Electrophysiology of Word Learning

Capacity to quickly acquire new words and learn language makes us who we are — communicating human beings. With modern brain research methodologies, we can now uncover the neural mechanisms underlying this unique word learning skill. In this chapter, we specifically focus on electrophysiology of word learning, with a particular emphasis on the time course of the learning-related brain activity. We first briefly review a selection of electrophysiological responses traditionally linked to word comprehension and describe what types of processing they are considered to reflect. Then, we review studies on two distinct word acquisition strategies — implicit and explicit learning of novel words, and, finally, studies that examined learning of new morphological units. We conclude by making suggestions for further research.