The remarkable rapidity and effortlessness of speech perception and word reading by skilled listeners or readers suggest implicit or automatic mechanisms underlying language processing. In speech perception, the implicit mechanisms are reflected by the auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) response, suggesting that phonemic, lexical, semantic, and syntactic information are automatically and rapidly processed in the absence of focused attention. In visual word reading, implicit orthographic and lexical processing are reflected by visual mismatch negativity (vMMN), the visual counterpart of auditory MMN. The semantic processing of spoken words is reflected by MMN. This study investigated whether semantic processing is also reflected by vMMN. For this purpose, visual Chinese words belonging to different semantic categories (color, taste, and action) were presented to participants in oddball paradigms. A set of words belonging to the same semantic category was frequently presented as standards; a word belonging to a different semantic category was presented sporadically as deviant. Participants were instructed to perform a visual cross-change detection task and ignore the words. Significant vMMN was elicited in Experiments 1 to 3, in which the deviant word carried a semantic radical that overtly indicated the word’s semantic category information. The vMMNs were most prominent around 260 ms after word onset, were parieto-occipital distributed, and were significantly left-hemisphere lateralized, suggesting rapid semantic processing of the visual words’ category-related information. No significant vMMN was elicited in Experiment 4, in which the deviant word did not carry any semantic radicals. Thus, the semantic radical, which has a high frequency of occurrence because it is carried by many words, may be critical for the elicitation of vMMN.

熟练的听众或读者在语音感知和单词阅读方面的显着快速和轻松表明语言处理背后的隐含或自动机制。在语音感知中，听觉失配负性 (MMN) 反应反映了内隐机制，这表明在没有集中注意力的情况下，音素、词汇、语义和句法信息会自动快速处理。在视觉单词阅读中，隐式正字法和词汇处理由视觉错配负性 (vMMN) 反映，视觉错配负性 (vMMN) 是听觉 MMN 的视觉对应物。MMN反映了口语的语义处理。本研究调查了 vMMN 是否也反映了语义处理。为此，属于不同语义类别（颜色、味道、和行动）被呈现给古怪范式的参与者。一组属于同一语义类别的词经常作为标准出现；属于不同语义类别的单词偶尔会被显示为异常。参与者被指示执行视觉交叉变化检测任务并忽略单词。实验 1 到 3 中引出显着的 vMMN，其中异常词带有一个语义部首，公开表示该词的语义类别信息。vMMNs 在单词出现后 260 ms 左右最为突出，呈顶枕叶分布，左半球显着偏侧，表明对视觉单词类别相关信息的快速语义处理。在实验 4 中没有引出显着的 vMMN，其中异常词没有带任何语义部首。因此，语义部首，因为它由许多词携带，所以出现频率很高，可能对 vMMN 的引出至关重要。