Print-specific N170 involves multiple subcomponents for Japanese Hiragana

Abstract Print-specific N170 in event-related potentials is generally considered to reflect relatively automatic processing for letter strings, which is crucial for fluent reading. However, our previous studies demonstrated that print-specific N170 for transparent Japanese Hiragana script consists of at least two subcomponents under rapid stimulus presentation: an attention-related left-lateralized N170 and a bilateral N170 associated with more automatic orthographic processes (Okumura, Kasai & Murohashi, 2014, 2015). The present study aimed to confirm the latter component by controlling presentation frequency of letters and nonlinguistic visual controls (i.e., symbols), but found a quite different pattern of results; an enhanced occipito-temporal positivity for words (80–120 ms poststimulus) followed by the typical left-lateralized N170 and an enhanced parietal negativity for nonwords (150–200 ms). These results should provide further insights into the interaction processes between attention and early stages of print processing.