Pragmatic inferences modulate N400 during sentence comprehension: Evidence from picture–sentence verification

Abstract

The present study examines the online realization of pragmatic meaning using event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants read sentences including the English quantifier some, which has both a semantic meaning (at least one) and a pragmatic meaning (not all). Unlike previous ERP studies of this phenomenon, sentences in the current study were evaluated not in terms of their truth with respect to the real world, but in terms of their consistency with a picture presented before the sentence. Sentences (such as “The boy cut some of the steaks in this story”) were constructed such that either 1) both the semantic and pragmatic interpretations were true with respect to the preceding picture (when the boy in fact cut some but not all of the steaks); 2) neither interpretation was true (when the boy in fact cut none of the steaks); or 3) the semantic interpretation was true but the pragmatic interpretation false (when the boy in fact cut all of the steaks). ERPs at the object word, which determined whether the sentence was consistent with the story, showed the largest N400 effect for objects that made the sentence false, whereas they showed an intermediate effect for objects that made the sentence false under the pragmatic interpretation but true under the semantic interpretation. The results suggest that this pragmatic aspect of meaning is computed online and integrated into the sentence model rapidly enough to influence comprehension of later words.

Gricean Expectations in Online Sentence Comprehension: An ERP Study on the Processing of Scalar Inferences

“…Pragmatic processing indeed affected the N400. Moreover, we replicated findings of different participant groups based on behavioral responses (Hunt et al, ; Noveck & Posada, ; Politzer‐Ahles et al, ; Spychalska et al, ) and showed that ERPs differed between groups on late sentence positions. As a whole, the present pattern of results is explained well, though not perfectly, by our probabilistic pragmatic processing model.…”

“…In the present experiment, the N400 was accompanied by a late positivity. Similar effects have been interpreted as reflecting logical‐semantic revision (Spychalska et al, ) or disconfirmed expectations (Hunt et al, ). Recently, it has been suggested that positivities like the current one may be linked to the sentence–verification paradigm itself and reflect task‐related effects rather than semantic or pragmatic processing per se .…”

“…One component that has been associated with the processing of quantified sentences in general is the N400 (Augurzky, Bott, Sternefeld, & Ulrich, ; Freunberger & Nieuwland, ; Urbach, DeLong, & Kutas, ; Urbach & Kutas, ). The N400 has been observed as a processing reflex of the so‐called underinformative sentences, that is, sentences with some used in a situation where the speaker could have used all instead (e.g., Some elephants are mammals ; see Hunt, Politzer‐Ahles, Gibson, Minai, & Fiorentino, ; Nieuwland, Ditman, & Kuperberg, ; Zhao, Liu, Chen, & Chen, ; but see Noveck & Posada, , for an effect going in the opposite direction).…”

Eye Movement Evidence for Context-Sensitive Derivation of Scalar Inferences

“…Such a pattern would indicate that processing measures at the rest in this sort of paradigm do not directly reflect scalar inference-making or meaning enrichment per se, but its downstream consequences (i.e., predictions of upcoming words based on a different interpretation of the scalar expression some). This has also been argued to be the case in event-related potential experiments that use brain responses to downstream words to make indirect inferences about the processing of some, rather than directly measuring the response to some itself (Hunt, Politzer-Ahles, Gibson, Minai, & Fiorentino, 2013;Nieuwland, Ditman, & Kuperberg, 2010;Noveck & Posada, 2003). It should be noted, however, that there was a significant interaction on regressions to the quantifier, such that there were more regressions to some in downward-entailing contexts than in upward-entailing contexts (see Tables 2 and 3); this may be consistent with the conjecture that seeing the rest causes participants to look back at the quantifier and re-evaluate its interpretation (perhaps by enriching the meaning with "not all").…”

Cognitive processing of verbal quantifiers in the context of affirmative and negative sentences: A Croatian study

“…The expected rate of incorrect answers predicts the dominance of the pragmatic interpretation: cca. 40% of logical compared to 60% of pragmatic answers (Hunt Politzer-Ahles, Gibson, Minai, and Fiorentino 2013;Noveck, 2001;Noveck and Posada 2003). Logical and pragmatic comprehension of sentences with the quantifier some was tested by giving different instructions to participants: one group were instructed to treat the quantifier some as some and possibly all and the other as some but not all (Bott and Noveck 2004;Noveck and Sperber 2007;Rips 1975).…”