatial-temporal signatures and reflect different psychological processes (Bridger, Bader, Kriukova, Unger, & Mecklinger, 2012). In the present study, we analyzed data using the basic N400/fN400 paradigm. We expect to find similar results to Bridger et al. (2012) in that the N400 and fN400 to be reliably different in topography and function.

The current study investigated the cognitive organization of alcohol expectancies using event-related potentials (ERPs). Building on previous behavioral and ERP paradigms, the goal of the current study was to quantify the relationship among alcohol expectancies using ERP indices of salience, congruence, and cognitive distance. The ERP components being evaluated fit perfectly into the alcohol expectancy theory and research; however, implementing specific paradigms to reliably measure individual differences in alcohol expectancies using ERPs has proven to be more elusive than originally thought. This study utilized established cognitive modeling techniques coupled with ERP responses to linguistic stimuli. In essence, this study provides an implicit measure of how particular types of words, in the context of alcohol, are categorized and integrated into individuals' expectancy frameworks. The study looked at two specific ERP components, the P300 and the N400, that have been shown to be sensitive to expectancy violations. In a sentence processing task the P300 was predicted to be related to individuals' alcohol expectancies and in a word pair task the N400 was predicted to index these expectancies. Results indicated that the P300 and N400 were both related to alcohol expectancies in the sentence task and the N400 was related to alcohol expectancies in the word pair task. While the results supported parts of the hypotheses, they were not unequivocal endorsements of the hypothesized relationships, perhaps highlighting the countervailing forces of salience and expectancy congruence. Furthermore, there were unexpected differences between males and females in the sample that interacted with the effect of expectancy on ERPs. In sum, prior research has highlighted individuals' expectations about alcohol as a mediator of biopsychosocial risk for alcohol use disorders (Goldman, 2002), and the results of this study provide a model for how ERP measures of expectancy could capture an aspect of individuals' risk based on reactions to expectancy related stimuli

Nepalese banks have witnessed a considerable shift in recent years towards its loans and advances by focussing on consumer credit. The traditional method of evaluating applicants that is based on the judgmental system is increasingly becoming inappropriate for the large volume of applicants. As a result of the shift in the lending market and the increased emphasis placed by the regulator on risk management, Nepalese banks have to rethinking on the way they assess their applicants for credit. Traditionally, the credit decision whether to accept/reject an applicant has been based on the subjective evaluation of the credit application forms and supporting documents. The literature advocates an objective approach on the lines of credit scoring which is fast, reliable, consistent and risk-based. On the strengths of this argument, this thesis presents the qualitative and quantitative considerations including issues relating to data capture, model development and implementation of a formal credit scoring model within the Nepalese Banking sector. The questionnaire was administered with the non-managerial level staff, the respondents in the expert interviews were managerial level staff and the database for model development were taken from a home loans customer database of a typical Nepalese bank. The findings of this work point to the fact that it is possible to develop such an objective model using six key characteristics and jointly produce a model that will predict the quality of loan with an acceptable degree of confidence.

Purpose: This study aims to achieve two objectives. First, to explore the main concerns of corporate governance stakeholders in Nigeria, focusing on three broad fields of institutionalisation: political, social and economic. Second, to examine the coverage accorded to the main institutional influences in the primary code of corporate governance in Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach: Employing an intrepretivist research philosophy, the study adopts a qualitative research strategy. Data was collected using semi-structured, face-to-face interviews from three groups of stakeholders (executives, regulators and corporate governance consultants). Their responses and views were analysed using a qualitative content analysis (QCA) technique. Findings: In highlighting the main institutional elements driving corporate governance in Nigeria, this study revealed that individuals wield the power to influence existing institutions in developing countries. This contradicts the position in developed economies where the robustness of institutional frameworks acts as a constraint on the behaviour of economic agents. This thesis also show that the recognition accorded to the main institutional frames in the primary code of corporate governance is inadequate. Based on these findings, a bottom-up approach to corporate governance is proposed where the concerns of economic agents are prioritised, as a strategy for building sustainable institutional frameworks. Originality/value: The study reinforced the need to re-examine the basis of agency and institutional theories in the context of developing economies. The study also made a case for the re-evaluation of the significance of executives in agency theory literature regarding developing economies, relying on the level of economic sophistication and the general lack of knowledge by shareholders with respect to their rights. This observation will enrich the scholarship on agency and institutional theories as this study draws attention to alternative strategies for understanding agency (human institutionalism) and institutional (bottom-up approach) theories.

