Open AccessComparison of block and event‐related fMRI designs in evaluating the word‐frequency effect
Author(s) -
Chee Michael W.L.,
Venkatraman Vinod,
Westphal Christopher,
Siong Soon Chun
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
human brain mapping
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.005
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1097-0193
pISSN - 1065-9471
DOI - 10.1002/hbm.10092
Subject(s) - predictability , block design , stimulus (psychology) , event related potential , associative property , computer science , psychology , word lists by frequency , natural language processing , speech recognition , artificial intelligence , cognitive psychology , electroencephalography , neuroscience , mathematics , statistics , combinatorics , pure mathematics , sentence
Printed word frequency can modulate retrieval effort in a task requiring associative semantic judgment. Event‐related fMRI, while avoiding stimulus order predictability, is in theory statistically less powerful than block designs. We compared one event‐related and two block designs that evaluated the same semantic judgment task and found that similar brain regions demonstrated the word frequency effect. Although the responses were lower in amplitude, event‐related fMRI was able to detect the word frequency effect to a comparable degree compared to the block designs. The detection of a frequency effect with the event‐related design also suggests that stimulus–order predictability may not be as serious a concern in block designs as might be supposed. Hum. Brain Mapping 18:186–193, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.