Predicting form and meaning: Evidence from brain potentials

Ito, Aine; Corley, Martin; Pickering, Martin J.; Martin, Andrea E.; Nieuwland, Mante S.

doi:10.1016/j.jml.2015.10.007

Cited by 132 publications

(221 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Therefore, it is possible that comprehenders do use argument role information to predict an upcoming verb, but they simply cannot do so quickly enough when the verb appears immediately following the arguments. This idea is consistent with previous findings that timing manipulations can modulate predictability effects (e.g., Dambacher et al, 2012;Ito, Corley, Pickering, Martin, & Nieuwland, 2016;Kutas, 1993;Wlotko & Federmeier, 2015). Under this view, the N400's sensitivity to argument role reversals should depend on (i) the predictability of the verb and (ii) the amount of time available for comprehenders to incorporate information about the arguments' roles in their verb predictions.…”

Section: Prediction In the Processing Of Thematic Relationssupporting

confidence: 90%

Wait a second! delayed impact of argument roles on on-line verb prediction

Chow

Lau

Wang

et al. 2018

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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Comprehenders can use rich contextual information to anticipate upcoming input on the fly, but recent findings suggest that salient information about argument roles may not impact verb prediction. We took advantage of the word order properties of Mandarin Chinese to examine the time course with which argument role information impacts verb prediction. We isolated the contribution of argument role information by manipulating the order of pre-verbal noun phrase arguments while holding lexical information constant, and we examined its effects on accessing the verb in long-term semantic memory by measuring the amplitude of the N400 component.Experiment 1 showed when the verb appeared immediately after its arguments, even strongly constraining argument role information failed to modulate the N400 response to the verb. An N400 effect emerged in Experiment 2 when the verb appeared at a greater delay. Experiment 3 corroborated the contrast between the first two experiments through a within-participants manipulation of the time interval between the arguments and the verb, by varying the position of an adverbial phrase. These results suggest time is a key factor governing how diverse contextual information contributes to predictions. Here argument role information is shown to impact verb prediction, but its effect is not immediate.3

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Section: Prediction In the Processing Of Thematic Relationssupporting

confidence: 90%

Wait a second! delayed impact of argument roles on on-line verb prediction

Chow

Lau

Wang

et al. 2018

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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“…In the study by Martin et al, this frontal positivity effect was absent in non-native speakers, which was taken as additional evidence that non-native speakers did not predict like native speakers. In our own previous work, we also found evidence for prediction in native speakers (Ito, Corley, Pickering, Martin, & Nieuwland, 2016), but not in non-native speakers (Ito et al, in press). Importantly, these previous studies investigated predictive processing not by the a/ an manipulation of DeLong et al but by examining whether words that match the form or meaning of a highly expected word elicited reduced N400s compared to words that do not match the form or meaning of an expected word (see also Federmeier & Kutas, 1999).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 57%

“…Importantly, these previous studies investigated predictive processing not by the a/ an manipulation of DeLong et al but by examining whether words that match the form or meaning of a highly expected word elicited reduced N400s compared to words that do not match the form or meaning of an expected word (see also Federmeier & Kutas, 1999). In Ito et al (2016), native speakers read predictive sentence contexts (e.g. "The student is going to the library to borrow a … "), followed by the predictable word (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How robust are prediction effects in language comprehension? Failure to replicate article-elicited N400 effects

Ito

Martin

Nieuwland

2016

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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Current psycholinguistic theory proffers prediction as a central, explanatory mechanism in language processing. However, widely-replicated prediction effects may not mean that prediction is necessary in language processing. As a case in point, C. D. Martin et al. [2013. Bilinguals reading in their second language do not predict upcoming words as native readers do. Journal of Memory and Language, 69(4), 574-588. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2013.08.001] reported ERP evidence for prediction in native-but not in non-native speakers. Articles mismatching an expected noun elicited larger negativity in the N400 time window compared to articles matching the expected noun in native speakers only. We attempted to replicate these findings, but found no evidence for prediction irrespective of language nativeness. We argue that pre-activation of phonological form of upcoming nouns, as evidenced in article-elicited effects, may not be a robust phenomenon. A view of prediction as a necessary computation in language comprehension must be re-evaluated. ARTICLE HISTORY

