No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
No semantic illusion in the ‘Semantic P600’ phenomenon: ERP evidence from Mandarin Chinese
Abstract
Recent observations of unexpected ERP responses to grammatically well-formed role-reversed sentences (the "Semantic P600" phenomenon) have been taken to bear directly on questions about the architecture of the language processing system. This paper evaluates two central pieces of evidence for accounts that propose a syntax-independent semantic composition mechanism, namely the presence of P600 effects and the absence of N400 effects in role-reversed sentences. Experiment 1 examined the relative contribution of the presence of an animacy violation and the semantic relations between words ('combinability') to the ERP responses to role-reversed sentences. Experiment 2 examined the ERP responses to role-reversed sentences that are fully animacy-congruous. Results from the two experiments showed that animacy-violated sentences with no plausible non-surface interpretation elicited the same P600 effect as both types of role-reversed sentences; additionally, semantically anomalous target words elicited no N400 effects when they were strongly semantically related to the preceding words, regardless of the presence of animacy violations. Taken together, these findings suggest that the presence of P600s to role-reversed sentences can be attributed to the implausibility of the sentence meaning, and the absence of N400 effects is due to a combination of weak contextual constraints and strong lexical association. The presence of a plausible non-surface interpretation and animacy violations made no unique contribution to the ERP response profiles. Hence, existing ERP findings are compatible with the long-held assumption that online semantic composition is dependent on surface syntax and do not constitute evidence for a syntax-independent semantic composition mechanism.
... It reflects the cognitive cost of processing complex or anomalous sentences to build coherent representations and update the communicated content (Aurnhammer et al., 2021(Aurnhammer et al., , 2023Brouwer et al., 2012). For example, Chow and Phillips (2013) found that implausible role-reversed sentences elicited pronounced P600 responses regardless of whether the syntax conflicts with the semantic interpretations, i.e., even when there were no plausible interpretations for the role reversals. Some studies that manipulated the ease of retrieval and plausibility of the critical word through the preceding context found that priming and plausibility independently modulate the N400 and P600 (Delogu et al., 2019;Klingvall & Heinat, 2024), providing support for the single-stream models of sentence processing. ...
... In this case, the "ladder" is the theme, not the agent, but it occupies the subject position and is assigned a semantically implausible action, as ladders do not climb in the real world, creating both a syntax-semantic conflict and a violation of world knowledge expectations. These examples illustrate how thematic role reversals in Indo-European languages often confound semantic implausibility with conflicts between semantic and syntactic processing streams (Chow & Phillips, 2013;Hoeks et al., 2004;Kim & Osterhout, 2005;Kuperberg et al., 2003;van Herten et al., 2005;Herten et al., 2006;Zheng & Lemhöfer, 2019), thereby complicating the interpretations of the observed effects. Consequently, the specific contributions of lexical retrieval and semantic integration to the N400 and the P600 components remain unclear. ...
... These results support the lexical retrieval account of N400, which posits that priming boosts the retrieval of an input word from memory, thus leading to N400 reduction (Brouwer et al., 2012(Brouwer et al., , 2017. This study adds to the semantic P600 literature, showing that when target words are equally primed within the given context (e.g., maintaining consistent semantic associations), they do not elicit significant N400 differences (Chow & Phillips, 2013;Li et al., 2023;Ye & Zhou, 2008). ...
Previous research has observed P600 but no N400 effects on grammatically well-formed but role-reversed sentences, prompting an examination of the syntax-based semantic composition. Multi-stream and single-stream models propose divergent meaning integration mechanisms and different functional interpretations of N400 and P600 components. Here, we test these competing hypotheses by examining how the ease of lexical retrieval and the plausibility of role-reversed sentences influence brain responses. We engaged Chinese native speakers in a sentence reading experiment while recording their brain potentials. The experiment manipulated lexical retrieval ease through priming the object nouns or not, and varied the plausibility of role-reversed sentences by employing the distinctive characteristic of Mandarin Chinese that allows plausible role-reversed sentences. Results revealed that priming significantly reduced the N400 responses, suggesting facilitated lexical retrieval processes. Implausible role reversals elicited greater P600 amplitudes compared to plausible role reversals and non-reversed canonical sentences, despite both reversed conditions featuring semantic-syntactic conflicts, suggesting that P600 is associated with semantic plausibility rather than syntax-semantic conflict monitoring. For plausible role reversals, we observed a sustained frontally distributed positivity, suggesting an elaborative analysis of events implied by non-canonical verb-argument structures. These findings support single-stream models of sentence processing, where the N400 indexes semantic retrieval and the P600 reflects integration efforts to build coherent sentence representations. This study is the first to separate semantic implausibility and syntactic-semantic conflict, providing insight into the neurocognitive mechanisms involved in syntax-semantic interface processing.
... Second, we used ERPs to test processing of role reversals, which have been widely reported to elicit semantic P600 effects 48 . While most accounts assume that role reversals are processed similarly across languages 48,54 , there is evidence that different language process these structures differently 16 . Prior experiments have tested Mandarin role reversals, but there are conflicting reports of N400s 16 , semantic P600s 54,56 , or no ERP modulation 58 . ...
... For role reversal sentences, we expected that if Mandarin plausibility comprehension comprises language-specific mechanisms, then there would be an N400 response, with or without P600 modulation, as predicted by the eADM 16 . Alternatively, if Mandarin comprehension relies on mechanisms identical to other languages, then there should be a semantic P600 response without modulation of the N400, as found in prior studies [42][43][44]54,56 . Crucially, we note that each of the three models has different aims and proposed mechanisms underlying their proposed processing architecture, and thus the corresponding predictions in the context of the current study (overviewed in Table 3) are not strict tests of the validity of any single model over another. ...
... At the position of the verb, we found that role reversals elicited an N400 effect followed by a local frontal positivity. In contrast to reports of semantic P600 effects to role reversals 45,46,48,54 , our findings indicate that Mandarin role reversal anomalies were detected via relatively early, automatic semantic processing and meaning retrieval mechanisms. Our finding of a frontal positivity contrasts with predictions for semantic P600s, given that frontal positivities are often dissociated from typically posterior P600 effects 56,66 . ...
Mandarin Chinese is typologically unusual among the world’s languages in having flexible word order despite a near absence of inflectional morphology. These features of Mandarin challenge conventional linguistic notions such as subject and object and the divide between syntax and semantics. In the present study, we tested monolingual processing of argument structure in Mandarin verb-final sentences, where word order alone is not a reliable cue. We collected participants’ responses to a forced agent-assignment task while measuring their electroencephalography data to capture real-time processing throughout each sentence. We found that sentence interpretation was not informed by word order in the absence of other cues, and while the coverbs BA and BEI were strong signals for agent selection, comprehension was a result of multiple cues. These results challenge previous reports of a linear ranking of cue strength. Event-related potentials showed that BA and BEI impacted participants’ processing even before the verb was read and that role reversal anomalies elicited an N400 effect without a subsequent semantic P600. This study demonstrates that Mandarin sentence comprehension requires online interaction among cues in a language-specific manner, consistent with models that predict crosslinguistic differences in core sentence processing mechanisms.
... Second, we used ERPs to test processing of role reversals, which have been widely reported to elicit semantic P600 effects 48 . While most accounts assume that role reversals are processed similarly across languages 48,54 , there is evidence that different language process these structures differently 16 . Prior experiments have tested Mandarin role reversals, but there are conflicting reports of N400s 16 , semantic P600s 54,56 , or no ERP modulation 58 . ...
... For role reversal sentences, we expected that if Mandarin plausibility comprehension comprises language-specific mechanisms, then there would be an N400 response, with or without P600 modulation, as predicted by the eADM 16 . Alternatively, if Mandarin comprehension relies on mechanisms identical to other languages, then there should be a semantic P600 response without modulation of the N400, as found in prior studies [42][43][44]54,56 . Crucially, we note that each of the three models has different aims and proposed mechanisms underlying their proposed processing architecture, and thus the corresponding predictions in the context of the current study (overviewed in Table 3) are not strict tests of the validity of any single model over another. ...
... At the position of the verb, we found that role reversals elicited an N400 effect followed by a local frontal positivity. In contrast to reports of semantic P600 effects to role reversals 45,46,48,54 , our findings indicate that Mandarin role reversal anomalies were detected via relatively early, automatic semantic processing and meaning retrieval mechanisms. Our finding of a frontal positivity contrasts with predictions for semantic P600s, given that frontal positivities are often dissociated from typically posterior P600 effects 56,66 . ...
Mandarin Chinese is typologically unusual among the world’s languages in having flexible word order despite a near absence of inflectional morphology. These features of Mandarin challenge conventional linguistic notions such as subject and object and the divide between syntax and semantics. In the present study, we tested monolingual processing of argument structure in Mandarin verb-final sentences, where word order alone is not a reliable cue. We collected participants’ responses to a forced agent-assignment task while measuring their electroencephalography data to capture real-time processing throughout each sentence. We found that sentence interpretation was not informed by word order in the absence of other cues, and while the coverbs BA and BEI were strong signals for agent selection, comprehension was a result of multiple cues. These results challenge previous reports of a linear ranking of cue strength. Event-related potentials showed that BA and BEI impacted participants’ processing even before the verb was read and that role reversal anomalies elicited an N400 effect without a subsequent semantic P600. This study demonstrates that Mandarin sentence comprehension requires online interaction among cues in a language-specific manner, consistent with models that predict crosslinguistic differences in core sentence processing mechanisms.
... We do know, however, that even proficient readers show additional processing efforts when resolving cue conf licts, manifested by a longer reading time using self-paced reading tasks (McRae et al., 1998) or by the semantic P600 component using event-related potentials (Kim & Osterhout, 2005;Kuperberg et al., 2007). Such processing efforts can be caused by multiple sources, including syntactic reanalysis or self-monitoring/correction/inhibition efforts from an initial good-enough processing (Ferreira & Patson, 2007), rational integration efforts over a noisy channel (e.g., a noisy environment, error-prone producer/perceiver) (Gibson et al., 2013;Levy, 2008b), additional integration efforts due to the implausibility of the target interpretation (Chow & Phillips, 2013;Patson & Warren, 2010), and/or a surprisal effect as the incoming linguistic materials are less predicted (Levy, 2008a). Various factors relevant to these processing mechanisms may also inf luence the processing efforts, such as cue validity/strength in the specific language (Harrington et al., 1992;MacWhinney et al., 1984) and individual differences in cognitive functions, including executive control (Thothathiri et al., 2018) and working memory Tan et al., 2017). ...
... Li et al., 1992;Wolpert et al., 2023). Chow and Phillips (2013) found semantic P600 effects for animacyviolated active BA construction sentences, suggesting increased processing efforts in integrating implausible meanings despite the morphological cues being reliable for comprehension. ...
... We also included an equal number of fillers with similar BA and BEI constructions, 30 with plausible meanings, with inanimate-agent-biased verbs, and 30 with implausible meanings from mismatched verbs, with counterbalanced agent and patient animacy as well as verb animacy bias, in order to reduce the predictability of the target verbs and to distract the participants from noticing the semantic reversal types of implausibility in the target conditions. The majority of the target sentences were adopted from the animacy congruent condition from Chow and Phillips (2013), with some adjustments including switching the agent and patient roles to create the implausible sentences, changing half the stimuli into the BEI constructions, and changing some glosses to better suit the current population (Chinese readers in Mainland China). Furthermore, the BA and BEI constructions were embedded in a temporal adjunct clause (preposition ZAI "at"... postposition ZHIHOU "after"), followed by a simple main clause with an intransitive event. ...
The current study combined sentence plausibility judgment and self-paced reading tasks to examine the comprehension strategies and processing patterns of Chinese deaf individuals when comprehending written Chinese sentences with syntactic–semantic cue conflicts. Similar to findings from previous crosslinguistic studies on deaf readers, the Chinese deaf readers showed great variability in their comprehension strategies, with only 38% robustly relying on syntactic cues. Regardless of their overall comprehension preferences, the deaf readers all showed additional processing efforts as reflected by longer reading time at the verb regions when they relied on the syntactic cues. Those with less robust reliance on syntactic cues also showed longer reading time at the verb regions even when they relied on the semantic cues, suggesting sensitivity to the syntactic cues regardless of the comprehension strategy. These findings suggest that deaf readers in general endure more processing burden while resolving conflicting syntactic and semantic cues, likely due to their overall high reliance on semantic information during sentence comprehension. Increased processing burden thus may contribute to an overall tendency of over-reliance on semantic cues when comprehending sentences with cue conflicts.
... For instance, P600 effects (rather than N400 effects) were found for semantic role violations ("the hearty meal was devouring/devoured", A. Kim and Osterhout, 2005) and for thematic role reversals ("the javelin has the athletes thrown" vs. "the javelin was by the athletes thrown", Hoeks et al., 2004). Later studies revealed that this phenomenon is not specific to materials in which a semantic illusion could be a plausible explanation of the absence of the N400 effect (Chow & Phillips, 2013;Nieuwland & van Berkum, 2005, see Chapter 4 for further discussion), i.e., a situation in which comprehenders temporarily employ a plausible interpretation (e.g., the athletes throwing the javelin, when reading "the javelin has the athletes thrown"), indicating a more general role of the P600 in language comprehension. ...
... Stimuli are examples from two conditions in Hoeks et al. (2004) who observed a biphasic effect for "the javelin has the athletes summarised" and a P600 effect for "The javelin has the athletes thrown" relative to the baseline condition "The javelin was by the athletes thrown". words can be absent, even if there is no semantically plausible alternative interpretation (Chow and Phillips, 2013;Delogu et al., 2019;Nieuwland and van Berkum, 2005; see Chapter 4 for discussion and novel data). ...
... In response to semantic illusion studies, the P600 was re-interpreted within multi-stream architectures that posited the P600 to reflect a conflict between competing semantic analyses. However, P600 effects have also been observed for implausible sentences that do not induce competing analyses relative to plausible controls (e.g., Chow & Phillips, 2013;Delogu et al., 2019Delogu et al., , 2021. Similarly, in Design 1, we observed P600 effects for unexpected continuations that do not make semantically attractive alternative interpretations available. ...