A large body of research relates families’ socioeconomic status (SES) to child language development (Hoff & Tian, 2005). Results from these studies indicate preschoolers from low SES backgrounds may have underdeveloped linguistic foundations required for future academic success (Sirin, 2005; Lacouri & Tissington, 2011). These differences have been said to create a 30 million word-gap between the language experiences of low and middle to high SES children by the age of 3 years. Thus, children who come from lower SES backgrounds often lack the vocabulary knowledge used in school and in textbooks (Hart & Risley, 1995). One index of SES is parental level of education, specifically maternal education (Hoff & Tien, 2005). The current study compared the language processes related to word knowledge of 17 preschoolers who live in lower maternal education attainment (LEA) homes and 17 preschoolers who live in higher maternal education attainment (HEA) homes. An event related potential (ERP) thought to index semantic congruity and comprehension monitoring, the N400, was used. Preschoolers listened to nouns and verbs presented aurally that matched or mismatched with pictures to understand how preschoolers from varying SES backgrounds process linguistic stimuli. Additionally, participants completed an Auditory Oddball Paradigm, or tone judgment task, to evaluate how preschoolers categorized and judged non-linguistic stimuli (e.g., standard and target pure tones). Tone judgment results revealed a Group x region midline interaction, indicating that the groups may recruit different neural resources to judge tones. The noun picture task results indicated that the HEA group processed familiar object labels more robustly and quicker than the LEA group. N400 results did not differ for the verb picture task. These results may indicate that both groups require more neural resources to process action labels and that perhaps verbs represent a higher level of linguistic complexity for young children. These results provide preliminary evidence of neural linguistic processing differences between preschoolers from varying socioeconomic backgrounds. Because of the lack of minimal differences on associated behavioral measures of language, one may speculate that ERP underpinnings as exemplified in the current study may hold promise for identifying subtle underlying differences in the processing of language among preschoolers

A word’s predictability has been shown to influence its processing. Two methodologies have demonstrated this time and again: eye tracking while reading and Event Related Potentials (ERPs). In eye tracking while reading, words that are made predictable by their contexts (as operationalized by the cloze task; Taylor, 1953) receive shorter first fixation times (Staub, 2015, for a review) as well as shorter gaze duration and increased skipping rate. In ERPs, the N400 component’s amplitude has also been shown to inversely correlate with a word’s predictability (Kutas and Federmeier, 2011, for a review). Despite the similarities, there is much reason to suspect that these two measures are reflections of different underlying cognitive processes, both modulated by a word’s predictability. We utilized the simultaneous collection of EEG and eye tracking data to investigate the differential effects of lexical predictability and stimulus quality on these measures. We found that these two manipulations had additive effects in the eye movement record, but yet only the manipulation of predictability influenced the N400 Fixation Related Potential (FRP) amplitude, with stimulus quality influencing neither the amplitude nor the latency of the N400. These findings provide no evidence for there being a role for predictability in early visual processing, and thus call into question the relative ordering of lexical processing effects laid out in Staub and Goddard (2019). Our findings also suggest that the N400’s underlying process is strictly temporally fixed and indexes the lexical processing difficulty left after there has already been a convergence of evidence towards the identity of the observed stimulus.

