The interaction of discourse context and world knowledge in online sentence comprehension. Evidence from the N400

Abstract

In an ERP experiment we investigated how the recruitment and integration of world knowledge information relate to the integration of information within a current discourse context. Participants were presented with short discourse contexts which were followed by a sentence that contained a critical word that was correct or incorrect based on general world knowledge and the supporting discourse context, or was more or less acceptable based on the combination of general world knowledge and the specific local discourse context. Relative to the critical word in the correct world knowledge sentences following a neutral discourse, all other critical words elicited an N400 effect that began at about 300 ms after word onset. However, the magnitude of the N400 effect varied in a way that suggests an interaction between world knowledge and discourse context. The results indicate that both world knowledge and discourse context have an effect on sentence interpretation, but neither overrides the other. IntroductionAlmost everyday we read or listen to new information. Listening to the news, speaking with a family member or coworker, overhearing a conversation or watching a television show will likely all involve encountering some new information, such as an anecdote of something that happened that day. Deriving the meaning of each of these utterances involves, at the least, retrieving the meanings of the individual words and facts about the world and combining them in a way that is licensed by the grammar and the prior discourse context. However, we sometimes hear new facts that may or may not be congruent with what we already know, for example, when speaking with a friend (e.g., Mary says to Bob, "John can't make it to the party", when Bob thought John was coming to the party) or watching a television show (e.g., "The pigs are flying low today, eh", John Cleese, 1969 in Monty Python's Flying Circus). When this occurs, do we initially just incorporate the current discourse for understanding the sentence or do we also integrate our world knowledge, creating a conflict? The purpose of the current study is to investigate how the recruitment and integration of world knowledge information relate to the integration of information within a current discourse context. When the discourse information does not fit with our previous world knowledge, is the default world knowledge overwritten? Models of language comprehension disagree on how and when discourse information and world knowledge are

“If a lion could speak …”: Online sensitivity to propositional truth-value of unrealistic counterfactual sentences

“…The immediate impact of propositional truth-value in counterfactual sentences about unrealistic worlds, as reported here, contrasts with several reports in the literature that pitted contextual relevance with real-world truth-value (e.g., Hald et al, 2007) or real-world possibility (e.g., Warren et al, 2008). As noted in the Introduction, these other reports may have involved a context that rendered an impossible consequence mildly congruent, yet still less predictable or plausible than a possible consequence.…”

“…Whereas several studies have reported that contextual relevance outweighs real-world constraints from an early moment on (e.g., a cartoon-like story about an amorous peanut can invert the relative ease of processing ''the peanut was salted'' as compared to ''the peanut in love'', Nieuwland & Van Berkum, 2006; see also Filik, 2008;Filik & Leuthold, 2008), some results on the processing of literally false or unrealistic sentences suggest that context does not completely overrule briefly disruptive effects of local violations (e.g., Hald, Steenbeek-Planting, & Hagoort, 2007;Warren, McConnell, & Rayner, 2008). For example, Warren et al reported that despite a fantasy-context (e.g., Harry Potter practicing magic spells on food items), words that incurred semantic violations (e.g., 'bread' in ''Harry used a book to teach the tough bread'') elicited longer fixations and gaze durations than in unproblematic sentences (e.g., ''Harry used a microwave to heat the tough bread'').…”

Expectation-based Comprehension: Modeling the Interaction of World Knowledge and Linguistic Experience

“…Nonetheless, studies that aim to elucidate the interplay between linguistic experience and world knowledge do exist. Hald, Steenbeek-Planting & Hagoort (2007), for example, contrasted stereotypical and nonstereotypical sentences (e.g., "The city Venice has very many canals/roundabouts [. .…”

Working memory capacity in L2 processing

“…In sentence processing, the amplitude of this effect is modulated by the cloze probability of the anomalous word, with more improbable words yielding larger N400 effects and with semantic priming reducing the size of these effects (Kutas and Hillyard 1984). Other sources of contextual information (e. g., discourse context, world knowledge, attitudes) also modulate N400 size (e. g., Hald et al 2007;Nieuwland and Van Berkum 2006). The N400 has also been portrayed as a reflection of the effortful retrieval of conceptual information from long-term semantic memory (e. g., Kutas and Federmeier 2000).…”