Neural correlates of the implicit processing of grammatical and stereotypical gender violations: A masked and unmasked priming study.
The aim of this study was to explore the neural correlates of the automatic activation of gender stereotypes by using the masked and unmasked priming technique. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants were presented with an Italian third-person singular pronoun (lui or lei) that were preceded by either a grammatically-marked (e.g., passeggeraFEM, pensionatoMASC) or stereotypically-associated (e.g., insegnanteFEM, conducenteMASC) role noun. Participants were required to judge the grammatical gender of the personal pronoun ignoring the preceding word. This word was presented in a masked or unmasked way. The results revealed slower reaction times and larger N400, in both the masked and unmasked conditions, when the pronouns were preceded by gender-incongruent than gender-congruent grammatical and stereotypical primes. A P300 effect also emerged in both masked and unmasked conditions for the grammatical gender mismatch between the antecedent and the pronoun. These results provide evidence that gender stereotypes can strongly influence our behavior even under unconscious conditions.
['Pesciarelli|F|F|', 'Scorolli|C|C|', 'Cacciari|C|C|']
D000293:Adolescent D000328:Adult D004569:Electroencephalography D005071:Evoked Potentials D005260:Female D006801:Humans D007802:Language D008297:Male D010470:Perceptual Masking D011930:Reaction Time D060865:Repetition Priming D012660:Semantics D013239:Stereotyped Behavior D013240:Stereotyping D055815:Young Adult
Gender stereotypes Event-related potentials N400 P300 Masked priming