N400/frontal negativity reveals the controlled processes of taxonomic and thematic relationships in semantic priming for artifacts

Recent studies show that taxonomic and thematic relationships are functionally and neurologically dissociated; however, there remain some discrepancies due to inconsistencies in definitions, task properties, and concept domains. This issue was further explored via the semantic priming paradigm with a long SOA of 600 ms while controlling for perceptual or functional features of artifacts involved across taxonomic and thematic relationships. Six conditions were compared: perceptual relationship (axe–helve), functional relationship (axe–wood), perceptual classification (axe–hammer), functional classification (axe–saw), unrelated condition (axe–skates), and nonword (axe–derf) conditions. Behavioral priming effects are found for all related conditions relative to unrelated conditions except for perceptual relationships, whereas semantic priming effects (smaller N400 amplitude) are found for functional relationships and perceptual classification relative to unrelated conditions but not for perceptual relationships and functional classification, indicating perceptual features are less important than functional features for artifacts. Furthermore, the frontal negativity elicited by functional relationships is smaller than all other related conditions at 400–550 ms, while it is only smaller than functional classification at 550–650 ms. These results indicate that, besides different features, taxonomic and thematic relationships are dissociated to organize object knowledge, which is primarily fuelled by feature processing, with taxonomic, or thematic, relationships further embedded with such sensory, or functional, features.