Multiple P3 evidence of a two-stage process word gender decision

All French nouns must be assigned to one of two grammatical genders: mascul ine or feminine. Participants used either the superordinate labels masculin /feminin or the singular indefinite articles un/une to classify French targ et nouns. Reaction time to the labels masculin/feminin was about 200 ms lon ger than to the un/une labels. When the indefinite articles were used, a si ngle P3 peak of the event-related potential was elicited. When superordinat e labels were used, a double-peaked positivity was observed. The latency of the initial P3 in the masculin/feminin trials was not significantly differ ent from that in the un/une trials. The second positive wave peaked similar to 300 ms following the first. An explanation consistent with these data i s that subjects used a two-stage process to classify the nouns appearing wi th superordinate labels. NeuroReport 11:3527-3531 (C) 2000 Lippincoa Willia ms & Wilkins.