When the polar bear encounters many polar bears: event-related potential context effects evoked by uniqueness failure

Context-dependent impact of presuppositions on early magnetic brain responses during speech perception

“…In response to context-mismatching PSP triggers, this former investigation found an N400/P600 effect in case of the definite (uniqueness violation) as well as the indefinite determiner (non-uniqueness violation), in line with the present findings of a clear major impact of context-matching on alpha power in the early (0-0.5 s) time window. As concerns the noun following the PSP trigger, Kirsten et al (2014) were able to document lexical effects as well as an interaction of these lexical effects with context-matching, which might correspond to the present interactions within the intermediate time windows (0.5-1.5 s). Regarding the late window (2.0-2.5 s) of the present study, Kirsten et al (2014) did not report a respective EEG correlate, but this, presumably, is due to the different timing conditions between word-by-word reading in the EEG study and listening to fluent speech in the present MEG study.…”

“…The EEG study of Kirsten et al (2014) used similar materials as the present experiment, but the stimuli were presented in a word-by-word reading modality. In response to context-mismatching PSP triggers, this former investigation found an N400/P600 effect in case of the definite (uniqueness violation) as well as the indefinite determiner (non-uniqueness violation), in line with the present findings of a clear major impact of context-matching on alpha power in the early (0-0.5 s) time window.…”

“…), verbs (''know''), or the definiteness of determiners (''the'') (Kirsten et al, 2014;Tiemann et al, 2011). In general, PSP triggers are used to mark linguistic materials as referring to something that is already known or has already been introduced into the actual context, i.e., something that is present in a mental model (Garrod & Sanford, 1982).…”

“…In a recent study addressing context-sensitive PSPs of determiner phrases, context-mismatching indefinite as well as definite items evoked an N400/P600 complex immediately upon reading the determiners (Kirsten et al, 2014). The present study used similar text materials, comprising context and test sentences, but the stimuli were presented in a spoken mode via headphones, and the listeners' brain responses were recorded by means of MEG measurements.…”

“…In order to direct the listeners' attention to context-sensitive semantic aspects of the test sentences and to ensure actual processing of the PSPs, the subjects were asked to rate the context-adequacy of each test sentence. Similar to the preceding investigation (Kirsten et al, 2014), the test materials included a definite (PSP trigger ''the'') or an indefinite (''a'', German ''ein'') determiner phrase. Roughly, the definite determiner suggests existence and uniqueness of an item in the context of a particular discourse sequence (Anderson & Holcomb, 2005;Heim, 1982;Krahmer, 1998) whereas the indefinite determiner is associated with an anti-uniqueness or novelty requirement (Alonso-Ovalle, Menendez-Benito, & Schwarz, 2011;Chemla, 2008;Kirsten et al, 2014;Napoli, 2013).…”