Lexical inhibition due to failed prediction: Behavioral evidence and ERP correlates.

Ness, Tal; Meltzer‐Asscher, Aya

doi:10.1037/xlm0000525

Cited by 35 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…Suppression of the wrongly predicted event and its associated semantic features are necessary in order to successfully reupdate this mental model ('re-integrate' the new input). In other words, in this situation, successful high-level integration of the incoming word is inherently linked to top-down suppression of wrongly predicted information, and the two processes proceed in parallel (see also Ness & Meltzer-Asscher, 2018).…”

Section: Late Frontal Positivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Tale of Two Positivities and the N400: Distinct neural signatures are evoked by confirmed and violated predictions at different levels of representation

Kuperberg

Wlotko

2018

Preprint

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Hierarchical prediction has been proposed as a fundamental computational principle underlying neurocognitive processing. Here we ask whether the brain engages distinct neurocognitive mechanisms in response to inputs that fulfill versus violate strong predictions at different levels of representation during language comprehension. Participants read three-sentence scenarios in which the third sentence constrained for a broad event structure (e.g. {Agent caution animate-Patient}). Low constraint contexts did not constrain for any specific event/lexical item. High constraint contexts additionally constrained for a specific event and lexical item (e.g. a twosentence context about a beach, lifeguards and sharks constrained for the event, {Lifeguards cautioned Swimmers} and the specific lexical item, "swimmers"). We measured ERPs on critical nouns that fulfilled and/or violated each of these constraints. We found clear, dissociable effects to fulfilled semantic predictions (a reduced N400), to event/lexical prediction violations (an increased late frontal positivity), and to event structure/animacy prediction violations (an increased late posterior positivity/P600). We argue that the late frontal positivity reflects a large change in activation associated with successfully updating the comprehender's mental model with new unpredicted input. We suggest that the posterior late positivity/P600 reflects an initial failure to incorporate new unpredicted input into the comprehender's mental model, and possibly a reanalysis of the previous inputs in attempts to revise this model. Together, these findings provide strong evidence that confirmed and violated predictions at different levels of representation manifest as distinct spatiotemporal neural signatures. and different tasks -all factors that are known to modulate the N400 and late positivity components. This made it difficult to compare the effects across different studies. However, based on a review of the early literature, Van Petten and Luka (2012) noted that, while both the late frontal and posterior positivity effects were associated with unexpected linguistic input, the main factor that distinguished between them was the plausibility of the resulting interpretation.This was confirmed in recent studies showing that, in high constraint contexts, the same individuals who produced a late frontal positivity effect on unexpected plausible critical words, produced a late posterior positivity effect on unexpected implausible critical words (in English

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Section: Late Frontal Positivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Tale of Two Positivities and the N400: Distinct neural signatures are evoked by confirmed and violated predictions at different levels of representation

Kuperberg

Wlotko

2018

Preprint

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“…Since WM is limited, it is unlikely that many competing predictions can simultaneously be pre‐updated. Additionally, the disconfirmation of a pre‐updated prediction was suggested to incur additional processing costs beyond what is needed when pre‐updating did not take place, since the integrated (i.e., pre‐updated) prediction has to be inhibited in order to enable the integration of the unexpected word that appeared in the actual input (Ness & Meltzer‐Asscher, 2018b). Rationally, pre‐updating should, therefore, only be initiated when a prediction has a high probability to be correct.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This finding suggests that the N400 reflects activation levels, associated with pre‐activation, rather than a penalty for the disconfirmation of strong predictions. However, low‐cloze words that follow high as opposed to low constraint contexts were found to also elicit a late anterior positivity, the “frontal post‐N400 positivity” (fPNP) component (e.g., Brothers et al., 2015; Federmeier et al., 2007; Kuperberg et al., 2020; Ness & Meltzer‐Asscher, 2018b; see Van Petten & Luka, 2012 for a review). Thus, the disconfirmation of a strong prediction incurs additional processing costs that are not observed if no strong prediction was formed in the first place.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From pre‐activation to pre‐updating: A threshold mechanism for commitment to strong predictions