To understand language, comprehenders must retrieve the meaning associated with the words they perceive from memory and they must integrate retrieved word meanings into a representation of utterance meaning. During incremental comprehension, both processes are constrained by what has been understood so far and hence are expectation-based mechanisms. Psycholinguistic experiments measuring the electrical activity of the brain have provided key evidence that may elucidate how the language comprehension system organises and implements expectation-based retrieval and integration. However, the field has converged neither on a generally accepted formalisation of these processes nor on their mapping to the two most salient components of the event-related potential signal, the N400 and the P600. Retrieval-Integration theory offers a mechanistic account of the underpinnings of language comprehension and posits that retrieval is indexed by the N400 and integration is indexed by the P600. Following these core assumptions, this thesis demonstrates the expectation-based nature of language comprehension in which both retrieval (N400) and integration (P600) are influenced by expectations derived from an incrementally constructed utterance meaning representation. Critically, our results also indicate that lexical association to the preceding context modulates the N400 but not the P600, affirming the relation of the N400 to retrieval, rather than to integration. Zooming in on the role of integration, we reveal an important novel dimension to the interpretation of the P600 by demonstrating that P600 amplitude — and not N400 amplitude — is continuously related to utterance meaning plausibility. Finally, we examine the single-trial dynamics of retrieval and integration, establishing that words that are more effortful to retrieve tend to be more effortful to integrate, as evidenced by a within-trial correlation of N400 and P600 amplitude. These results are in direct opposition to traditional and more recent proposals arguing that (1) the N400 indexes integration processes, (2) integration — as indexed by the N400 — is merely “quasi-compositional”, and (3) the P600 is a reflection of conflicting interpretations generated in a multi-stream architecture. Rather, our findings indicate that (1) integration is continuously indexed by the P600, (2) integration is fully compositional, and (3) a single-stream architecture in which the N400 continuously indexes retrieval and the P600 continuously indexes integration is sufficient to account for the key ERP data. We conclude that retrieval and integration are two central mechanisms underlying language processing and that the N400 and the P600 should be considered part of the default ERP signature of utterance comprehension. Future study of expectation-based language processing should adopt a comprehension-centric view on expectancy and hence focus on integration effort, as indexed by the P600.
... "the customer that the waitress served" vs. "the waitress that the customer served"). It is also observed with simple SOV structure in languages that allow it, such as Mandarin and Dutch (Chow & Phillips, 2013;Chow, Lau, Wang, & Phillips, 2018;Hoeks, Stowe, & Doedens, 2004;Kolk, Chwilla, Van Herten, & Oor, 2003). In addition, the pattern still holds even when there is only one pre-verbal argument (Kuperberg, Sitnikova, Caplan, & Holcomb, 2003;Kuperberg, Kreher, Sitnikova, Caplan, & Holcomb, 2007;Kim & Osterhout, 2005;Momma, Sakai, & Phillips, 2015). ...
... Interestingly and in line with previous findings, the N400 was not sensitive to role reversal situations, as if the verb fired were a good fit of event for a servant to act on a millionaire. As discussed in the Introduction section, the insensitivity of N400 to role reversal situations has been replicated in many languages with various verb final sentence structures (Kim & Osterhout, 2005;Kuperberg, Kreher, Sitnikova, Caplan, & Holcomb, 2007;Momma et al., 2015;Chow & Phillips, 2013;Chow et al., 2016). The null effect could not be attributed to lack of engaging predictive mechanism during the experiment, as we did observe an N400 effect to the cloze manipulation in our control items. ...
... In Experiment 3, we aimed at investigating whether we could observe a lower time limit on the argumenthood effect we observed in Experiment 1, by using a slightly faster presentation rate (600 ms SOA). Prior studies have already reported the absence of argument role effects on the N400 at a 600 ms presentation rate (Chow & Phillips, 2013;Kuperberg, Kreher, Sitnikova, Caplan, & Holcomb, 2007). Here we also found no significant argumenthood effects at the 600 ms presentation rate. ...
The current study investigated the processing stages by which the parser incorporates different pieces of information, from clausehood to argument roles, to update predictions about the main verb. Using Mandarin to match word position across relevant conditions, we extend classic ERP findings on the impact of argument role reversals ([The millionaireSUBJECT the servantOBJECT fired] vs. #[The servantSUBJECT the millionaireOBJECT fired]), by investigating cases where one of the nouns is not an argument of the verb ([The millionaireSUBJECT the servantOBJECT fired] vs. #[The millionaire thought [the servantSUBJECT fired…]]). The pattern of N400 responses suggest a three-stage model of argument-verb computation: An initial stage demonstrates sensitivity at the verb to semantic association only. Soon after, responses show partial structure-sensitivity, differentiating whether the noun phrases are arguments of the upcoming verb or not. Only at the last stage do the arguments’ roles (e.g. agent/patient) become available to impact computations at the verb.
... Nevertheless, there is little evidence to date that comprehenders' expectations about an upcoming verb are sensitive to this information during real-time comprehension. In fact, a number of studies in languages such as Dutch, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and English have reported that reversing the preverbal arguments did not modulate comprehenders' N400 response at the verb in pairs like (1), despite the large difference in the predictability of the verb (Chow & Phillips, 2013;Hoeks, Stowe, & Doedens, 2004;Kolk, Chwilla, van Herten, & Oor, 2003;Oishi & Sakamoto, 2010;van Herten, Chwilla, & Kolk, 2006;van Herten, Kolk, & Chwilla, 2005;Ye & Zhou, 2008;cf. Bornkessel-Schlesewsky et al., 2011). ...
... Lastly, with the linking hypothesis that the N400 is modulated by the extent to which a word's semantic representation has been pre-activated (i.e. the prediction view), we have proposed that the N400's insensitivity to argument role reversals may be taken to show that verb predictions are not always sensitive to argument role information, potentially because the impact of argument role information on online verb prediction is not immediate (Chow & Phillips, 2013;. We will call this the "Slow Prediction" hypothesis. ...
... In fact, one common characteristic among many previous studies that looked at argument role reversals is the close proximity between the arguments and the target verb in the experimental materials. For example, the SOA between the second argument and the target verb was only 480 ms in Hoeks et al. (2004), 530 ms in , 600 ms in Chow and Phillips (2013), and 645 ms in Kolk et al. (2003) and van Herten et al. (2005van Herten et al. ( , 2006. 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. ...
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.
... Since the particle ba always follows the subject and immediately precedes the direct object, the arguments' identity and their syntactic roles are evident even before the target verb. (1), despite the large difference in the predictability of the verb (Chow & Phillips, 2013;Hoeks, Stowe, & Doedens, 2004;Kolk et al., 2003;Oishi & Sakamoto, 2010;van Herten, Chwilla, & Kolk, 2006;van Herten, Kolk, & Chwilla, 2005;Ye & Zhou, 2008;cf. Bornkessel-Schlesewsky et al., 2011). ...
... Lastly, with the linking hypothesis that the N400 is modulated by the extent to which a word's semantic representation has been pre-activated (i.e., the prediction view), we have proposed that the N400's insensitivity to argument role reversals may be taken to show that verb predictions are not always sensitive to argument role information, potentially because the impact of argument role information on online verb prediction is not immediate (Chow & Phillips, 2013;. We will call this the "Slow Prediction" hypothesis. ...
... In fact, one common characteristic among many previous studies that looked at argument role reversals is the close proximity between the arguments and the target verb in the experimental materials. For example, the SOA between the second argument and the target verb was only 480 ms in Hoeks et al. (2004), 530ms in , 600 ms in Chow and Phillips (2013), and 645 ms in Kolk et al. (2003) and van Herten et al. (2005van Herten et al. ( , 2006. ...
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
... What is more, P600 effect was also reported to be associated with semantic processing and reanalysis, which was also called "semantic P600" (Chow and Phillips, 2013;Yang et al., 2015). Such positive amplitude has two reported origins seemingly different from the normal P600 effect. ...
... Such positive amplitude has two reported origins seemingly different from the normal P600 effect. First, it arises in a grammatically correct yet role-reversed sentence, which was interpreted as the implausibility of the sentence meaning (e.g., 高 材 生 把 数 学 题 难 倒 了 。Translation: The student baffled the math problem) (Chow and Phillips, 2013). Second, sentence structures with either a verb-noun mismatch (e.g., 小赵修理一 张信纸。Translation: Zhao repaired a piece of writing paper.) ...
Previous studies used BA and BEI structures as stimuli to infer that syntax-first models seemed not applicable in Chinese. However, there were inconsistent results of both within same structures and between different structures. Since sentence structures of stimuli were non-canonical as well as lacking wide representativeness in Chinese, we examined the processing mechanism of a more representative structure in Chinese, QING (QING + NP1 + V + NP2) structure in the current study. Four conditions, including correct sentences (CORRECT), semantic-violated sentences (SEMANTIC), syntactic-violated sentences (SYNTACTIC), and combined violated sentences (COMBINED), were composed by manipulating the V between NP1 and NP2. Results with respect to three types of violation were as follows. In the initial phrase (100–300 ms), there existed an interaction between SEMANTIC consistency and the SYNTACTIC category. In the intermediate phrase (300–500 ms), the interaction continued with similar negative waves evoked by three types of violated sentences. In the final phrase (500–700 ms), both SYNTACTIC or COMBINED evoked obvious negative waves. The current research of Qing structure provided new evidence for the processing mechanism of Chinese sentence patterns. Specifically, we found that the interactive model rather than the syntax-first model may apply to the processing of this specific structure of Chinese sentences and compared the results with those reported in previous studies that examined other types of sentence structures.
... Therefore, the P600 is now also argued to be an index of conflict resolution (Kuperberg, 2007) or processes of semantic integration (Brouwer, Crocker, Venhuizen, & Hoeks, 2017). P600 effects have been reported in many languages including English (Guo, Guo, Yan, Jiang, & Peng, 2009;Hagoort, 2003;Qi et al., 2017;Tagarelli, Shattuck, Turkeltaub, & Ullman, 2019), Mandarin (Chow & Phillips, 2013;Qiu & Zhou, 2012;Ren, Chen, Qi, Qiu, & Gao, 2018), Spanish (Barber & Carreiras, 2005;Caffarra & Martin, 2019), and Dutch (Gunter & Friederici, 1999;Vissers, Chwilla, Egger, & Chwilla, 2013;Zheng & Lemhofer, 2019). The "semantic P600" in particular has been receiving increasing attention recently. ...
... In this case, although the sentence is syntactically well-formed, though with a semantic anomaly, it unexpectedly elicits a P600 effect rather than an N400 effect (Kyriaki, Schlesewsky, & Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, 2020). This type of semantic P600 effect has been found in native speakers of English (Frenzel, Schlesewsky, & Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, 2011;Kuperberg, Choi, Cohn, & Jackendoff, 2010;Paczynski & Kuperberg, 2012), Spanish (Stroud & Phillips, 2012), Dutch (Van de Meerendonk, Kolk, Vissers, & Chwilla, 2010;Van Herten, Kolk, & Chwilla, 2005), French (Shen, Fiori-Duharcourt, & Isel, 2016) and Chinese (Chow & Phillips, 2013) and also in L2 learners (Zheng & Lemhofer, 2019). ...
... For example, the component has been found in "semantic illusion" contexts, i.e. grammatical sentences that are semantically anomalous due to thematic role reversal or thematic violations (the "Semantic P600", see e.g. Chow & Phillips, 2013;Hoeks, Stowe, & Doedens, 2004;Kim & Osterhout, 2005;Kuperberg et al., 2007). ...
... These and other findings have led numerous researchers to argue that the P600 reflects integration processes (Brouwer, Fitz, & Hoeks, 2012;Delogu, Brouwer, & Crocker, 2019;Kaan, Harris, Gibson, & Holcomb, 2000; For further discussion regarding the functional nature of the P600, also see Chow & Phillips, 2013). ...
Ample evidence suggests that during sentence processing comprehenders can “pre‐activate” lexical/semantic knowledge stored in long‐term memory. A relatively recent development suggests that in some cases a stronger form of prediction is employed, involving “pre‐updating” the predicted content into the sentence's representation being built in working memory. The current study argues for an activation threshold mechanism by which pre‐updating is initiated, within the routine processing stages of a word in a context. By combining a speeded cloze task with event‐related potentials, we were able to analyze electrophysiological data measured prior to when participants were prompted to produce a completion, based on the participant's cloze response, reflecting their strongest prediction at that specific moment in time. A P600 effect reflecting pre‐updating was observed in high (relative to low) constraint sentences, even in trials where the participant predicted a low cloze word. The results support a mechanism in which multiple predictions accumulate activations, “racing” toward a retrieval threshold. Once the activation level of a certain word passes the threshold, the word is integrated into the sentence representation in working memory. Pre‐updating occurs if a certain prediction passes the retrieval threshold prior to its realization in the input.
... The P600 was also found in "semantic illusion" contexts, namely syntactically sound sentences that are semantically anomalous due to thematic role reversal or thematic violations (the "Semantic P600", see e.g. Chow & Phillips, 2013;Hoeks, Stowe, & Doedens, 2004;Kuperberg et al., 2007). These and other findings have led to the suggestion that P600 amplitude reflects integration difficulty (Brouwer, Fitz, & Hoeks, 2012;Kaan et al., 2000; For further discussion regarding the functional nature of the P600, also see Chow & Phillips, 2013). 2 ...
... Chow & Phillips, 2013;Hoeks, Stowe, & Doedens, 2004;Kuperberg et al., 2007). These and other findings have led to the suggestion that P600 amplitude reflects integration difficulty (Brouwer, Fitz, & Hoeks, 2012;Kaan et al., 2000; For further discussion regarding the functional nature of the P600, also see Chow & Phillips, 2013). 2 ...
It was recently proposed that lexical prediction in sentence context encompasses two qualitatively distinct prediction mechanisms: “pre-activation,” namely, activating representations stored in long-term memory, and “pre-updating,” namely, updating the sentence's representation, built online in working memory (WM), to include the predicted content [Lau, E. F., Holcomb, P. J., & Kuperberg, G. R. Dissociating N400 effects of prediction from association in single-word contexts. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 25, 484–502, 2013]. The current study sought to find evidence for pre-updating and test the influence of individual differences in WM capacity on the tendency to engage in this process. Participants read strongly and weakly constraining sentences. ERPs were measured on the predictable noun as well as on the preceding verb, where the prediction is generated. Increased P600 amplitude was observed at the verb in the strongly constraining sentences, reflecting integration of the predicted upcoming argument, thus providing evidence for pre-updating. This effect was greater for participants with higher WM capacity, indicating that the tendency to engage in pre-updating is highly affected by WM capacity. The opposite effect was observed at the noun, that is, for participants with higher WM span, a greater decrease in P600 amplitude in the strongly constraining sentences was observed, indicating that the integration of a pre-updated word was easier. We discuss these results in light of previous literature and propose a plausible architecture to account for the interplay between pre-activation and pre-updating, mediating the influence of factors such as WM capacity.
