Thompson-Schill and colleagues (1997, 1998) conducted an experiment in which participants generated an appropriate verb in response to a presented noun. They found that the processing of nouns such as rope, which have many semantically associated verbs, elicited ________ activity in the inferior frontal cortex than did nouns such as scissors, which do not. This result supports the ________ hypothesis of inferior frontal lobe function.
A)greater; working memory retrieval
B)greater; selection
C)less; working memory retrieval
D)less; selection

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The experiment found that the processing of nouns with many semantically associated verbs (like "rope") elicited greater activity in the inferior frontal cortex than nouns with fewer associated verbs (like "scissors"). This supports the hypothesis that the inferior frontal cortex is involved in selecting the appropriate word from a set of related options, rather than simply retrieving a word from memory. Therefore, the correct answer is (B) greater selection.

Thompson-Schill and Colleagues (1997, 1998) Conducted an Experiment in Which