Visual mismatch negativity indexes automatic lexicality detection

This study explores the automatic processing of lexicality and abstract linguistic contrasts using visual mismatch negativity (vMMN). Prior research has shown that auditory mismatch negativity is sensitive to abstract linguistic contrast, but it remains unclear if similar effects occur through the visual domain. Similarly, there is some evidence of lexicality effects via vMMN, but previous work did not seem to fully claim that lexicality detection is observed independent of attention. We investigated whether lexicality contrasts (words and pseudowords) and abstract contrasts between word classes could elicit vMMNs. Our findings indicate that lexicality can generate vMMNs, with significant ERP effects observed for word contrasts. However, no vMMN was detected for the abstract contrast between nouns and verbs. These results suggest that while lexical processing can occur rapidly and automatically in the visual modality (extending predictive coding accounts to include pre-attentive lexical-level representations), abstract processing of visual linguistic information warrants further investigation.