... This clash triggers reanalysis, evident in the P600. Chow and Phillips (2013) investigated the "Semantic P600" phenomenon in Chinese, finding that well-formed role-reversed sentences evoked P600 activation, highlighting the dependence of online semantic processing on surface syntax. Deng et al. (2016) revealed early syntactic processing (ELAN) and semantic-syntactic integration (N400) in Chinese verbs. ...
Sun Y and Luo X (2024) A mapping-knowledge-domain analysis of ERP research on language processing. The event-related potentials (ERPs) technique represents a newly developed methodology in cognitive neuroscience and has significantly extended the scope of linguistic studies, offering valuable insights into cognitive processes related to language. While extant literature reviews have addressed specific facets of ERP research on language processing, a comprehensive overview of this domain remains notably absent. This study aims to fill this gap by pioneering a mapping-knowledge-domain analysis of ERP research on language processing using Citespace, a visualized bibliometric software. The current study conducted a meticulous survey and evaluation of relevant literature extracted from the Web of Science core collection. Initially, this study outlines the spatial-temporal distribution within this domain. Subsequently, employing document co-citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, cluster analysis, and burst detection analysis, this study delved deeper into the research landscape. Findings reveal that key areas in ERP research on language processing predominantly focus on sentence comprehension, reading comprehension, and mismatch negativity, with notable emphasis on topics such as speech perception, temporal dynamics, and working memory. The current study advocates for future investigations to concentrate on larger linguistic units, explore the integration of ERP components and their functional significance, and scrutinize individual differences among participants. These directions are imperative for advancing the understanding of language processing mechanisms.
... Some studies found the P600 for (morpho-)syntactically anomalous words (e.g., Friederici, Hahne and Mecklinger 1996) so that the P600 was initially believed to reflect syntactic integration difficulties (Osterhout and Nicol 1999; Kaan et al. 2000; Allen, Badecker and Osterhout 2003 among many others). However, the P600 was also found for non-syntactic violations, such as semantic violations, animacy violations or thematic role violations (e.g., Chow and Phillips 2013). Later accounts thus do not interpret the P600 as an index of syntactic processing alone. ...
The present monograph contains a collection of contrastive, cross-linguistic studies of South Slavic languages and English. The contributions reflect many developments in linguistic research. One of the aims of the volume is to continue the long tradition of contrastive studies by addressing the relationship between English and South Slavic languages, while also considering the plethora of theories, approaches and methodologies available to linguists in the present moment. This task has been enthusiastically pursued by the twelve authors of the eight chapters in this monograph that explore English in contrast to Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, North Macedonian, Serbian, and Slovene.
... The averaged waveform for each participant was low-pass filtered at 30 Hz (zerophase, 12 dB/octave) for graphing presentation purposes only, and all statistical analyses were performed using the unfiltered data. Using the low-pass filter with lower frequency can make the grand average waveforms smoother and easy to find ERP component by visual inspection (Chow & Phillips, 2013;Havas et al., 2012;Li et al., 2020). The grand average for each task was obtained by averaging across the individual participant averages, separately for each task. ...
The role of the visuospatial network in mathematical processing has been established, but the involvement of the semantic network in mathematical processing is still poorly understood. The current study utilized a number series completion paradigm with the event-related potential (ERP) technique to examine whether the semantic network supports mathematical processing and to find the corresponding spatiotemporal neural marker. In total, 32 right-handed undergraduate students were recruited and asked to complete the number series completion as well as the arithmetical computation task in which numbers were presented in sequence. The event-related potential and multi-voxel pattern analysis showed that the rule identification process involves more semantic processing when compared with the arithmetical computation processes, and it elicited higher amplitudes for the late negative component (LNC) in left frontal and temporal lobes. These results demonstrated that the semantic network supports the rule identification in mathematical processing, with the LNC acting as the neural marker.
... The semantic P600 has now been observed in a number of studies across multiple languages, often elicited using some kind of implausible thematic role assignment (Kim and Osterhout, 2005;Van Herten, Kolk and Chwilla, 2005;Stroud and Phillips, 2012;Chow and Phillips, 2013). A variety of theoretical perspectives on the nature of the semantic P600 have been put forward, emphasizing links to processes involved in integrating newly accessed information into the emerging mental model of the sentence (Brouwer et al., 2012) and/or adjudicating conflict among the representations built from multiple language processing streams, such as those involved in semantic versus combinatorial analyses (Kuperberg, 2007). ...
To understand how neural networks in the left (LH) and right (RH) cerebral hemispheres contribute to different aspects of language comprehension, in two experiments we measured event-related potentials (ERPs) as right-handed participants read sentences, some of which contained morphosyntactic and thematic role violations. Replicating prior work (Kuperberg et al., 2006), in Experiment 1 thematic role violations elicited both an N400 and a (semantic) P600 effect. Morphosyntactic violations elicited effects that differed as a function of participants' familial sinistrality (the presence [FS+] or absence [FS-] of a left-handed biological relative): FS + participants showed a (syntactic) P600 effect whereas FS- participants showed a biphasic N400 and P600 response. To assess whether this difference reflects different underlying patterns of lateralization, in Experiment 2 target words were presented using visual half-field (VF) presentation. Indeed, for morphosyntactic violations, the FS- group elicited an asymmetric pattern, showing a P600 effect only with LH-biased presentation and an N400 effect in both VFs (cf. Lee and Federmeier, 2015). In contrast, FS + participants showed a bilateral (N400-only) response pattern. This provides further evidence of FS-based differences in hemispheric contributions to syntactic processing. Strikingly, we found that, when lateralized, thematic role violations did not elicit a P600 effect, suggesting that this effect requires contributions from both hemispheres. The different response patterns for morphosyntactic and thematic role animacy violations across FS and VF also points to a processing difference in the comprehension mechanisms underlying the semantic and syntactic P600, which had heretofore been assumed to be variants of the same component.
... The hearty meal was devouring) in which the error could be attributed to syntactic properties like word order or the characteristics of the agent/patient of a verb (e.g. Chow & Phillips, 2013;Herten, Kolk, & Chwilla, 2005;Kim & Osterhout, 2005;Kuperberg, 2007). Although none of our sentences involved role reversals and only 13 out of 120 sentences with semantic anomalies involved animacy violation, other factors may also elicit semantic P600s, such as the severity of the conflict between expected words and the presented words. ...
We examined how readers process content and function words in sentence comprehension with ERPs. Participants read simple declarative sentences using a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) with flankers paradigm. Sentences contained either an unexpected semantically anomalous content word, an unexpected syntactically anomalous function word or were well-formed with no anomalies. ERPs were examined when target words were in the parafoveal or foveal vision. Unexpected content words elicited a typically distributed N400 when displayed in the parafovea, followed by a longer-lasting, widely distributed positivity starting around 300 ms once foveated. Unexpected function words elicited a left lateralised LAN-like component when presented in the parafovea, followed by a left lateralised, posteriorly distributed P600 when foveated. These results suggested that both semantic and syntactic processing involve two stages – the initial, fast process that can be completed in parafovea, followed by a more in depth attentionally mediated assessment that occurs with direct attention.
... In fact, there is a significant body of research in psycholinguistics and cognitive science to support such a distinction. Agent and theme roles correspond with two abstract and relatively salient categories that are accessed and processed rapidly and robustly in processing [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. This general finding has been reported in studies investigating adult and child populations, as well as during exposure to visual and/or linguistic events. ...
Experimental research on argument structure has reported mixed results regarding the processing of unaccusative and unergative predicates. Using eye tracking in the visual world paradigm, this study seeks to fill a gap in the literature by presenting new evidence of the processing distinction between agent and theme subjects. We considered two hypotheses. First, the Unaccusative Hypothesis states that unaccusative (theme) subjects involve a more complex syntactic representation than unergative (agent) subjects. It predicts a delayed reactivation of unaccusative subjects compared to unergatives after the presentation of the verb. Second, the Agent First Hypothesis states that the first ambiguous NP of a sentence will preferably be interpreted as an agent due to an attentional preference to agents over themes. It predicts a larger reactivation of agent subjects than themes. We monitored the time course of gaze fixations of 44 native speakers across a visual display while processing sentences with unaccusative, unergative and transitive verbs. One of the pictures in the visual display was semantically related to the sentential subject. We analyzed fixation patterns in three different time frames: the verb frame, the post-verb frame, and the global post-verbal frame. Results indicated that sentential subjects across the three conditions were significantly activated when participants heard the verb; this is compatible with observing a post-verbal reactivation effect. Time course and magnitude of the gaze-fixation patterns are fully compatible with the predictions made by the Agent First Hypothesis. Thus, we report new evidence for (a) a processing distinction between unaccusative and unergative predicates in sentence comprehension, and (b) an attentional preference towards agents over themes, reflected by a larger reactivation effect in agent subjects.
... In past decades, researchers tried to use isolated words or simple sentences to investigate speech comprehension in the human brain. In those studies, subjects were asked to participate in specific tasks such as identifying whether the perceived word is a real word or a pseudoword (Binder et al., 2009;Zhang et al., 2019), or assessing whether a word in a sentence is congruent or incongruent with the rest of the sentence (Chow and Phillips, 2013). With this kind of well-designed paradigm, researchers can use a statistical analysis method (such as t-tests, analysis-of-variance) to estimate the mechanism of speech processing by comparing neural behaviors between different conditions. ...
In recent years, electroencephalograph (EEG) studies on speech comprehension have been extended from a controlled paradigm to a natural paradigm. Under the hypothesis that the brain can be approximated as a linear time-invariant system, the neural response to natural speech has been investigated extensively using temporal response functions (TRFs). However, most studies have modeled TRFs in the electrode space, which is a mixture of brain sources and thus cannot fully reveal the functional mechanism underlying speech comprehension. In this paper, we propose methods for investigating the brain networks of natural speech comprehension using TRFs on the basis of EEG source reconstruction. We first propose a functional hyper-alignment method with an additive average method to reduce EEG noise. Then, we reconstruct neural sources within the brain based on the EEG signals to estimate TRFs from speech stimuli to source areas, and then investigate the brain networks in the neural source space on the basis of the community detection method. To evaluate TRF-based brain networks, EEG data were recorded in story listening tasks with normal speech and time-reversed speech. To obtain reliable structures of brain networks, we detected TRF-based communities from multiple scales. As a result, the proposed functional hyper-alignment method could effectively reduce the noise caused by individual settings in an EEG experiment and thus improve the accuracy of source reconstruction. The detected brain networks for normal speech comprehension were clearly distinctive from those for non-semantically driven (time-reversed speech) audio processing. Our result indicates that the proposed source TRFs can reflect the cognitive processing of spoken language and that the multi-scale community detection method is powerful for investigating brain networks.
... These patterns may suggest different processing mechanisms involved in the processing of incongruities in negated sentences compared to those in affirmative sentences. More specifically, the N400 effect in affirmative sentences reflects difficulties with the integration of the incongruent information (Kutas & Federmeier, 2011;Kutas & Hillyard, 1980), while the P600 in negated sentences suggests that the incongruities led to processes associated with reevaluation of the larger context as found in previous studies reporting a P600 effect in response to semantic incongruities (Bornkessel-Schlesewsky & Schlesewsky, 2008;Brouwer et al., 2012;Burkhardt, 2007;Chow & Phillips, 2013; Kolk, Chwilla, van Herten, & Oor, 2003 van Herten, Kolk, & Chwilla, 2005; van Herten, Chwilla, & Kolk, 2006) ...
... The results showed similar biphasic N400-P600 patterns for semantic violation and semantic-syntactic double violation. Since a syntactic problem was not inserted into the semantic violation sentences, the P600 response resulting from semantic violation was considered to be associated with a general mechanism involving semantic computation/integration. Further, the P600 response for semantic violation was common during Chinese sentence reading (Chow and Phillips 2013;Yu and Zhang 2008;Zhang et al. 2010). In addition, in a review by Leckey and Federmeier (2019), they also mentioned that the functional significance of the P600 response should be determined according to the different processing mechanisms. ...
Language comprehension requires the processing of both linguistic and extra-linguistic information, such as syntax, semantics, and pragmatic information. Previous studies have systematically examined the interplay between syntactic and semantic processing. However, there is a lack of data on how pragmatic processing proceeds and its interaction with semantic processing. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), the present study manipulated the semantic coherence of a verb phrase (VP) and the respect consistency of the object noun phrase in the VP, resulting in four types of critical sentences. Participants read 160 critical Chinese sentences and 220 filler sentences. After electroencephalogram recordings, they completed the Autism Quotient Communication (AQ-Comm) subscale and a sentence acceptability rating task. The ERP results showed that respect violation elicited a larger N400 response and a late negative activity in the pragmatically less-skilled subgroup (as indexed by higher scores on the AQ-Comm subscale). In contrast, respect violation elicited a P600 response in the pragmatically skilled subgroup (as indexed by lower scores on the AQ-Comm subscale). The double violation condition elicited an ERP pattern that was similar to that of the semantic violation condition in both subgroups, suggesting that respect violation effects were present only when the VP was semantically coherent. These results suggest that semantic violation can preclude readers from engaging in pragmatic inferencing, regardless of the participants' pragmatic skills. Strategies for resolving respect violation and corresponding brain activities vary according to participants' pragmatic abilities.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11571-021-09700-2.
... The present study seeks to go a step forward and to evaluate how the pragmatic use of word order alternation interacts with its use as a cue for arguments prominence computation. In other words, if prominence is considered a hierarchy composed by other independent hierarchies (e.g., animacy features are independent from case marking and word order), and in a particular sentence these hierarchies may conflict with each other (e.g., the innanimate argument bares nominative case, Chow and Phillips, 2013), it is worth exploring when the language word order (SVO) is incongruent with the canonical word order stipulated by the lexico-semantic structure of the verb (SVO for activity verbs and OVS for ObjExp psych verbs) and that of the rhematic hierarchy ("given" referents precede "new" ones). ...
