Is there any semantic processing in crowded words? Electrophysiological evidence from an ERP study

Crowding refers to the phenomenon that the nearby objects impede one's ability to identify a target. The research used event-related potential to investigate the semantic processing of flanked targets with the combination of a crowding task and semantic N400 paradigm. The results showed that the N400 component (an index of semantic processing), was suppressed when the target words were flanked by the flankers. The results indicated that there was no semantic processing of the flanked target. Moreover, our findings provided event-related potential evidence for the faulty-integration model of crowding.