49 research outputs found
On the incrementality of pragmatic processing: An ERP investigation of informativeness and pragmatic abilities
In two event-related potential (ERP) experiments, we determined to what extent Griceâs maxim of informativeness as well as pragmatic ability contributes to the incremental build-up of sentence meaning, by examining the impact of underinformative versus informative scalar statements (e.g. âSome people have lungs/pets, andâŠâ) on the N400 event-related potential (ERP), an electrophysiological index of semantic processing. In Experiment 1, only pragmatically skilled participants (as indexed by the Autism Quotient Communication subscale) showed a larger N400 to underinformative statements. In Experiment 2, this effect disappeared when the critical words were unfocused so that the local underinformativeness went unnoticed (e.g., âSome people have lungs thatâŠâ). Our results suggest that, while pragmatic scalar meaning can incrementally contribute to sentence comprehension, this contribution is dependent on contextual factors, whether these are derived from individual pragmatic abilities or the overall experimental context
Why the A/AN prediction effect may be hard to replicate:A rebuttal to Delong, Urbach, and Kutas
Concurrent use of animacy and event-knowledge during comprehension:Evidence from event-related potentials
Definitely saw it coming? The dual nature of the pre-nominal prediction effect
Acknowledgements We thank Birgit Knudsen for help with EEG data collection and Elise van Wonderen for help with norming data collection. JR was partially supported by NWO Veni grant 275-89-032. We thank Tamara Swaab and two anonymous reviewers for providing helpful feedback on a previous draft of this manuscript. All materials associated with the current article are available on OSF at https://osf.io/6drcy/. For the analyses and plots, we used the following packages for R (R Core Team, 2018): âbrmsâ (BĂŒrkner, 2017), âlme4â (Bates et al., 2014), âsimrâ (Green & MacLeod, 2016), âggplot2â (Wickham, 2016), âdplyrâ (Wickham, François, Henry & MĂŒller, 2019), âpatchworkâ (Pederson, 2020), âemmeansâ (Lenth, 2019).Peer reviewedPostprin
Great expectations: Specific lexical anticipation influences the processing of spoken language
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recently several studies have shown that people use contextual information to make predictions about the rest of the sentence or story as the text unfolds. Using event related potentials (ERPs) we tested whether these on-line predictions are based on a message-level representation of the discourse or on simple automatic activation by individual words. Subjects heard short stories that were highly constraining for one specific noun, or stories that were not specifically predictive but contained the same prime words as the predictive stories. To test whether listeners make specific predictions critical nouns were preceded by an adjective that was inflected according to, or in contrast with, the gender of the expected noun.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>When the message of the preceding discourse was predictive, adjectives with an unexpected gender inflection evoked a negative deflection over right-frontal electrodes between 300 and 600 ms. This effect was not present in the prime control context, indicating that the prediction mismatch does not hinge on word-based priming but is based on the actual message of the discourse.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>When listening to a constraining discourse people rapidly make very specific predictions about the remainder of the story, as the story unfolds. These predictions are not simply based on word-based automatic activation, but take into account the actual message of the discourse.</p
Event-related brain potential evidence for animacy processing asymmetries during sentence comprehension
The animacy distinction is deeply rooted in the language faculty. A key example is differential object marking, the phenomenon where animate sentential objects receive specific marking. We used event-related potentials to examine the neural processing consequences of case-marking violations on animate and inanimate direct objects in Spanish. Inanimate objects with incorrect prepositional case marker âaâ (âal sueloâ) elicited a P600 effect compared to unmarked objects, consistent with previous literature. However, animate objects without the required prepositional case marker (âel obispoâ) only elicited an N400 effect compared to marked objects. This novel finding, an exclusive N400 modulation by a straightforward grammatical rule violation, does not follow from extant neurocognitive models of sentence processing, and mirrors unexpected âsemantic P600â effects for thematically problematic sentences. These results may reflect animacy asymmetry in competition for argument prominence: following the article, thematic interpretation difficulties are elicited only by unexpectedly animate objects
When the Truth Is Not Too Hard to Handle: An Event-Related Potential Study on the Pragmatics of Negation