Word order alternation has been described as one of the most productive information structure markers and discourse organizers across languages. Psycholinguistic evidence has shown that word order is a crucial cue for argument interpretation. Previous studies about Spanish sentence comprehension have shown greater difficulty to parse sentences that present a word order that does not respect the order of participants of the verb's lexico-semantic structure, irrespective to whether the sentences follow the canonical word order of the language or not. This difficulty has been accounted as the cognitive cost related to the miscomputation of prominence status of the argument that precedes the verb. Nonetheless, the authors only analyzed the use of alternative word orders in isolated sentences, leaving aside the pragmatic motivation of word order alternation. By means of an eye-tracking task, the current study provides further evidence about the role of information structure for the comprehension of sentences with alternative word order and verb type, and sheds light on the interaction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics. We analyzed both “early” and “late” eye-movement measures as well as accuracy and response times to comprehension questions. Results showed an overall influence of information structure reflected in a modulation of late eye-movement measures as well as offline measures like total reading time and questions response time. However, effects related to the miscomputation of prominence status did not fade away when sentences were preceded by a context that led to non-canonical word order of constituents, showing that prominence computation is a core mechanism for argument interpretation, even in sentences preceded by context.
... This effect was originally interpreted as signaling a syntactic process, since it has been repeatedly engendered by syntactic errors (Hagoort et al., 1993;Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992) or grammatical but syntactically complex structures (Osterhout et al., 1994;Kaan et al., 2000;Phillips et al., 2005;Gouvea et al., 2010). Nevertheless, there has been a more recent attempt to reinterpret it as the "semantic P600" effect (Kim & Osterhout, 2005;Kuperberg, 2007;Bornkessel-Schlesewsky & Schlesewsky, 2008;Van de Meerendonk et al., 2009;Brouwer et al., 2012;Paczynski & Kuperberg, 2012;Chow & Phillips, 2013), since words that are semantically implausible in a sentence context can also register a large P600. Although the etiology of the P600 is still being debated, there is a broad consensus that it reflects integration-related cognitive costs in constructing coherent representation (Friederici & Weissenborn, 2007;Kuperberg, 2007;Bornkessel & Schlesewsky, 2008;Van Petten & Luka, 2012). ...
... Behavioral Results (Chow & Phillips, 2013;Chow, Lau, Wang, & Phillips, 2018) (Bornkessel-Schlesewsky et al., 2011) Materials and Procedure ...
... This suggests that structural relations may influence semantic processing in the N400 time window under certain conditions. For more discussion, see Brouwer et al. (2012) or Chow and Phillips (2013). See also the delay experiment described in this section. ...
The number meaning of grammatically plural nouns is to some extent context sensitive. In negative sentences, plural nouns typically receive an inclusive reading referring to any number of individuals (one or many). This contrasts with their more frequent exclusive reading referring to a group of two or more individuals. The present study investigated whether a plural noun in a negative sentence is treated as inclusive immediately when it is encountered or whether this interpretation is delayed. In an experiment using a technique based on a numerical variant of the Stroop effect (Berent et al. in J Mem Lang 53:342–358, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2005.05.002; Patson and Warren in J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 36(3):782–789, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018783), participants counted visually presented singular and plural Polish nouns embedded in either affirmative or negative sentences. The nouns were displayed once or as two copies. Plural nouns were easier to count when they were repeated twice on the screen than when only one copy was displayed. For singular nouns this pattern was reversed and the effect was weaker. Crucially, no difference was found for plural nouns appearing in affirmative and negative sentences. This indicated that an inclusive (“one or more”) reading of plural nouns in the scope of sentential negation was not immediate. The results are in line with past research suggesting that the semantic processing of a negative sentence may proceed in two phases (Fischler et al. in Psychophysiology 20(4):400–409, 1983. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.1983.tb00920.x; Kaup et al. in J Pragmat 38:1033–1050, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2005.09.012; Lüdtke et al. in J Cogn Neurosci 20(8):1355–1370, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2008.20093; Spychalska in Proceedings of the 2011 ESSLLI student session, 2011).
... While structural repair refers to the processes that attempt to construct a correct representation when the sentence continuation is ungrammatical, ambiguity resolution is resolving the temporary difficulty that is posed by the ambiguity in the sentence [10,29,30]. Subsequent investigations have found P600 effects in response to a broad range of nonsyntactic manipulations, including highly semantically anomalous sentences [31], sentences with animacy violations, or sentences with thematic role violations [32][33][34][35][36][37], as well as nonlinguistic manipulations involving musical syntax [38]. A few studies have reported the existence of 'Semantic P600' potential in response to syntactic violations [39]. ...
The past few decades of research in language processing provides empirical data on the dimensions of the brain-language relationship. The processing of different language components is determined through various methods. The methodologies used to study language processing have evidenced an immense advancement over the years, tracking real-time processing events with millisecond precision. ERP (event-related potentials) is one such method which assists to visualize the neural mechanisms that underlie language processing. Different electrophysiological components mark different components of language depending on their structural and functional aspects. Since research on language processing is expanding its boundaries, the neural mechanisms for processing syntax components have been the focus of recent investigations across the languages of the world. The present review article aims to discuss the findings of studies on syntax processing besides highlighting the functional significance of P600, the electrophysiological marker of syntax processing. The results of the review elucidate the need for evaluating the finer details of syntax, including morpho-syntax concerning specific language structures. Studies across the languages of the world exemplify the uniqueness in the structure of different languages that may provide varied perspectives on the universality in syntax processing. The present review contributes a new dimension towards understanding the nature of syntax processing with respect to language specificity.
... Other studies have identified brain regions such as the left mid-superior temporal cortex that encode abstract Agent and Patient roles, during written sentence comprehension (Frankland & Greene, 2015), as well as viewing of animated videos (Wang, Cherkassky, et al., 2016). In the last decade, language comprehension research has focused on the precise timing of thematic role assignment, with debate as to whether role interpretation is delayed relative to other types of information (see Chow & Phillips, 2013;Chow, Smith, Lau, & Phillips, 2016;Kim, Oines, & Sikos, 2016;Kowalski & Huang, 2017;Kukona, Fang, Aicher, Chen, & Magnuson, 2011). Nonetheless, the idea that agent-and patient-like roles are assigned relatively rapidly during comprehension is uncontroversial. ...
The status of thematic roles such as Agent and Patient in cognitive science is highly controversial: To some they are universal components of core knowledge, to others they are scholarly fictions without psychological reality. We address this debate by posing two critical questions: to what extent do humans represent events in terms of abstract role categories, and to what extent are these categories shaped by universal cognitive biases? We review a range of literature that contributes answers to these questions: psycholinguistic and event cognition experiments with adults, children, and infants; typological studies grounded in cross-linguistic data; and studies of emerging sign languages. We pose these questions for a variety of roles and find that the answers depend on the role. For Agents and Patients, there is strong evidence for abstract role categories and a universal bias to distinguish the two roles. For Goals and Recipients, we find clear evidence for abstraction but mixed evidence as to whether there is a bias to encode Goals and Recipients as part of one or two distinct categories. Finally, we discuss the Instrumental role and do not find clear evidence for either abstraction or universal biases to structure instrumental categories.
... Additionally, in event-related potentials (ERP) studies, violations of an animacy requirement differ from other semantic anomalies, eliciting P600 effects that are often attributed to syntactic processing (e.g. Chow & Phillips, 2013). Moreover, in filler-gap dependencies, a filled-gap effect in the subject position was shown to occur more often if the filler is animate then if it is inanimate (Wagers & Pendleton, 2016). ...
Throughout an open filler-gap dependency, some features of the filler are actively maintained in working-memory, while others decay and are retrieved at the gap. The current study asks whether the availability of certain features of the filler (due to their maintenance) influences the parser’s attempt to posit a gap upon encountering a verb. We report the results of two self-paced reading experiments testing the hypothesis that maintained features guide active gap-filling. Experiment 1 used similarity-based interference to show that animacy is a maintained feature. Experiment 2 combined a filled-gap design and a plausibility manipulation, with violation of either the animacy requirement or some other selectional restriction of the verb, to test when an attempt to resolve a dependency is made despite poor fit between the verb and the filler. Results suggest that only verbs selecting an argument with features like those maintained in the filler’s representation trigger an attempt to resolve the dependency.
... The semantic P600 has also been further studied since it was originally reported by Kuperberg and colleagues (2003). In addition to work in English, the semantic P600 has been characterized in Dutch (Van Herten, Kolk, & Chwilla, 2005), Spanish (Stroud & Phillips, 2012), and Chinese (Chow & Phillips, 2013), attesting to its generalizability. The original results have been replicated and built upon in the Kuperberg lab, showing, among other things, that the semantic P600 often makes up part of a biphasic response, being seen alongside an N400 in a number of studies (e.g., Kuperberg, Caplan, Sitnikova, Eddy, & Holcomb, 2006;Kuperberg, Choi, Cohn, Paczynski, & Jackendoff, 2010). ...
Since its discovery in the 1960s, the P300 has been contributing both directly and indirectly to language research. Perhaps most notably, it has been suggested that the P600, an ERP component that was first characterized in the context of syntactic processing, could be a variant of the P3b subcomponent of the P300. Here, we review studies on both sides of the debate. We also review the “semantic P600,” a positivity with a similar time course and distribution to the P600 seen for syntactic manipulations but that is obtained in response to some types of semantic anomalies. Because most current theories of the P600 try to account for both the syntactic and the semantic variant, linking the syntactic P600 to the P3b might also imply a similar link for the semantic P600. However, we describe emerging research in our lab that casts doubt on the idea that the syntactic P600 and the semantic P600 are the same effect. We argue that grouping ERP responses primarily by domain (language vs. nonlanguage) is likely to be misleading and suggest alternative ways of determining whether ERP effects reflect similar or different processing mechanisms.
... The role of context in the processing of linguistic material seems to be a popular topic of interest within the domain of psycholinguistics, one that has recently been investigated by numerous researchers (e.g., van Berkum et al. 2003;Camblin, Gordon, and Swaab 2007;Federmeier 2007;Chow and Phillips 2013). One of the experimental techniques that demonstrates how the anticipation mechanisms work is the event-related potential (ERP) method, which originally stemmed from the electroencephalography method and dates back to the 1980s (Kaan 2007: 571). ...
The aim of this work was to estimate the role of sentential context in idiom recognition. It is believed that context can facilitate lexical word comprehension and production, already at the early stages (van Berkum et al. 2003; Canal et al. 2015). The exact nature of the facilitation provided by context is particularly interesting in the case of idioms given that, first, their meaning is not derived compositionally, and second, they can be ambiguous with regard to their literal and figurative readings. Assuming that context can facilitate the recognition of an idiom, the facilitation could be observed via movement of the idiom recognition point (IRP; Cacciari and Tabossi 1988), i.e., one would expect the IRP to appear on the word(s) preceding the IRP, which would have been established without the supporting context. Alternatively, the facilitation could be reflected solely in idiom production time differences. Another research
question concerned the differences in context types. The context supporting the more salient (i.e., default; Giora 1997) meaning of an expression was be expected to facilitate production to a greater degree than the context promoting the less salient meaning of the same expression. A two-stage online cloze probability study was conducted in order to verify these hypotheses. 50 native speakers of Polish were asked to provide spoken continuations of idiomatic expressions (Experiment A) and sentences containing idioms (Experiment B). The responses were recorded, transcribed (in order to estimate idiom cloze probabilities), and coded (in order to measure idiom production times). The obtained data provided partial support for the Configuration Model and full support for the Graded Salience Hypothesis. Although a statistically significant difference was observed between mean cloze probabilities of idioms embedded in the salient context and idioms presented without context, the IRP did
not move. In accordance with Giora’s (1997) model, the less salient context facilitated the production of idioms to a lesser extent than the more salient context, which was reflected both in higher cloze probabilities and in faster production times in the salient versus non-salient context condition.
... However, it is controversial whether the absence of an N400 effect in studies like this indeed indicates misinterpretation (Bornkessel-Schlesewsky & Schlesewsky, 2008;Brouwer et al., 2012;Chow & Phillips, 2013;Phillips, 2013). As Brouwer, Fitz, and Hoeks (2012) point out, multistream accounts of semantic P600 effects presuppose that differences in N400 amplitude reflect difficulty with semantic integration. ...
Most current models of sentence comprehension assume that the human parsing mechanism (HPM) algorithmically computes detailed syntactic representations as basis for extracting sentence meaning. These models share the assumption that the representations computed by the HPM accurately reflect the linguistic input. This assumption has been challenged by Ferreira (2003), who showed that comprehenders sometimes misinterpret unambiguous sentences in which subject and object appear in noncanonical order, such as passives or object-clefts. According to Ferreira, these misinterpretations show that parallel to an algorithmic analysis, the HPM performs a heuristic analysis sometimes resulting in interpretations not licensed by the grammar. Our study investigated whether misinterpretation effects indeed reflect an erroneous mapping of form to meaning due to heuristic processing strategies. Using an experimental design closely following Ferreira (2003), Experiment 1 demonstrates that errors with noncanonical sentences show up in German as well, despite the fact that German provides morphological case, which a heuristic strategy should use. Experiment 2 required participants to judge the plausibility of the same sentences. With this task, no evidence for misinterpretation of noncanonical sentences was found. Taken together, our results suggest that misinterpretation errors do not reflect errors in the mapping of form to meaning, but task-specific difficulties that arise when participants retrieve information from the memory representation of a sentence. Consequently, misinterpretation errors do not provide evidence for the claim that the HPM pursues a heuristic analysis in addition to an algorithmic analysis. Our results instead lend support to models of the HPM that assume algorithmic processing only.
... 10 It is worth mentioning here the so-called "semantic P600, " which sometimes appears with an absence of N400 effect. Chow and Phillips (2013) offer a detailed discussion arguing that semantic P600 is compatible with the long-held assumption that online semantic composition is dependent on surface syntax. ...
This paper reviews a series of experimental studies that address what we call “interface judgment,” which is the complex judgment involving integration from multiple levels of grammatical representation such as the syntax-semantics and prosody-semantics interface. We first discuss the results from the ERP literature connected to NPI licensing in different languages, paying particular attention to the N400 and the P600 as neural correlates of this specific phenomenon and focusing on the study by Xiang et al. (2016). The results of this study show evidence that there are two distinct NPI licensing mechanisms, i.e., licensing and rescuing, in line with Giannakidou (1998, 2006). Then we discuss an acceptability judgment task on Greek NPIs which supports the negativity as a scale hypothesis (Zwarts, 1995, 1996; Giannakidou, 1998). For the semantics-prosody interface judgment, we discuss two types of findings on two different phenomena and languages: (i) the study by Giannakidou and Yoon (2016) on scalar and non-scalar NPIs in Greek and Korean, which serves as the foundation for Chatzikonstantinou's (2016) study of production data showing distinct prosodic properties in emphatic (scalar) and non-emphatic (non-scalar) Greek NPIs; (ii) a (production and perception) study by Etxeberria and Irurtzun (2015) on the prosodic disambiguation of the scalar/non-scalar readings of sentences containing the focus particle “ere” in Basque. The main conclusion of the paper is that experimental methods of the kind discussed in the paper are useful in establishing physical, quantitative correlates of interface judgment.