Music's effect on non-musical domains has been an area of intense research. Musical training has been shown to positively affect the processing of phonology, lexical tone, and syntax. While music also has positive effects in second language phonology acquisition, its effect on grammar acquisition is contested. This thesis aimed to study the under-researched topic of music and second language grammar acquisition using electroencephalography (EEG), thereby studying the electrical responses of the brain. Beginning level Spanish students were trained on a new grammatical principle prior to performing a grammaticality judgment task, and their behavioral and neural results were analyzed. Those students with a stronger musical aptitude did not perform better than the other students in the grammaticality judgement task, nor was there any difference in their neural responses to critical syntactic violations.

<p>Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used extensively in the scientific research of cognitive processing such as language comprehension. Specific responses, such as the negativity called N400 (Kutas & Hillyard, 1980), have in the literature typically been associated with semantic violations in sentences. Another electrophysiological response, the positive P600 waveform, has mostly been associated with syntactic and morphological violations. However, recently, the P600 has been reported also in connection with semantic violations (Kuperberg et al, 2003; van Herten, 2004; Osterhout, 2004). The present research further explores the neurophysiological correlates of processing sentences with semantic and morpho-syntactic violations. It tests the functional interpretations of the P600 component, which has been proposed to reflect syntactic error detection, context updating, or syntactic reanalysis or repair. I contrasted semantic and syntactic possessive violations. The semantic violation conditions (i.e. <em>The mother borrowed the <strong>car’s daughter</strong> for work yesterday</em>), morphosyntactic violations (i.e. <em>The mother borrowed the <strong>daughter car</strong> for work yesterday) </em>and double violation sentences (i.e. <em>The mother borrowed the <strong>car daughter</strong> for work yesterday) </em>were derived from the control condition, (i.e. <em>The mother borrowed the <strong>daughter’s car</strong> for work yesterday). </em>I explored whether the P600 component may index more general processes than ones related to syntactic error detection. An N400 was seen to our semantic manipulation, i.e. <em>The mother borrowed the <strong>car’s daughter</strong> for work yesterday.</em> However, none of the conditions produced a P600.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

Cochlea-Implantate sind Neuroprothesen, die es Gehörlosen ermöglichen, Zugang zu auditiver Information wieder zu erlangen. Allerdings ist das resultierende Signal stark verzerrt bzw. degradiert und eine erfolgreiche Adaptation oft unvollständig. Das Verständnis zugrundeliegender perzeptueller Lernprozesse ist somit von enormer klinischer Bedeutung. Perzeptuelles Lernen degradierter Sprache lässt sich mittels Noise-Vokodierung bei Hörgesunden simulieren. In Bildgebungsstudien konnte anhand funktioneller Magnetresonanztomographie gezeigt werden, dass perzeptuelles Lernen degradierter Sprache mit einer Aktivitätssteigerung im linken inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) und linken inferior parietal cortex (IPC) assoziiert war. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht den Einfluss von fazilitierender, nicht-invasiver Hirnstromstimulation (anodale transkranielle Gleichstromstimulation, tDCS) über dem linken IFG und linken IPC auf das perzeptuelle Lernen {\\itshape{Noise}}-vokodierter Sprache. Die Probanden trainierten die Diskrimination von Minimal- (\"Tisch\"- \"Fisch\") und identen (\"Tisch\"- \"Tisch\") Wortpaaren, während der erste Stimulus akustisch degradiert, der zweite in geschriebener Form präsentiert wurden. Vor und nach dem Training wurden die trainierten Stimuli und eine gleiche Anzahl untrainierter Stimuli präsentiert. Perzeptuelles Lernen wurde in unserer Studie als eine Verbesserung der Diskriminationsleistung untrainierter Wortpaare operationalisiert. Zudem wurde vor und nach dem Training ein Elektroenzephalogramm abgeleitet. Auf elektrophysiologischer Ebene wurde der Einfluss des Lernvorgangs und der tDCS auf die N400 untersucht, welche mit der Verarbeitung lexiko-semantischer Informationen assoziiert ist. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass eine anodale tDCS über dem linken IFG perzeptuelles Lernen stark degradierter Sprache fazilitierte, während bei einer Placebo- bzw. einer Stimulation über dem linken IPC kein perzeptuelles Lernen stattfand.