Our brains rapidly map incoming language onto what we hold to be true. Yet there are claims that such integration and verification processes are delayed in sentences containing negation words like not. However, studies have often confounded whether a statement is true and whether it is a natural thing to say during normal communication. In an event-related potential (ERP) experiment, we aimed to disentangle effects of truth value and pragmatic licensing on the comprehension of affirmative and negated real-world statements. As in affirmative sentences, false words elicited a larger N400 ERP than did true words in pragmatically licensed negated sentences (e.g., âIn moderation, drinking red wine isn't bad/goodâŠâ), whereas true and false words elicited similar responses in unlicensed negated sentences (e.g., âA baby bunny's fur isn't very hard/softâŠâ). These results suggest that negation poses no principled obstacle for readers to immediately relate incoming words to what they hold to be true
Incremental comprehension of spoken quantifier sentences:Evidence from brain potentials
Do people incrementally incorporate the meaning of quantifier expressions to understand an unfolding sentence? Most previous studies concluded that quantifiers do not immediately influence how a sentence is understood based on the observation that online N400-effects differed from offline plausibility judgments. Those studies, however, used serial visual presentation (SVP), which involves unnatural reading. In the current ERP-experiment, we presented spoken positive and negative quantifier sentences (âPractically all/practically no postmen prefer delivering mail, when the weather is good/bad during the dayâ). Different from results obtained in a previously reported SVP-study (Nieuwland, 2016) sentence truth-value N400 effects occurred in positive and negative quantifier sentences alike, reflecting fully incremental quantifier comprehension. This suggests that the prosodic information available during spoken language comprehension supports the generation of online predictions for upcoming words and that, at least for quantifier sentences, comprehension of spoken language may proceed more incrementally than comprehension during SVP reading
If the real world were irrelevant, so to speak: The role of propositional truth-value in counterfactual sentence comprehension
Propositional truth-value can be a defining feature of a sentenceâs relevance to the unfolding discourse, and establishing propositional truth-value in context can be key to successful interpretation. In the current study, we investigate its role in the comprehension of counterfactual conditionals, which describe imaginary consequences of hypothetical events, and are thought to require keeping in mind both what is true and what is false. Pre-stored real-world knowledge may therefore intrude upon and delay counterfactual comprehension, which is predicted by some accounts of discourse comprehension, and has been observed during online comprehension. The impact of propositional truth-value may thus be delayed in counterfactual conditionals, as also claimed for sentences containing other types of logical operators (e.g., negation, scalar quantifiers). In an event-related potential (ERP) experiment, we investigated the impact of propositional truth-value when described consequences are both true and predictable given the counterfactual premise. False words elicited larger N400 ERPs than true words, in negated counterfactual sentences (e.g., âIf N.A.S.A. had not developed its Apollo Project, the first country to land on the moon would have been Russia/Americaâ) and real-world sentences (e.g., âBecause N.A.S.A. developed its Apollo Project, the first country to land on the moon was America/Russiaâ) alike. These indistinguishable N400 effects of propositional truth-value, elicited by opposite word pairs, argue against disruptions by real-world knowledge during counterfactual comprehension, and suggest that incoming words are mapped onto the counterfactual context without any delay. Thus, provided a sufficiently constraining context, propositional truth-value rapidly impacts ongoing semantic processing, be the proposition factual or counterfactual
Large-scale replication study reveals a limit on probabilistic prediction in language comprehension
Do people routinely pre-activate the meaning and even the phonological form of upcoming words? The most acclaimed evidence for phonological prediction comes from a 2005 Nature Neuroscience publication by DeLong, Urbach and Kutas, who observed a graded modulation of electrical brain potentials (N400) to nouns and preceding articles by the probability that people use a word to continue the sentence fragment (âclozeâ). In our direct replication study spanning 9 laboratories (N=334), pre-registered replication-analyses and exploratory Bayes factor analyses successfully replicated the noun-results but, crucially, not the article-results. Pre-registered single-trial analyses also yielded a statistically significant effect for the nouns but not the articles. Exploratory Bayesian single-trial analyses showed that the article-effect may be non-zero but is likely far smaller than originally reported and too small to observe without very large sample sizes. Our results do not support the view that readers routinely pre-activate the phonological form of predictable words.Additional co-authors: Simon Busch-Moreno, Xiao Fu, Jyrki Tuomainen, Eugenia Kulakova, E Matthew Husband, Zdenko KohĂșt, Shirley-Ann Rueschemeyer, Falk Huetti