Ness

Meltzer‐Asscher

2021

Psychophysiology

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Ample evidence suggests that during sentence processing comprehenders can “pre‐activate” lexical/semantic knowledge stored in long‐term memory. A relatively recent development suggests that in some cases a stronger form of prediction is employed, involving “pre‐updating” the predicted content into the sentence's representation being built in working memory. The current study argues for an activation threshold mechanism by which pre‐updating is initiated, within the routine processing stages of a word in a context. By combining a speeded cloze task with event‐related potentials, we were able to analyze electrophysiological data measured prior to when participants were prompted to produce a completion, based on the participant's cloze response, reflecting their strongest prediction at that specific moment in time. A P600 effect reflecting pre‐updating was observed in high (relative to low) constraint sentences, even in trials where the participant predicted a low cloze word. The results support a mechanism in which multiple predictions accumulate activations, “racing” toward a retrieval threshold. Once the activation level of a certain word passes the threshold, the word is integrated into the sentence representation in working memory. Pre‐updating occurs if a certain prediction passes the retrieval threshold prior to its realization in the input.

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“…Despite the lateness of its onset and of its maximum, the N400s have been proposed to index the access to, or the early activation of, semantic representations corresponding to the unprimed stimulus (e.g., Kieffer, 2002; for a review see Kutas & Federmeier, 2011). At the opposite, the N400s have been suggested to index the late integration of these activated representations within the representation of the context (for recent debates, see for instance Brouwer, Crocker, Venhuizen & Hoeks, 2017;Mantegna et al, 2019;Ness & Meltzer-Asscher, 2018). However, the other meanings that were primed by semantically unrelated items might have to be set aside first for the appropriate meaning of the unexpected stimulus to be integrated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Task instructions: a part of the social context of participants? A N300 and N400 event-related brain potential study

Sinha¹,

Bouten²,

Tardif³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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The early and preconscious processing of stimuli that are meaningful in everyday life includes systematical activations of many semantic, emotional and motor representations. Inhibitions should then occur in order to select, among these primed representations, those that are consistent with the context. Even in a lab this context is social, as it typically consists of the experimenter and of the instructions and stimuli (s)he provides. Three recent N400 studies confirm this social view of experimental settings by showing that socially driven processes affect what was primed by prior stimuli. The small amplitudes of the N400 event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by stimuli preceded by semantical primes were found to be enhanced by the mere presence of a person next to participants when they know this person did not have the semantic primes. It thus seems that N400 processes inhibit what these primes have activated so that participants can also have the perspective of the uninformed person. This inhibition interpretation implies that N400s should be notably reduced when nothing allows to determine what should be inhibited, that is, when the social context is not defined and when task’s instructions require minimal inhibition. We tested this prediction by having a stranger next to participants (n=29) and by presenting meaningful unpredictable images in a simple memorization task. As foreseen, N400s were small. They were enhanced by definable social contexts, that is, in participants alone with the experimenter (n=30) and in those with a friend (n = 36). The amplitudes of the N300s were also enhanced. A second experiment revealed that these N300 and N400 enhancements were larger for friends who felt in the presence of their partner during most of the experiment. As to the late posterior positivities (LPPs) immediately succeeding the N400s, they were found to be larger in the unknown social context of the first experiment, suggesting that more information ended up being placed into the working memory when inhibitions could not occur. These results are compatible with a serial 3-stages framework of the processing of stimuli meaningful in everyday life. Early and broad systematic activations (priming) would be followed by automatic late selections done according to the social-context and then, by the participant’s consciousness of the meanings of the stimulus in this context. As inadequate late selections would cause impairments of social and cognitive behaviors, the present results could have implications for psychiatric disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia.

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Lexical inhibition due to failed prediction: Behavioral evidence and ERP correlates.

Cited by 35 publications

References 65 publications

A Tale of Two Positivities and the N400: Distinct neural signatures are evoked by confirmed and violated predictions at different levels of representation

A Tale of Two Positivities and the N400: Distinct neural signatures are evoked by confirmed and violated predictions at different levels of representation

From pre‐activation to pre‐updating: A threshold mechanism for commitment to strong predictions

Task instructions: a part of the social context of participants? A N300 and N400 event-related brain potential study

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