Semantic prediction in language comprehension: evidence from brain potentials

Abstract

Do people predict specific word-forms during language comprehension? In an Event-Related Potential (ERP) study participants read German sentences with predictable (The goalkeeper claims that the slick ball was easy to CATCH.) and unpredictable (The kids boasted that the young horse was easy to SADDLE.) verbs. Verbs were either consistent with the expected word-form (catch/saddle) or inconsistent and therefore led to ungrammaticality (*catches/*saddles). ERPs within the N400 time-window were modulated by predictability but not by the surface-form of the verbs, suggesting that no exact word-forms were predicted. Based on our results we will argue that predictions included semantic rather than form-information. Furthermore, ungrammatical verbs led to a strong P600, probably due to task-saliency whereas correct unpredictable verbs elicited an anterior post-N400 positivity. Because the contexts were moderately constraining, this might reflect discourse revision processes rather than inhibition of a predicted word.

Reading Comprehension and Predictability Effects on Sentence Processing: An Event‐Related Potential Study

“…It has been proposed that frontal positivities following unexpected endings in strongly constraining sentences might be reflecting the cost of inhibiting context‐based predictions of lexical items (DeLong et al, ; DeLong et al, ; Van Petten & Luka, ) (although recent lines of evidence suggest that this effect might not be restricted to strong expectancy violations, since it was observed in medium and low constrain contexts by Brothers et al, and Freunberger & Roehm, ). On the other hand, posterior positivities (including the syntax‐related P600) have been interpreted to reflect the integration of retrieved lexical information with previous message‐level representations (Brouwer, Crocker, Venhuizen & Hoeks, 2016; Brouwer & Hoeks, , Brouwer et al, ; see also Delogu, Brouwer, & Crocker, ; Friederici, ; Ledwidge, ), or as the product of domain‐general recognition and categorization processes (Sassenhagen & Bornkessel‐Schlesewsky, ), indexing subjective significance or stimulus salience within a given task.…”

The costs of being certain: Brain potential evidence for linguistic preactivation in sentence processing

“…Interestingly, the input doesn't necessarily have to be a perfect match with the prediction in order to facilitate processing: When the target word is related in meaning or form to the predicted word, processing can be facilitated as well (e.g., Federmeier & Kutas, 1999;Freunberger & Roehm, 2016;Ito, Corley, Pickering, Martin, & Nieuwland, 2016;Laszlo & Federmeier, 2009). Yet, most studies provide indirect evidence for predictive language processing, because they measure the outcome of linguistic preactivation, that is, the degree to which a prediction turns out to be right or wrong.…”

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

“…4 Knowing that amplitude is a parameter related to a difficulty to perform morpho-syntactic integration (KUTAS; FONTENEAU;FRAUENFELDER;RIZZI, 1998;NEVILLE, 1991), we propose that the pragmatic scope set by the subject DPs in the WK condition presented extra selectional restrictions to the verb, which ultimately overburdened the verbobject integration, causing the higher wave amplitudes captured at the derivations. Since the introduction of the subject shapes the causation mode in the VP (PYLKKÄNEN, 2002;MARANTZ, 2001), the retrieval of the subject DP requires encyclopedic contents, and so way more cognitive resources are demanded.…”

“…The literature shows that ERP peak amplitudes related to (iv) are higher than those related to (iii) and the difference between the two is statistically significant (KUTAS; HILLYARD, 1980;NEVILLE, 1991, FRANÇA et al, 2004. Usually the interpretation is that sandals is incongruous in the context of eat and therefore integration efforts result in augmented ERP amplitudes.…”

“…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).…”