... It should be noted, however, that this sentence is syntactically well-formed because it does not violate phrase structure rules. According to Kim and Osterhout (2005) and other studies, such a sentence typically elicits a P600 effect but not an N400 effect (Chinese: Chow and Phillips, 2013;Dutch: Hoeks et al., 2004;Kolk et al., 2003;van Herten et al., 2005;English: Kim and Osterhout, 2005, Kuperberg et al., 2003, 2006, 2007, Japanese: Oishi and Sakamoto, 2009see Bornkessel-Schlesewsky andSchlesewsky, 2008, Brouwer, et al., 2012;Kuperberg, 2007 for a review). ...
Several recent event-related potential (ERP) studies have observed a left (anterior) negativity (L(A)N) in (morpho)syntactically well-formed but semantically anomalous sentences, which are often referred to as semantic reversal anomalies (e.g., The window closes someone). Such a L(A)N elicitation for semantic reversal anomalies is not expected under the widely held assumption that LANs are associated with morphosyntactic processing loads and are insensitive to semantic anomalies. This raises the empirical question of why semantic reversal anomalies elicit a L(A)N effect. One possible explanation for this observation can be presented in relation the multi-stream processing model, according to which the independent semantic processing stream challenges an analysis outputted by the morphosyntactic processing stream, leading to a misperception of morphosyntactic ill-formedness. Alternatively, the L(A)N effect may reflect a mismatch between expected and actual syntactic structures. As an inanimate subject can trigger the expectation of an intransitive structure rather than an active transitive structure, the input of a transitive verb should violate such an expectation. The present study tests these two hypotheses by manipulating the temporal predictabilities of verb types to examine the underlying cognitive processes of L(A)N effects in semantic reversal anomalies. The results reveal a L(A)N effect for semantic reversal anomalies only when prediction of a verb type was possible, in favour of the latter prediction-based view. The implications of this finding are discussed with respect to predictive processing mechanisms and the architecture of processing systems.
... The P600 is a positive-going neural response that is reliably elicited after reading or listening to a morphosyntactic violation within a sentence; the P600 generally shows a latency between 500 to 800 ms after encountering the morphosyntactic violation and is largest over posterior regions of the scalp. Although the P600 is not a direct reflection of morphosyntactic processes (Brouwer, Fitz, & Hoeks, 2012;Chow & Phillips, 2013;Kim & Osterhout, 2005;Kolk & Chwilla, 2007;Kolk, Chwilla, van Herten, & Oor, 2003;Kuperberg, Kreher, Sitnikova, Caplan, & Holcomb, 2007;Osterhout, McLaughlin, Kim, Greewald, & Inoue, 2004;van de Meerendonk, Kolk, Vissers, & Chwilla, 2010;van Herten, Chwilla, & Kolk, 2006), it reliably co-occurs with morphosyntactic anomalies, thus making it a good index of sensitivity to morphosyntactic manipulations, including subject-verb agreement (Coulson, King, & Kutas, 1998;Hagoort, Brown, & Groothusen, 1993;Nevins, Dillon, Malhotra, & Phillips, 2007;Osterhout & Mobley, 1995;Osterhout, Mckinnon, Bersick, & Corey, 1996;Tanner & Bulkes, 2015;Tanner, Nicol, & Brehm, 2014; see Molinaro, Barber, & Carreiras, 2011, for an overview). 1 When combined with the other studies using self-paced reading and eye-tracking, this ERP literature provides evidence that native English speakers attend to agreement relations during language comprehension. ...
Numerous studies have demonstrated that native Mandarin speakers have pervasive difficulties processing L2 English agreement morphology. However, less is known about the lexical and morphological cues that may modulate Mandarin speakers’ sensitivity to English number agreement. To investigate this, we examined subject-verb agreement processing in English by L1 Mandarin participants using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and focused on the use of quantificational cues to noun number and their interaction with agreement morphology on the verb. Previous work in English monolinguals has shown that agreement violations elicited larger P600s when preceded by a plurally quantified subject NP compared to an unquantified NP. In the present study, Mandarin speakers were tested on the same quantified and unquantified sentences (e.g., Most/The cookies taste/*tastes…) as in the prior work. Like the L1 English speakers, ERPs time-locked to the verb showed a reliable P600 in response to agreement violations. However, the P600 in Mandarin speakers was larger for ungrammatical verbs with unquantified subjects, a contrast with English monolinguals. First, these results demonstrate that L2 agreement violations can elicit qualitatively similar neural responses in L1 Mandarin speakers as in English monolinguals (P600 effects), a finding which is to our knowledge novel. Second, quantification modulated the P600 in the L2 speakers in a qualitatively different way than in natives. Overall, these findings suggest stronger reliance on lexical versus morphological cues to number in Mandarin speakers, and that this impacts anticipation of subsequent grammatical features.
... While the functional interpretation of the N400 is still a matter of debate (e.g., Lau, Namyst, Fogel, & Delgado, 2016;Lau et al., 2008, for an overview see Kutas & Federmeier, 2011), there is growing consensus that N400 amplitude indexes processes associated with the ease of accessing and retrieving conceptual knowledge stored in long-term memory (e.g., Brouwer et al., 2012;Federmeier & Kutas, 1999;Kutas & Federmeier, 2000;Lau, Almeida, Hines, & Poeppel, 2009;Thornhill & van Petten, 2012). According to this view, N400 effects of predictability are generated by retrieval mechanisms and reflect the degree to which the preceding context activates conceptual knowledge associated with the eliciting word though mechanisms such as lexical or event schemas priming (e.g., Chow & Phillips, 2013;Chwilla & Kolk, 2005;Lau et al., 2016). In the current study, the N400 effect of event boundary suggests that the conceptual knowledge activated by the context primes fine boundary targets more than coarse boundary targets. ...
When reading a text describing an everyday activity, comprehenders build a model of the situation described that includes prior knowledge of the entities, locations, and sequences of actions that typically occur within the event. Previous work has demonstrated that such knowledge guides the processing of incoming information by making event boundaries more or less expected. In the present ERP study, we investigated whether comprehenders’ expectations about event boundaries are influenced by how elaborately common events are described in the context. Participants read short stories in which a common activity (e.g., washing the dishes) was described either in brief or in an elaborate manner. The final sentence contained a target word referring to a more predictable action marking a fine event boundary (e.g., drying) or a less predictable action, marking a coarse event boundary (e.g., jogging). The results revealed a larger N400 effect for coarse event boundaries compared to fine event boundaries, but no interaction with description length. Between 600 and 1000 ms, however, elaborate contexts elicited a larger frontal positivity compared to brief contexts. This effect was largely driven by less predictable targets, marking coarse event boundaries. We interpret the P600 effect as indexing the updating of the situation model at event boundaries, consistent with Event Segmentation Theory (EST). The updating process is more demanding with coarse event boundaries, which presumably require the construction of a new situation model.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (10.3758/s13421-017-0766-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
... 'window' is a THEME of 'close'). Previous studies have observed a P600 effect for semantic reversal anomaly, which superficially resembled a P600 effect in response to (morpho)syntactic violation in terms of polarity, peak latency, and topographical distribution (Chinese: Chow and Phillips, 2013;Dutch: Hoeks et al., 2004;Kolk et al., 2003;van Herten et al., 2005;English: Kim and Osterhout, 2005, Kuperberg et al., 2003, 2007, Japanese: Oishi and Sakamoto, 2009see Bornkessel-Schlesewsky andSchlesewsky, 2008, Brouwer et al., 2012;Kuperberg, 2007 for a review). Although the P600 has been traditionally associated with difficulties in syntactic processing, the effect observed in cases of semantic reversal anomaly suggests that it reflects a more general processing difficulty or that several types of P600 exist, each of which reflects a distinct underlying process. ...
The present study examined the locus responsible for the effect of emotional state on sentence processing in healthy native speakers of Japanese, using event-related brain potentials. The participants were induced into a happy, neutral, or sad mood and then subjected to electroencephalogram recording during which emotionally neutral sentences, including grammatical sentences (e.g. window-NOM close vi, ‘The window closes.’), morphosyntactically-violated sentences (e.g. window-ACC close vi, Lit. ‘Close the window.’), and semantically-reversed sentences (e.g. window-NOM close vt, ‘The window closes pro.’) were presented. The results of the ERP experiment demonstrated that while the P600 effect elicited by morphosyntactic violation was not modulated by mood, the P600 effect elicited by semantic reversal anomaly was observed only in participants previously induced into a happy mood. The LAN and N400 were not sensitive to the participants’ transient emotional state. These results suggest intact memory access and impaired integration of syntactic and semantic information in individuals in a sad mood.
... Nearly three decades of research have revealed that the P600 is remarkably sensitive to and reliably elicited by (morpho)syntactic violations, for example by violations of word order (e.g., Friederici & Mecklinger, 1996), subject-verb agreement (e.g., Osterhout & Mobley, 1995), and nominal (gender/number) agreement (e.g., Barber & Carreiras, 2005). Although there are differences in the specific theoretical descriptions of P600 effects (Chow & Phillips, 2013;Friederici, Hahne & Saddy, 2002a;Osterhout, Kim & Kuperberg, 2012;van de Meerendonk, Kolk, Vissers & Chwilla, 2010), there is a general consensus that P600s reflect the processing of a stimulus in conflict with an expected linguistic representation, and a late attempt at resolving or reanalyzing this conflict. Note that in many studies, P600s are preceded by frontally-distributed and occasionally left-lateralized anterior negativities, termed LANs, and that this biphasic LAN-P600 pattern is considered by some researchers to be a key neural signature of (morpho)syntactic processing (Friederici et al., 2002a;Molinaro, Barber & Carreiras, 2011). ...
It has been suggested that bilinguals learn additional languages ‘better’ than monolinguals. However, evidence is sparse, particularly for grammar. We examined behavioral and neural correlates of learning an additional (artificial) language in early Mandarin–English bilinguals, compared to English monolinguals. Following grammar instruction, participants practiced comprehension and production, and judged grammaticality at low and high proficiency while event-related potentials (ERPs) were acquired. Bilinguals and monolinguals did not differ on behavioral measures, but showed distinct ERP patterns. At low proficiency only bilinguals showed a P600, a common ERP correlate of syntactic processing in native speakers of languages. At high proficiency both groups showed P600s, though the monolinguals also evidenced an anterior positivity not typically found in native speakers of languages during syntactic processing. These findings suggest that, even without bilingual/monolingual behavioral differences, bilinguals show ERP patterns for an additional language that are more similar to those of native speakers of languages.
... Similarly, Tanner, McLaughlin, Herschensohn, and Osterhout (2013) 1 It should be noted that our hypothesis, namely a tradeoff between N400 and P600 responses modulated by semantic attraction, is one of several possible explanations of the finding that semantic anomaly can elicit a mixture of N400 and P600 effects. The precise nature of the relationship between the N400 and P600 effects following semantically surprising words remains an unsettled issue, which is currently addressed by several proposals that do not involve a tradeoff relationship (e.g., Bornkessel-Schlesewsky & Schlesewsky, 2008;Brouwer, Crocker, Venhuizen, & Hoeks, 2016;Brouwer, Fitz, & Hoeks, 2012;Chow & Phillips, 2013;DeLong et al., 2014;Kolk & Chwilla, 2007;Kuperberg, 2007Kuperberg, , 2016. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. ...
This study investigated the processes reflected in the widely observed N400 and P600 event-related potential (ERP) effects and tested the hypothesis that the N400 and P600 effects are functionally linked in a tradeoff relationship, constrained in part by individual differences in cognitive ability. Sixty participants read sentences, and ERP effects of semantic anomaly, relative to plausible words, were calculated for each participant. Results suggested qualitatively different ERP patterns across participants: Some individuals generated N400-dominated effects, whereas others generated P600-dominated effects, for the same stimuli. To specify the sources of individual differences in brain responses, we also derived aggregate scores for verbal working memory (WM), nonverbal WM, and language experience/knowledge, based on 6 behavioral measures administered to each participant. Multiple regression analysis pitting these 3 constructs against each other showed that a larger verbal WM capacity was significantly associated with larger P600 and smaller N400 effect amplitudes across individuals, whereas the other constructs did not predict the ERP effects. The results suggest that N400 and P600 brain responses, which may be attributable to semantic integration difficulty and structural processing, respectively, vie for expression when comprehenders encounter semantically unexpected words and that which option wins out is constrained in part by each comprehender's verbal WM capacity. (PsycINFO Database Record
The current study investigated how individual variability in working memory (WM) updating affects real-time processing of thematic role assignment and word association during sentence reading comprehension when ERPs were recorded. By adopting a factorial design, four types of sentences were formed by crossing word association and role assignment as independent variables. The results indicated that associated words evoked a smaller N400 effect but a larger P600 effect than unassociated words in the high WM group, whereas no word association effect was found in the low WM group. In contrast, role reversal elicited larger N400 effects for both groups. These results suggest that individual differences in WM updating influenced whether and how readers retrieved and integrated the associated word in whole sentences but did not influence the online assignment of thematic roles during sentence reading. Individuals with high WM updating, in contrast to those with low WM updating, were good at making use of word-associated information provided by the preceding context in current processing.
This study examined individual-level variability in N400 and P600 ERP correlates of native and nonnative language sentence processing of semantic and grammar information. Twenty-six native English-speaking learners of Spanish as a second language were tested. Participants completed sentence reading tasks in English and Spanish during EEG recording. The group-level results for grammar showed P600s in the native and nonnative language. For semantics, there was an N400 only in the native language. Individual-level ERP patterns revealed that, for native language semantics, about two thirds of participants showed N400s, but approximately one-third showed P600s. For native language grammar, approximately one third of participants exhibited N400s instead of P600s. Individual-level ERPs showed similar variability in the nonnative language for semantics and grammar, and N400/P600 variability in Spanish related to Spanish verbal fluency and grammar knowledge. This contributes knowledge of how nonnative and native language neurocognition compare regarding the processing routes that individuals use during comprehension.