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“…So, necessarily, part of the task is to identify the onset of each new syllable and combine syllables into words, phrases and sentence. As of the identification of the first words, there is profuse evidence that we take a very active, or better, proactive step in trying to anticipate incoming material, so that incoming items can, without a delay, be represented and incorporated into existing representations (SCHUBERTH;EIMAS, 1977;STANOVICH;WEST, 1981;STEEDMAN, 1988;KAMIDE, 1999;FEDERMEIER, 2007;ITO et al, 2016;FREUNBERGER;ROEHM, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An ERP study of kind-denoting nouns in the subject position in Brazilian Portuguese

França

Mauricio

Infantosi

2017

RELIN

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Resumo: A referencialidade é um tópico que sempre renova o interesse da linguística teórica e experimental. Isso porque as referências são recursos fundamentais das línguas naturais que estabelecem uma relação entre a língua no cérebro e as coisas do mundo lá fora. Este experimento investiga duas condições referentes a mecanismos de referencialidade: uma relaciona-se a um NP não específico na posição do sujeito e a outra se relaciona a um NP que denota tipo influenciado por um contexto especial de Conhecimento do Mundo. A comparação entre as duas condições nas suas versões congruente e incongruente revelou que a Condição do Conhecimento do Mundo apresentou um ERP (N 400 ) com latência mais curta. Já que as sentenças são percebidas em uma ordem linear e que o sujeito em português (língua SVO) vem na frente, aqui se propõe que o acesso ao sujeito pragmaticamente saliente na sua posição sentença-inicial abre, logo de início, uma moldura pragmática e pode Revista de Estudos da Linguagem, Belo Horizonte, v.25, n.3, p.1433-1461, 2017 1434 restringir a seleção no verbo-complemento, fazendo com que o merge verbo-objeto se dê de forma mais rápida. Isso pode explicar porque o N 400 relacionado aos estímulos do Conhecimento do Mundo apareceu mais cedo do que na Condição de Controle. Adicionalmente, encontrouse um ERP positivo em torno dos 600 ms apenas presente nos estímulos da Condição de Conhecimento do Mundo e ausente na Condição de Controle. A interpretação deste achado é que o pleno acesso ao conteúdo pragmático que está no sujeito só ocorre após o merge do complemento ao verbo. Palavras-chave: hipótese sintaxe-primeiro; pragmática no processamento de sentenças; extração de potenciais relacionados a evento; N 400 -P 600 . Abstract:Referring is a permanently hot topic in theoretical and experimental linguistics since references establish the fundamental relationship between parts of language in the brain and things out there in the world. This experiment investigates two conditions pertaining to reference mechanisms: one relates to a generic NP in the subject position and the other to an NP that is influenced by a special World Knowledge context. The comparison between the two conditions in their congruous and incongruous versions depicts a shorter latency for the N 400 ERPs of the World Knowledge stimuli. Since linguistic input gradually reaches the reader from left to right, we propose that the access to a pragmatically salient subject in its sentence-initial position, by opening a window into World Knowledge, may restrict selections in the verb-complement merge more speedily than pragmatically unmarked subjects. This may explain why the N 400 related to the World Knowledge stimuli appeared earlier than that of the Control Condition. Additionally, we found a later positive ERP around the 600ms only present in the World Knowledge stimuli and absent in the Control condition. The interpretation of this finding is that full access to the pragmatic contents of the subject only takes place after the verb complement merge.

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Predicting form and meaning: Evidence from brain potentials

Cited by 132 publications

References 53 publications

Wait a second! delayed impact of argument roles on on-line verb prediction

Wait a second! delayed impact of argument roles on on-line verb prediction

How robust are prediction effects in language comprehension? Failure to replicate article-elicited N400 effects

An ERP study of kind-denoting nouns in the subject position in Brazilian Portuguese

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