Syntactic parsing preferences and their on-line revisions: a spatio-temporal analysis of event-related brain potentials.
The present study investigates the processes involved in the recovery from temporarily ambiguous garden-path sentences. Event-related brain potentials (ERP) were recorded while subjects read German subject-object ambiguous relative and complement clauses. As both clause types are initially analyzed as subject-first structures, object-first structures require a revision which is more difficult for complement than for relative clauses. The hypothesis is tested that the revision process consists of two sub-processes, namely diagnosis and actual reanalysis. Applying a spatio-temporal principal component analysis to the ERP data, distinct positive sub-components presumably reflecting different sub-processes could be identified in the time range of the P300 and P600. It will be argued that the P600 is not a monolithic component, and that different sub-processes may be involved at varying time points depending on the type of garden-path sentence.
Friederici
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AD
Max Planck Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, P.O. Box 500 355, 04303, Leipzig, Germany. angelafr@cns.mpg.de
Mecklinger
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A
Spencer
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KM
Steinhauer
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K
Donchin
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E
D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D018913:Event-Related Potentials, P300; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D013223:Statistics as Topic