Purportedly (morpho)syntactic-event-related brain wave components – P600, LAN, and e[arly]LAN – have over the years proved more likely to be domain-general responses. Studies comparing late positive responses to anomalies across cognitive domains, and manipulating their probability of occurrence, suggest that the P600 is a member of the P300 family. Other studies report individual variation in response to (morpho)syntactic anomalies, smudging the distinction between N400 and P600 responses, and suggesting that LAN responses to morphosyntactic anomaly may be an artifact of N400+P600 overlap. The eLAN has similarly been shown to be a methodological artifact. We argue that studies of long-distance dependencies have produced the most consistent and reliable results, partly because they largely avoid violation paradigms, although current insights may be profitably applied to ERP studies of syntactic islands. We also suggest that what are taken to be specialized effects of referential processing are in fact another manifestation of such long-distance (anaphoric) effects.
It is common in linguistics to contrast “theoretical” and “experimental” research. Researchers who pursue experimental research are often asked about the theoretical consequences of their work. Such questions generally equate “theoretical” with theories at a specific high level of abstraction, guided by the questions of traditional linguistic theory. These theories focus on the structural representation of sentences in terms of discrete units, without regard to order, time, finer-grained memory encoding, or the neural circuitry that supports linguistic computation. But there is little need for the high-level descriptions to have privileged status. There are interesting theoretical questions at all levels of analysis. A common experience is that we embark on a project guided by its apparent relevance to high-level theoretical debates. And then we discover new theoretical questions at lower levels of analysis that we had not been aware of previously. We illustrate this using examples from many different lines of experimental research.
The present study conducted two event-related potential experiments to investigate whether readers adapt their expectations to morphosyntactically (Experiment 1) or semantically (Experiment 2) anomalous sentences when they are repeatedly exposed to them. To address this issue, we experimentally manipulated the probability of occurrence of grammatical sentences and syntactically and semantically anomalous sentences through experiments. For the low probability block, anomalous sentences were presented less frequently than grammatical sentences (with a ratio of 1 to 4), while they were presented as frequently as grammatical sentences in the equal probability block. Experiment 1 revealed a smaller P600 effect for morphosyntactic violations in the equal probability block than in the low probability block. Linear mixed-effect models were used to examine how the size of the P600 effect changed as the experiment went along. The results showed that the smaller P600 effect of the equal probability block resulted from an amplitude's decline in morphosyntactically violated sentences over the course of the experiment, suggesting an adaptation to morphosyntactic violations. In Experiment 2, semantically anomalous sentences elicited a larger N400 effect than their semantically natural counterparts regardless of probability manipulation. Little evidence was found in favor of adaptation to semantic violations in that the processing cost associated with the N400 did not decrease over the course of the experiment. Therefore, these results demonstrated a dynamic aspect of language-processing system. We will discuss why the language-processing system shows a selective adaptation to morphosyntactic violations. 2
Mounting Event-Related Potential (ERP) research testing the neurocognitive processes of foreign- and native-accented speech comprehension shows that listeners process foreign-accented speech in qualitatively and quantitatively different ways from native-accented speech. Previous ERP research has presented listeners with foreign- and native-accented sentences only, devoid of any cues to the speaker's identity. Additional cues about the foreign-accented speaker identity, such as faces, may be useful in aiding listeners' processing, potentially reducing differences between neurocognitive processes associated with foreign-accented and native-accented speech comprehension. This study tested whether providing listeners with extra-linguistic face cues to the speakers' identity affects the ERP correlates of grammatical and semantic processing of foreign-accented and native-accented sentences. Specifically, we presented listeners with face cues to speaker identity followed by native- and foreign-accented sentences that were identical to Grey and Van Hell (2017), who did not provide face cues. To elucidate the effects of face cues, we compared the present study's Face Cue data with the Grey and Van Hell (2017) No Face Cue data. For grammar processing, the results showed a biphasic Nref-P600 for native-accented speech and a P600 for foreign-accented speech in the Face Cue group. In the No Face Cue group, results for grammar processing showed an Nref for native-accented speech and no significant ERP effects for foreign-accented speech. This result indicates that face cues were effective in aiding processing of foreign-accented sentences. For semantic processing, there were robust N400 effects for native-accented speech and delayed N400s for foreign-accented speech in the Face Cue and No Face Cue groups. This pattern indicates that the extra-linguistic face cue to foreign-accented speaker identity did not affect semantic processing. Overall, the results provide neurocognitive evidence that the integration of speaker and face information aids listeners during the processing of foreign-accented speech, particularly for grammatical processing.
Semantic reversal anomalies (SRAs)—sentences where an implausibility is created by reversing participant roles—have attracted much attention in the literature on the electrophysiology of language. In spite of being syntactically well formed but semantically implausible, these sentences unexpectedly elicited a monophasic P600 effect in English and Dutch rather than an N400 effect. Subsequent research revealed variability in the presence/absence of an N400 effect to SRAs depending on the language examined and the choice of verb type in English. However, most previous studies employed the same presentation modality (visual) and task (acceptability judgement). Here, we conducted two experiments and three statistical analyses to investigate the influence of stimulus modality, task demand and statistical choices on event‐related potential (ERP) response patterns to SRAs in English. We reproduced a previous study's procedure and analysis (N. Bourguignon et al. (2012) Brain and Language, 122, 179–189) and further introduced between‐subjects factors of task type and modality, using mixed‐effects modelling to analyse the data. We observed an N400 effect to typical English SRAs (agent subject verbs, e.g. “the fries will eat the boys”), which contrasts existing literature and was not predicted by existing theories that account for SRA processing. Task demand modulated the ERPs elicited by SRAs, while auditory presentation led to increased comprehension accuracy and a more broadly distributed ERP. Finally, the statistical methods used influenced the presence/absence of ERP effects. Our results suggest a sensitivity of language‐related ERP patterns to methodological parameters, and we conclude that future experiments should take this into careful consideration.
Event-related potentials (ERPs) provide a window into how the brain is processing language. Here, we propose a theory that argues that ERPs such as the N400 and P600 arise as side effects of an error-based learning mechanism that explains linguistic adaptation and language learning. We instantiated this theory in a connectionist model that can simulate data from three studies on the N400 (amplitude modulation by expectancy, contextual constraint, and sentence position), five studies on the P600 (agreement, tense, word category, subcategorization and garden-path sentences), and a study on the semantic P600 in role reversal anomalies. Since ERPs are learning signals, this account explains adaptation of ERP amplitude to within-experiment frequency manipulations and the way ERP effects are shaped by word predictability in earlier sentences. Moreover, it predicts that ERPs can change over language development. The model provides an account of the sensitivity of ERPs to expectation mismatch, the relative timing of the N400 and P600, the semantic nature of the N400, the syntactic nature of the P600, and the fact that ERPs can change with experience. This approach suggests that comprehension ERPs are related to sentence production and language acquisition mechanisms.
During comprehension of a hierarchical structure, semantic integration between sequential, mismatched sentential constituents does not proceed when the later word in the sequence (e.g., the noun in the verb + classifier + noun) can be assigned an alternative role in the sentence (e.g., as a modifier of a subsequent object noun) (Zhang et al., 2011). Using electrophysiological measures, we examined how the availability of an alternative structure and whether the reader is motivated to generate an alternative structure affect semantic integration in a hierarchical structure. The same set of sentences was employed in three experiments in which the semantic congruency between the adjective and the object noun in the local structure and the sentential-contextual expectancy towards a noun were manipulated simultaneously. The reader's motivation was manipulated by tasks in which they made semantic acceptability judgment (Experiment 1), passively viewed sentences for comprehension (Experiment 2), or actively predicted the upcoming word and monitored the compatibility between the anticipated and the actual input (Experiment 3). Stronger contextual expectancy reduced N400 responses to the object noun regardless of semantic congruency, indicating that strengthening the constraints of an alternative argument decreased the effort of semantic integration between incompatible local constituents. Relative to weaker expectancy, the incongruent noun preceded by a stronger expectancy context elicited reduced N400 responses when no active prediction was demanded but showed equal amplitudes when such a demand was high. These findings demonstrate that the semantic failure in a flexible structure is likely to be resolved by the comprehender's motivation to generate an alternative structure based on the active use of contextual expectancy information, thus highlighting the "role-dependent semantic processing" during sentence comprehension.
Syntactic and semantic information processing can interact selectively during language comprehension. However, the nature and extent of the interactions, in particular of semantic effects on syntax, remain to some extent elusive. We revisit an influential ERP result by Kim and Osterhout (2005), later replicated by Kim and Sikos (2011), that the verb in sentences such as 'The hearty meal was devouring … ' evokes a P600 effect-a signature of syntactic processing difficulty-even though all stimuli were grammatically well-formed. We view this effect as a manifestation of a conflict in the assignment of grammatical subject and object roles to the verb's arguments as performed independently by a semantic system (predicting that meal should be the object) and by a syntactic system (labeling meal as the subject). More specifically, we develop an explicit algorithmic implementation of a parallel processing architecture that supports (i) meaning-based prediction of grammatical role labels, using either a probabilistic label guesser or a neural network, and (ii) comparison of the predicted labels with labels assigned by a state-of-the-art dependency parser. We demonstrate that the system can classify sentences from the Kim and Osterhout (2005) corpus with adequate accuracy, and can detect labeling conflicts as intended. Some implications of our results for models of prediction in language processing are discussed.
Event-related potentials were measured as subjects read sentences presented word by word. A small N400 and a robust P600 effect were elicited by verbs that assigned the thematic role of Agent to their preceding noun-phrase argument when this argument was inanimate in nature. The amplitude of the P600, but not the N400, was modulated by the transitivity of the critical verbs and by plausibility ratings of passivised versions of these sentences (reflecting the fit between the critical verb and the inanimate noun-phrase as the verb's Theme). The P600 was similar in scalp distribution although smaller in amplitude, than that elicited by verbs with morphosyntactic violations. Pragmatically unlikely verbs that did not violate thematic constraints elicited a larger N400 but no P600 effect. These findings support the theory that the cost of syntactic processing on a verb is influenced by the precise thematic relationships between that verb and its preceding arguments.
Ambiguity resolution is a central problem in language comprehension. Lexical and syntactic ambiguities are standardly assumed to involve different types of knowledge representations and be resolved by different mechanisms. An alternative account is provided in which both types of ambiguity derive from aspects of lexical representation and are resolved by the same processing mechanisms. Reinterpreting syntactic ambiguity resolution as a form of lexical ambiguity resolution obviates the need for special parsing principles to account for syntactic interpretation preferences, reconciles a number of apparently conflicting results concerning the roles of lexical and contextual information in sentence processing, explains differences among ambiguities in terms of ease of resolution, and provides a more unified account of language comprehension than was previously available.
Presents a theoretical account of certain aspects of sentence comprehension, particularly the processes involved in deciding whether a sentence is true or false. The model proposes that (a) sentences are internally represented as an ordered set of constituents in an abstract propositional format, (b) other information sources (e.g., pictures) may be represented in a similar format in this task, and (c) the corresponding constituents from the sentence representation and the picture representation are serially compared. The predictions are made on the basis of a single parameter-the time to find and compare one pair of constituents. The model also accounts for verification of counterfactual clauses, implicit negatives, universal and particular quantifiers, and sentence recoding. (50 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The present studies employed event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the time course for the integration of lexico-semantic and discourse information during the resolution of categorical anaphors. Scenarios were constructed to include three potential antecedents. Anaphors were semantically ambiguous in that two of the potential antecedents were exemplars of the anaphor. Final sentences resolved the anaphor with the correct (associatively related/contextually appropriate), incorrect (associatively related/contextually inappropriate), or control antecedent (associatively unrelated/contextually inappropriate). We examined the amplitude of the N400 component, which is thought to reflect the ease of semantic integration, at several points following the anaphor. The smallest N400 was evoked when the text referred back to a correct antecedent following an anaphor; an intermediate N400 was evoked by incorrect antecedents and the largest N400 was evoked by reinstating the control antecedent following an anaphor. Results demonstrated that, following an ambiguous anaphor, readers are able to use both lexico-semantic and discourse-level information to semantically integrate an antecedent into its larger discourse context.
Monitoring is an aspect of executive control that entails the detection of errors and the triggering of corrective actions when there is a mismatch between competing responses or representations. In the language domain, research of monitoring has mainly focused on errors made during language production. However, in language perception, for example while reading or listening, errors occur as well and people are able to detect them. A hypothesis that was developed to account for these errors is the monitoring hypothesis for language perception. According to this account, when a strong expectation conflicts with what is actually observed, a reanalysis is triggered to check the input for processing errors reflected by the P600 component. In contrast to what has been commonly assumed, the P600 is thought to reflect a general reanalysis and not a syntactic reanalysis. In this review, we will describe the different studies that led to this hypothesis and try to extend it beyond the language domain.
We evaluated the distinctiveness, independence, and relative time courses of the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by syntactically and semantically anomalous words. ERPs were recorded from 13 scalp electrodes while subjects read sentences, some of which contained a selectional restriction violation (semantically anomalous), a verb tense violation (syntactically anomalous), or a doubly anomalous word that violated both selectional restriction and verb tense constraints. Semantic anomalies elicited a monophasic increase in N400 amplitude, whereas syntactic anomalies elicited a late positive shift with an onset around 500 msec and a duration of several hundred msec. Doubly anomalous words elicited both an increase in N400 amplitude and a late positive wave, and these effects summated in an approximately (but not perfectly) linear manner. These results are discussed with respect to the hypotheses that syntactic and semantic processes are separable and independent.
We review the discovery, characterization, and evolving use of the N400, an event-related brain potential response linked to meaning processing. We describe the elicitation of N400s by an impressive range of stimulus types--including written, spoken, and signed words or pseudowords; drawings, photos, and videos of faces, objects, and actions; sounds; and mathematical symbols--and outline the sensitivity of N400 amplitude (as its latency is remarkably constant) to linguistic and nonlinguistic manipulations. We emphasize the effectiveness of the N400 as a dependent variable for examining almost every aspect of language processing and highlight its expanding use to probe semantic memory and to determine how the neurocognitive system dynamically and flexibly uses bottom-up and top-down information to make sense of the world. We conclude with different theories of the N400's functional significance and offer an N400-inspired reconceptualization of how meaning processing might unfold.
Word frequency is the most important variable in language research. However, despite the growing interest in the Chinese language, there are only a few sources of word frequency measures available to researchers, and the quality is less than what researchers in other languages are used to.
Following recent work by New, Brysbaert, and colleagues in English, French and Dutch, we assembled a database of word and character frequencies based on a corpus of film and television subtitles (46.8 million characters, 33.5 million words). In line with what has been found in the other languages, the new word and character frequencies explain significantly more of the variance in Chinese word naming and lexical decision performance than measures based on written texts.
