Concurrent use of animacy and event-knowledge during comprehension: Evidence from event-related potentials

Abstract

In two ERP experiments, we investigated whether readers prioritize animacy over real-world event-knowledge during sentence comprehension. We used the paradigm of Paczynski and Kuperberg (2012), who argued that animacy is prioritized based on the observations that the ‘related anomaly effect’ (reduced N400s for context-related anomalous words compared to unrelated words) does not occur for animacy violations, and that animacy violations but not relatedness violations elicit P600 effects. Participants read passive sentences with plausible agents (e.g., The prescription for the mental disorder was written by the psychiatrist) or implausible agents that varied in animacy and semantic relatedness (schizophrenic/guard/pill/fence). In Experiment 1 (with a plausibility judgment task), plausible sentences elicited smaller N400s relative to all types of implausible sentences. Moreover, animate words elicited smaller N400s than inanimate words, and related words elicited smaller N400s than unrelated words. Crucially, at the P600 time-window, we observed more positive ERPs for animate than inanimate words and for related than unrelated words at anterior regions. In Experiment 2 (with no judgment task), we observed an N400 effect with animacy violations, but no other effects. Taken together, the results of our experiments fail to support a prioritized role of animacy information over real-world event-knowledge, but they support an interactive, constraint-based view on incremental semantic processing.

A Theoretical Framework for a Hybrid View of the N400

“…Though both “jacket” and “towel” in (30-a) taken from Metusalem et al ( 2012 ) share few features with the best completion “snowman” and both words are highly atypical given the partial event structure built up preceding the CW in the target sentence, “jacket” elicited a reduced N400 amplitude compared to “towel.” However, this attenuation only occurred when the target sentence was embedded in the wider context given in (30-a) and not when it was used in isolation. A similar argument holds for (30-b) taken from Vega-Mendoza et al ( 2021 ), which is a replication study of Paczynski and Kuperberg ( 2012 ). The authors found the following pattern of N400 amplitude per condition: plausible control (psychiatrist) < animate-related (schizophrenic) < animate-unrelated (guard) < inanimate-related (pill) < inanimate-unrelated (fence).…”

“…Second, in the original study Paczynski and Kuperberg ( 2012 ) the authors found (a) an interaction wherein related words elicited smaller N400 amplitudes than unrelated words when these words were animate, but not when they were inanimate and (b) animate-related words like “schizophrenic” did not elicit a reliable N400 effect compared to control words. For a discussion of the differences in the methodological design of the two studies, see Vega-Mendoza et al ( 2021 ).…”

Do ‘early’ brain responses reveal word form prediction during language comprehension? A critical review

“…The participants could have strategically paid attention to the possessor words in the second phrase (Dana's) because they cued impending sentence ungrammaticality, and this attention-strategy could have played out differently depending on whether the first phrase also contained a possessor word. This is important because task-relevant words can elicit ERP effects that one would not observe without task (e.g., Baggio, 2012;Roehm et al, 2007;Vega-Mendoza et al, 2017), effects that could reflect evaluation of the materials, decision-making, and possibly response planning (Polich and Kok, 1995). Moreover, task-associated ERPs can be of fairly long duration and spill-over into the time window of the critical word, causing differences to appear early as 0 ms after word onset.…”

“…A secondary, explicit task (e.g., acceptability judgments) is sometimes very useful and informative (e.g., to determine whether two groups of participants evaluate sentences equally accurately), and sometimes boosts some of the processes involved in comprehension. However, such a task itself can generate brain responses that distort the effects of interest and induce strategic behaviors that are not representative of the processes that one is trying to explain (Roehm et al, 2007;Vega-Mendoza et al, 2017). Demonstrations of the broader relevance of prediction are most convincing when participants are simply reading or listening to naturalistic materials under the instruction to comprehend the materials to their best ability, or perhaps when they are instructed to answer questions about the content of the stimulus materials that have nothing to do with the manipulation of interest (for further reading, see Willems, 2015).…”

Distinguishing Old From New Referents During Discourse Comprehension: Evidence From ERPs and Oscillations

“…Compatible with this idea, sentence-final words following partially matching nouns elicit an N400-like effect compared to the other three conditions. Several studies have reported N400-like negativities for sentence-final words of unexpected or otherwise difficult sentences (Anderson and Holcomb, 2005; Paczynski and Kuperberg, 2012; Nieuwland, 2014; Vega-Mendoza et al, 2018), suggestive of continued sentence comprehension difficulty. Such effects may be more pronounced when participants perform a meta-linguistic judgment task (Nieuwland, 2014; Vega-Mendoza et al, 2018).…”