“…These theories can explain why, in many tests of negation processing -including ours -there is an interaction between the polarity and truth value of a sentence. Other theories argue that under the right experimental and pragmatic conditions, the true state of affairs is represented and accessible to comprehenders immediately, suggesting that it is possible for negation to be processed fluently in a single step, especially in supportive contexts (as is also reflected in the contexts effects seen in our data, though we note that even in our most supportive contexts, negation was processed slower; Tian et al, 2010Tian et al, , 2016Papeo, Hochmann, & Battelli, 2016;Wang, Sun, Tian, & Breheny, 2021). Although this body of literature is highly complementary to the data we have presented here, our studies here are not designed to test between competing theories about the mechanism by which negation is represented.…”