Our results confirm that word frequencies based on subtitles are a good estimate of daily language exposure and capture much of the variance in word processing efficiency. In addition, our database is the first to include information about the contextual diversity of the words and to provide good frequency estimates for multi-character words and the different syntactic roles in which the words are used. The word frequencies are freely available for research purposes.
In the language domain, most studies of error monitoring have been devoted to language production. However, in language perception, errors are made as well and we are able to detect them. According to the monitoring theory of language perception, a strong conflict between what is expected and what is observed triggers reanalysis to check for possible perceptual errors, a process reflected by the P600. This is at variance with the dominant view that the P600 reflects syntactic reanalysis or repair, after syntactic violations or ambiguity. In the present study, the prediction of the monitoring theory of language perception was tested, that only a strong conflict between expectancies triggers reanalysis to check for possible perceptual errors, reflected by the P600. Therefore, we manipulated plausibility, and hypothesized that when a critical noun is mildly implausible in the given sentence (e.g., “The eye consisting of among other things a pupil, iris, and eyebrow …”), a mild conflict arises between the expected and unexpected event; integration difficulties arise due to the unexpectedness but they are resolved successfully, thereby eliciting an N400 effect. When the noun is deeply implausible however (e.g., “The eye consisting of among other things a pupil, iris, and sticker …”), a strong conflict arises; integration fails and reanalysis is triggered, eliciting a P600 effect. Our hypothesis was confirmed; only when the conflict between the expected and unexpected event is strong enough, reanalysis is triggered.
Measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) has been fundamental to our understanding of how language is encoded in the brain. One particular ERP response, the N400 response, has been especially influential as an index of lexical and semantic processing. However, there remains a lack of consensus on the interpretation of this component. Resolving this issue has important consequences for neural models of language comprehension. Here we show that evidence bearing on where the N400 response is generated provides key insights into what it reflects. A neuroanatomical model of semantic processing is used as a guide to interpret the pattern of activated regions in functional MRI, magnetoencephalography and intracranial recordings that are associated with contextual semantic manipulations that lead to N400 effects.
Event‐related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during the performance of a lexical decision task, in which a proportion of the words were either semantic associates or repetitions of the preceding word. Reaction times were faster to both the second member of associated pairs (targets) and repeated words, with the latter facilitatory effect being more than twice that of the former.
ERPs to the semantic primes were more negative‐going than those to targets. This difference peaked around 400–450 ms after stimulus onset. Comparison of unrepeated and repeated words revealed a larger and temporally more extended difference, with a similar scalp topography.
The prime‐target differences are interpreted as a further example of the sensitivity of the ‘N400’ component of the ERP to semantic relationships between words. The differences between the repetition and priming effects in ERPs are considered equivocal with respect to the view that the associated behavioural effects are caused by different cognitive mechanisms.
Abstract The N400 is an endogenous event-related brain potential (ERP) that is sensitive to semantic processes during language comprehension. The general question we address in this paper is which aspects of the comprehension process are manifest in the N400. The focus is on the sensitivity of the N400 to the automatic process of lexical access, or to the controlled process of lexical integration. The former process is the reflex-like and effortless behavior of computing a form representation of the linguistic signal, and of mapping this representation onto corresponding entries in the mental lexicon. The latter process concerns the integration of a spoken or written word into a higher-order meaning representation of the context within which it occurs. ERPs and reaction times (RTs) were acquired to target words preceded by semantically related and unrelated prime words. The semantic relationship between a prime and its target has been shown to modulate the amplitude of the N400 to the target. This modulation can arise from lexical access processes, reflecting the automatic spread of activation between words related in meaning in the mental lexicon. Alternatively, the N400 effect can arise from lexical integration processes, reflecting the relative ease of meaning integration between the prime and the target. To assess the impact of automatic lexical access processes on the N400, we compared the effect of masked and unmasked presentations of a prime on the N400 to a following target. Masking prevents perceptual identification, and as such it is claimed to rule out effects from controlled processes. It therefore enables a stringent test of the possible impact of automatic lexical access processes on the N400. The RT study showed a significant semantic priming effect under both unmasked and masked presentations of the prime. The result for masked priming reflects the effect of automatic spreading of activation during the lexical access process. The ERP study showed a significant N400 effect for the unmasked presentation condition, but no such effect for the masked presentation condition. This indicates that the N400 is not a manifestation of lexical access processes, but reflects aspects of semantic integration processes.
The effects of sentential context and semantic memory structure during on-line sentence processing were examined by recording event-related brain potentials as individuals read pairs of sentences for comprehension. The first sentence established an expectation for a particular exemplar of a semantic category, while the second ended with (1) that expected exemplar, (2) an unexpected exemplar from the same (expected) category, or (3) an unexpected item from a different (unexpected) category. Expected endings elicited a positivity between 250 and 550 ms while all unexpected endings elicited an N400, which was significantly smaller to items from the expected category. This N400 reduction varied with the strength of the contextually induced expectation: unexpected, categorically related endings elicited smaller N400s in more constraining contexts, despite their poorer fit to context (lower plausibility). This pattern of effects is best explained as reflecting the impact of context-independent long-term memory structure on sentence processing. The results thus suggest that physical and functional similarities that hold between objects in the world—i.e., category structure—influence neural organization and, in turn, routine language comprehension processes.
The time courses for processing constituent structure relations, subcategorization restrictions, and thematic role relations during sentence comprehension were measured with reaction time and speed-accuracy trade-off variants of a grammaticality judgment task. Thematic role processing was found to be delayed by as much as 100 ms relative to the time when constituent structure and subcategorization information were processed. These data suggest a model of sentence comprehension in which the construction of a syntactic representation temporally leads the construction of a more embellished thematic representation. Serial and parallel variants of such a model are discussed.
Ferreira and Clifton (1986, Experiment 1) found that readers experienced equal difficulty with temporarily ambiguous reduced relatives clauses when the first noun was animate (e.g., "The defendant examined by the lawyer was . . .") and when it was inanimate and thus an unlikely Agent (e.g., "The evidence examined . . ."). This data pattern suggested that a verb′s semantic constraints do not affect initial syntactic ambiguity resolution. We repeated the experiment using: (1) inanimate noun/verb combinations that did not easily permit a main clause continuation, (2) a baseline condition with morphologically unambiguous verbs (e.g., "stolen"), (3) a homogeneous set of disambiguating prepositional phrases, and (4) a display in which all of the critical regions were presented on the same line of text. In two eye-movement experiments, animacy had immediate effects on ambiguity resolution: only animate nouns showed clear signs of difficulty. Post-hoc regression analyses revealed that what little processing difficulty readers had with the inanimate nouns varied with the semantic fit of individual noun/verb combinations: items with strong semantic fit showed no processing difficulty compared to unambiguous controls, whereas items with weak semantic fit showed a pattern of processing difficulty which was similar to Ferreira and Clifton (1986). The results are interpreted within the framework of an evidential (constraint-based) approach to ambiguity resolution. Analyses of reading times also suggested that the millisecond per character correction for region length is problematic, especially for small scoring regions. An alternative transformation is suggested.
We aimed to determine whether semantic relatedness between an incoming word and its preceding context can override expectations based on two types of stored knowledge: real-world knowledge about the specific events and states conveyed by a verb, and the verb's broader selection restrictions on the animacy of its argument. We recorded event-related potentials on post-verbal Agent arguments as participants read and made plausibility judgments about passive English sentences. The N400 evoked by incoming animate Agent arguments that violated expectations based on real-world event/state knowledge, was strongly attenuated when they were semantically related to the context. In contrast, semantic relatedness did not modulate the N400 evoked by inanimate Agent arguments that violated the preceding verb's animacy selection restrictions. These findings suggest that, under these task and experimental conditions, semantic relatedness can facilitate processing of post-verbal animate arguments that violate specific expectations based on real-world event/state knowledge, but only when the semantic features of these arguments match the coarser-grained animacy restrictions of the verb. Animacy selection restriction violations also evoked a P600 effect, which was not modulated by semantic relatedness, suggesting that it was triggered by propositional impossibility. Together, these data indicate that the brain distinguishes between real-world event/state knowledge and animacy-based selection restrictions during online processing.
In 1994, there were only two dominant noninvasive techniques to offer insight about the functional organization of language from its brain bases: the behavior of brain-damaged patients (neuropsychology), and event-related brain potential (ERPs). Positron emission tomographic and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) measures begin to contribute in understanding neuropsychology. Over the ensuing decade plus, these have been joined by functional magnetic resonance imaging, transcranial magnetic stimulation, event related spectral changes in the electroencephalogram (EEG), and noninvasive optical imaging. These methods are closely related in their neural and physical bases: ERPs, event-related frequency changes in the EEG and MEG. The amplitude of the EEG is considerably smaller than invasively recorded field potentials because the skull is a strong electrical insulator. Like field potentials, the amplitude and polarity of the EEG depends on the number and amplitude of the contributing synaptic potentials, on whether current is flowing into or out of cells (i.e., movement of positive or negative ions, excitatory or inhibitory synaptic potentials), and on the geometric relationship between the synapses and electrode.
An attempt to answer the problems raised by specialist and layman alike, to summarize the present state of linguistic knowledge, to set forth certain hypotheses which seem not wholly improbable, and to draw boundaries between what is generally accepted, what may fairly be inferred, and what is at present utterly unknown. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Three eye-tracking experiments investigated two frequency-based processing accounts: the serial lexical-guidance account, in which people adopt the analysis compatible with the most likely subcategorization of a verb; and the serial-likelihood account, in which people adopt the analysis that they would regard as the most likely analysis, given the information available at the point of ambiguity. The results demonstrate that neither of these accounts explains readers' performance. Instead people preferred to attach noun phrases as arguments of verbs even when such analyses were unlikely to be correct. We suggest that these results fit well with a model in which the processor initially favors informative analyses.
Five experiments used ERPs and eye tracking to determine the interplay of word-level and discourse-level information during sentence processing. Subjects read sentences that were locally congruent but whose congruence with discourse context was manipulated. Furthermore, critical words in the local sentence were preceded by a prime word that was associated or not. Violations of discourse congruence had early and lingering effects on ERP and eye-tracking measures. This indicates that discourse representations have a rapid effect on lexical semantic processing even in locally congruous texts. In contrast, effects of association were more malleable: Very early effects of associative priming were only robust when the discourse context was absent or not cohesive. Together these results suggest that the global discourse model quickly influences lexical processing in sentences, and that spreading activation from associative priming does not contribute to natural reading in discourse contexts.
Several authors have contended that the N400 is a reflection of a post-lexical event such as that proposed by Neely and Keefe [J.H. Neely, D.E. Keefe, Semantic context effects on visual word processing: a hybrid prospective/retrospective processing theory, in: G.H. Bower (Ed.), The Psychology of Learning and Motivation: Advances in Research and Theory, Vol. 23, Academic Press, New York, 1989, pp. 207–248.], whereby the subject compares the word on the current trial to the “context” provided by the word on the preceding trial [M. Besson, M. Kutas, The many facets of repetition: A cued-recall and event-related potential analysis of repeating words in same versus different sentence contexts, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 19 (5) (1993), 1115-1133; C. Brown, P. Hagoort, The processing nature of the N400: Evidence from masked priming. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 5(1) (1993), 34–44; P.J. Holcomb, Semantic priming and stimulus degradation: Implications for the role of the N400 in language processing, Psychophysiology 30 (1993), 47–61; M.D. Rugg, M.C. Doyle, Event-related potentials and stimulus repetition in indirect and direct tests of memory, in: H. Heinze, T. Munte, G.R. Mangun (Eds), Cognitive Electrophysiology, Birkhauser Boston, Cambridge, MA, 1994]. A study which used masked primes to directly test this possibility has been reported by Brown and Hagoort [C. Brown, P. Hagoort, The processing nature of the N400: evidence from masked priming. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 5(1) (1993), 34–44]. When the primes were masked, no priming effect was observed on the N400. When behavioral data were collected in the same paradigm, from another group of subjects, the usual priming effect on RT was obtained. Considered together, the data from the two groups of subjects indicated that activation of semantic representations had occurred without conscious awareness. As no N400 priming effect was observed, it was suggested that N400 must reflect a post-lexical process. This interpretation, however, is at odds with the findings of other studies which have reported N400 priming effects under conditions where post-lexical processes would not be thought to operate[J. Anderson, P. Holcomb, Auditory and visual semantic priming using different stimulus onset asynchronies: an event-related brain potential study. Psychophysiology 32 (1995), 177–190; J. Boddy, Event-related potentials in chronometric analysis of primed word recognition with different stimulus onset asynchronies, Psychophysiology 23 (1986), 232–245; D. Deacon, T. Uhm, W. Ritter, S. Hewitt, The lifetime of automatic priming effects may exceed two seconds, Cognitive Brain Research 7 (1999), 465–472; P.J. Holcomb, Automatic and attentional process: an event-related brain potential analysis of semantic priming. Brain and Language 35 (1998) 66–85]. The present study replicated Brown and Hagoort using a repeated measures design, a shorter SOA (stimulus onset asynchrony), and a slightly different threshold setting procedure. Significant priming effects were obtained on the mean amplitude of the N400 regardless of whether the words were masked or unmasked. The findings imply that the processing subserving the N400 is not postlexical, since the N400 was manipulated without the subjects being aware of the identity of the words.
Children and adults verified sentences of four grammatical types—“kernel,” passive, negative, and passive negative—with respect to pictures. The pictures presented situations which were either reversible, in that the object of action could also serve as the subject, or nonreversible, in that the object could not normally serve as the subject. Chomsky's syntactic competence model correctly predicted that passives would take more time to evaluate than kernels, and passive negatives more time than negatives; but semantic and psychological factors are required to explain the finding that syntactically simple negatives took more time than relatively more complex passives. Making sentences nonreversible largely washed out the difference in syntactic complexity between active and passive sentences, making passives about as easy as kernels, and passive negatives about as easy as negatives. It is argued that nonreversibility facilitates comprehension of passive (both affirmative and negative) sentences in that, although the normal subject-object order is reversed, it is still clear which of the two nouns is subject and which object. The syntactic theory also does not account for an obtained interaction between truth value and affirmation-negation. All of the factors considered—syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic—are important in accounting for the performance of Ss as young as six.
Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 13 scalp electrodes while subjects read sentences containing syntactic ambiguities. Words which were inconsitent with the “preferred” sentence structure elicited a brain potential (P600) quite distinct from the potential previously observed following contextually inappropriate words (N400). Furthermore, final words in sentences typically judged to be unacceptable elicited an N400-like effect, relative to final words in sentences typically judged to be acceptable. These findings suggest that ERPs are sensitive to syntactic anomaly, including anomaly engendered by disambiguating material following erroneous analysis of a syntactically ambiguous string (the “garden path” effect). We evaluate the speculation that the P600 and N400 effects are elicited as a function of anomaly type (syntactic and semantic, respectively).
We recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) while participants read sentences, some of which contained an anomalous word. In the critical sentences (e.g., The meal was devouring…), the syntactic cues unambiguously signaled an Agent interpretation of the subject noun, whereas the semantic cues supported a Theme interpretation. An Agent interpretation would render the main verb semantically anomalous (as meals do not devour things). Conversely, the Theme interpretation would render the main verb syntactically anomalous (as the -ED form, not the -ING form, is syntactically appropriate for this interpretation). We report that the main verbs in such sentences elicit the P600 effect associated with syntactic anomalies, rather than the N400 effect associated with semantic anomalies. We conclude that, at least under certain conditions, semantic information is “in control” of how words are combined during sentence processing.
Three experiments addressed the question whether semantic content or pragmatic context can direct the initial syntactic analysis assigned to sentences. Each experiment determined whether syntactic processing biases that have been observed in sentences presented in isolation can be overcome. In two experiments that measured eye movements, we found that the syntactic processing biases remained even when they resulted in thematically based anomaly or when they conflicted with discourse biases. In a third experiment, we used a self-paced reading task to replicate some of the results obtained using eye movement measures. We argue that the data support the existence of a syntactic processing module.
The literature on the electrophysiology of language comprehension has recently seen a very prominent discussion of “semantic P600” effects, which have been observed, for example, in sentences involving an implausible thematic role assignment to an argument that would be a highly plausible filler for a different thematic role of the same verb. These findings have sparked a discussion about underlying properties of the language comprehension architecture, as they have generally been viewed as a challenge to established models of language processing and specifically to the notion that syntax precedes semantics in the comprehension process. In this paper, we review the literature on semantic P600 effects and discuss a number of challenges – both conceptual and empirical – to existing approaches in this domain. We then provide a new perspective on these effects by showing how they can be derived within an independently motivated, hierarchically organised neurocognitive model of language comprehension in which syntactic structuring precedes argument interpretation (the extended Argument Dependency Model, eADM; Bornkessel and Schlesewsky, 2006). In addition to straightforwardly deriving the phenomenon of a “semantic P600,” the basic architectural properties of the eADM account for existing empirical puzzles within the semantic P600 literature.
In traditional theories of language comprehension, syntactic and semantic processing are inextricably linked. This assumption has been challenged by the 'semantic illusion effect' found in studies using event related brain potentials. Semantically anomalous sentences did not produce the expected increase in N400 amplitude but rather one in P600 amplitude. To explain these findings, complex models have been devised in which an independent semantic processing stream can arrive at a sentence interpretation that may differ from the interpretation prescribed by the syntactic structure of the sentence. We review five such multi-stream models and argue that they do not account for the full range of relevant results because they assume that the amplitude of the N400 indexes some form of semantic integration. Based on recent evidence we argue that N400 amplitude might reflect the retrieval of lexical information from memory. On this view, the absence of an N400-effect in semantic illusion sentences can be explained in terms of priming. Furthermore, we suggest that semantic integration, which has previously been linked to the N400 component, might be reflected in the P600 instead. When combined, these functional interpretations result in a single-stream account of language processing that can explain all of the Semantic Illusion data.
This paper presents event-related brain potential (ERP) data from an experiment on syntactic processing. Subjects read individual sentences containing one of three different kinds of violations of the syntactic constraints of Dutch. The ERP results provide evidence for M electrophysiological response to syntactic processing that is qualitatively different from established ERP responses to semantic processing. We refer to this electro-physiological manifestation of parsing as the Syntactic Positive Shift (SPS). The SPS was observed in an experiment in which no task demands, other than to read the input, were imposed on the subjects. The pattern of responses to the different kinds of syntactic violations suggests that the SPS indicates the impossibility for the parser to assign the preferred structure to an incoming string of words, irrespective of the specific syntactic nature of this preferred structure. The implications of these findings for further research on parsing are discussed.
Animacy is known to play an important role in language processing and production, but debate remains as to how it exerts its effects: 1) through links to syntactic ordering, 2) through inherent differences between animate and inanimate entities in their salience/lexico-semantic accessibility, 3) through links to specific thematic roles. We contrasted these three accounts in two event related potential (ERP) experiments examining the processing of direct object arguments in simple English sentences. In Experiment 1, we found a larger N400 to animate than inanimate direct object arguments assigned the Patient role, ruling out the second account. In Experiment 2 we found no difference in the N400 evoked by animate direct object arguments assigned the Patient role (prototypically inanimate) and those assigned the Experiencer role (prototypically animate), ruling out the third account. We therefore suggest that animacy may impact processing through a direct link to syntactic linear ordering, at least on post-verbal arguments in English. We also examined processing on direct object arguments that violated the animacy-based selection restriction constraints of their preceding verbs. These violations evoked a robust P600, which was not modulated by thematic role assignment or reversibility, suggesting that the so-called semantic P600 is driven by overall propositional impossibility, rather than thematic role reanalysis.
Because context has a robust influence on the processing of subsequent words, the idea that readers and listeners predict upcoming words has attracted research attention, but prediction has fallen in and out of favor as a likely factor in normal comprehension. We note that the common sense of this word includes both benefits for confirmed predictions and costs for disconfirmed predictions. The N400 component of the event-related potential (ERP) reliably indexes the benefits of semantic context. Evidence that the N400 is sensitive to the other half of prediction--a cost for failure--is largely absent from the literature. This raises the possibility that "prediction" is not a good description of what comprehenders do. However, it need not be the case that the benefits and costs of prediction are evident in a single ERP component. Research outside of language processing indicates that late positive components of the ERP are very sensitive to disconfirmed predictions. We review late positive components elicited by words that are potentially more or less predictable from preceding sentence context. This survey suggests that late positive responses to unexpected words are fairly common, but that these consist of two distinct components with different scalp topographies, one associated with semantically incongruent words and one associated with congruent words. We conclude with a discussion of the possible cognitive correlates of these distinct late positivities and their relationships with more thoroughly characterized ERP components, namely the P300, P600 response to syntactic errors, and the "old/new effect" in studies of recognition memory.
In 1980, the N400 event-related potential was described in association with semantic anomalies within sentences. When, in 1992, a second waveform, the P600, was reported in association with syntactic anomalies and ambiguities, the story appeared to be complete: the brain respected a distinction between semantic and syntactic representation and processes. Subsequent studies showed that the P600 to syntactic anomalies and ambiguities was modulated by lexical and discourse factors. Most surprisingly, more than a decade after the P600 was first described, a series of studies reported that semantic verb-argument violations, in the absence of any violations or ambiguities of syntax can evoke robust P600 effects and no N400 effects. These observations have raised fundamental questions about the relationship between semantic and syntactic processing in the brain. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the recent studies that have demonstrated P600s to semantic violations in light of several proposed triggers: semantic-thematic attraction, semantic associative relationships, animacy and semantic-thematic violations, plausibility, task, and context. I then discuss these findings in relation to a unifying theory that attempts to bring some of these factors together and to link the P600 produced by semantic verb-argument violations with the P600 evoked by unambiguous syntactic violations and syntactic ambiguities. I suggest that normal language comprehension proceeds along at least two competing neural processing streams: a semantic memory-based mechanism, and a combinatorial mechanism (or mechanisms) that assigns structure to a sentence primarily on the basis of morphosyntactic rules, but also on the basis of certain semantic-thematic constraints. I suggest that conflicts between the different representations that are output by these distinct but interactive streams lead to a continued combinatorial analysis that is reflected by the P600 effect. I discuss some of the implications of this non-syntactocentric, dynamic model of language processing for understanding individual differences, language processing disorders and the neuroanatomical circuitry engaged during language comprehension. Finally, I suggest that that these two processing streams may generalize beyond the language system to real-world visual event comprehension.
Recent ERP findings challenge the widespread assumption that syntactic and semantic processes are tightly coupled. Syntactically well-formed sentences that are semantically anomalous due to thematic mismatches elicit a P600, the component standardly associated with syntactic anomaly. This 'thematic P600' effect has been attributed to detection of semantically plausible thematic relations that conflict with the surface syntactic structure of the sentence, implying a processing architecture with an independent semantic analyzer. A key finding is that the P600 is selectively sensitive to the presence of plausible verb-argument relations, and that otherwise an N400 is elicited (The hearty meal was devouring … vs. The dusty tabletop was devouring …: Kim & Osterhout, 2005). The current study investigates in Spanish whether the evidence for an independent semantic analyzer is better explained by a standard architecture that rapidly integrates multiple sources of lexical, syntactic, and semantic information. The study manipulated the presence of plausible thematic relations, and varied the choice of auxiliary between passive-biased fue and active-progressive biased estaba. Results show a late positivity that appeared as soon as comprehenders detected an improbable combination of subject animacy, auxiliary bias, or verb voice morphology. This effect appeared at the lexical verb in the fue conditions and at the auxiliary in the estaba conditions. The late positivity elicited by surface thematic anomalies was the same, regardless of the presence of a plausible non-surface interpretation, and no N400 effects were elicited. These findings do not implicate an independent semantic analyzer, and are compatible with standard language processing architectures.
This research tests whether comprehenders use their knowledge of typical events in real time to process verbal arguments. In self-paced reading and event-related brain potential (ERP) experiments, we used materials in which the likelihood of a specific patient noun (brakes or spelling) depended on the combination of an agent and verb (mechanic checked vs. journalist checked). Reading times were shorter at the word directly following the patient for the congruent than the incongruent items. Differential N400s were found earlier, immediately at the patient. Norming studies ruled out any account of these results based on direct relations between the agent and patient. Thus, comprehenders dynamically combine information about real-world events based on intrasentential agents and verbs, and this combination then rapidly influences online sentence interpretation.
This paper demonstrates systematic cross-linguistic differences in the electrophysiological correlates of conflicts between form and meaning ("semantic reversal anomalies"). These engender P600 effects in English and Dutch (e.g. Kolk et al., 2003; Kuperberg et al., 2003), but a biphasic N400 - late positivity pattern in German (Schlesewsky and Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, 2009), and monophasic N400 effects in Turkish (Experiment 1) and Mandarin Chinese (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 revealed that, in Icelandic, semantic reversal anomalies show the English pattern with verbs requiring a position-based identification of argument roles, but the German pattern with verbs requiring a case-based identification of argument roles. The overall pattern of results reveals two separate dimensions of cross-linguistic variation: (i) the presence vs. absence of an N400, which we attribute to cross-linguistic differences with regard to the sequence-dependence of the form-to-meaning mapping and (ii) the presence vs. absence of a late positivity, which we interpret as an instance of a categorisation-related late P300, and which is observable when the language under consideration allows for a binary well-formedness categorisation of reversal anomalies. We conclude that, rather than reflecting linguistic domains such as syntax and semantics, the late positivity vs. N400 distinction is better understood in terms of the strategies that serve to optimise the form-to-meaning mapping in a given language.
Event-related brain potentials were recorded during RSVP reading to test the hypothesis that quantifier expressions are incrementally interpreted fully and immediately. In sentences tapping general knowledge (Farmers grow crops/worms as their primary source of income), Experiment 1 found larger N400s for atypical (worms) than typical objects (crops). Experiment 2 crossed object typicality with non-logical subject-noun phrase quantifiers (most, few). Off-line plausibility ratings exhibited the crossover interaction predicted by full quantifier interpretation: Most farmers grow crops and Few farmers grow worms were rated more plausible than Most farmers grow worms and Few farmers grow crops. Object N400s, although modulated in the expected direction, did not reverse. Experiment 3 replicated these findings with adverbial quantifiers (Farmers often/rarely grow crops/worms). Interpretation of quantifier expressions thus is neither fully immediate nor fully delayed. Furthermore, object atypicality was associated with a frontal slow positivity in few-type/rarely quantifier contexts, suggesting systematic processing differences among quantifier types.
Two related questions critical to understanding the predictive processes that come online during sentence comprehension are 1) what information is included in the representation created through prediction and 2) at what functional stage does top-down, predicted information begin to affect bottom-up word processing? We investigated these questions by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) as participants read sentences that ended with expected words or with unexpected items (words, pseudowords, or illegal strings) that were either orthographically unrelated to the expected word or were one of its orthographic neighbors. The data show that, regardless of lexical status, attempts at semantic access (N400) for orthographic neighbors of expected words is facilitated relative to the processing of orthographically unrelated items. Our findings support a view of sentence processing wherein orthographically organized information is brought online by prediction and interacts with input prior to any filter on lexical status.
Our brains rapidly map incoming language onto what we hold to be true. Yet there are claims that such integration and verification processes are delayed in sentences containing negation words like not. However, studies have often confounded whether a statement is true and whether it is a natural thing to say during normal communication. In an event-related potential (ERP) experiment, we aimed to disentangle effects of truth value and pragmatic licensing on the comprehension of affirmative and negated real-world statements. As in affirmative sentences, false words elicited a larger N400 ERP than did true words in pragmatically licensed negated sentences (e.g., "In moderation, drinking red wine isn't bad/good..."), whereas true and false words elicited similar responses in unlicensed negated sentences (e.g., "A baby bunny's fur isn't very hard/soft..."). These results suggest that negation poses no principled obstacle for readers to immediately relate incoming words to what they hold to be true.
Three groups of aphasic patients, Broca's, Conduction, and Wernicke's, and a nonaphasic patients control group were tested for comprehension of object-relative center-embedded sentences. The sentences were of three types: sentences in which semantic constraints between words allowed the subjects to assign a correct semantic reading of the sentence without decoding the syntax, sentences in which semantic constraints were relaxed and for which a correct reading was only possible with knowledge of syntactic relationships among words, and sentences which described highly improbable events. The subjects' task was to choose which of two pictures captured the meaning expressed in the sentence. Broca's and Conduction aphasics performed near perfectly on sentences where they could use semantic information. Their performance dropped to chance when they had to use syntactic information. These results support a neuropsychological dissociation of heuristic and algorithmic processes based primarily, though not exclusively, on semantic and syntactic information, respectively.