本研究在之前的工作基础上继续考察中央顶N200的功能意义。在之前的研究中，发现重复呈现双字合成词可以引起N200的波幅增强，并初步认为此成分反映了正字法加工而非语义加工。本研究采用语义加工深度不同的任务，着重考察N200是否真的不受语义加工影响。实验一采用内隐加工语义的词汇判断任务，包括重复启动，语义启动和控制条件。实验二采用有意对语义进行加工的语义判断任务，包括语义高相关，语义低相关和语义无关三种条件。在两个实验中都可观测到N400语义启动效应，但只有重复启动能够引起N200的增强。此结果进一步证明N200与语义信息加工无关。

　　Recent event-related potential research has reported a N200 response or a negative deflection peaking around 200 ms following the visual presentation of two-character Chinese words. This N200 shows amplitude enhancement upon immediate repetition and there has been preliminary evidence that it reflects orthographic processing but not semantic processing. The present study tested whether this N200 is indeed unrelated to semantic processing with more sensitive measures, including the use of two tasks engaging semantic processing either implicitly or explicitly and the adoption of a within-trial priming paradigm. In Exp. 1, participants viewed repeated, semantically related and unrelated prime-target word pairs as they performed a lexical decision task judging whether or not each target was a real word. In Exp. 2, participants viewed high-related, low-related and unrelated word pairs as they performed a semantic task judging whether each word pair was related in meaning. In both tasks, semantic priming was found from both the behavioral data and the N400 ERP responses. Critically, while repetition priming elicited a clear and large enhancement on the N200 response, semantic priming did not show any modulation effect on the same response. The results indicate that the N200 repetition enhancement effect cannot be explained with semantic priming and that this specific N200 response is unlikely to reflect semantic processing.