title: Event-related potential indicators of text integration across sentence boundaries.
abstract: An event-related potentials (ERPs) study examined word-to-text integration processes across sentence boundaries. In a two-sentence passage, the accessibility of a referent for the first content word of the second sentence (the target word) was varied by the wording of the first sentence in one of the following ways: lexically (explicitly using a form of the target word); conceptually (using a paraphrase of the target word), and situationally (encouraging an inference concerning the referent of the target word). A baseline condition had no coreference between the two sentences. ERP results on the target word indicated multiple effects related to word identification and word-to-referent mapping processes. Both the explicit and paraphrase conditions, but not the inference condition, showed a reduced N400 relative to the baseline condition, consistent with immediate integration by lexico-semantic processes. A 300-ms effect (P300) was found in the paraphrase condition. The results were consistent with an immediate integration hypothesis and furthermore differentiated a lexical (N200), a conceptual (P300), and a situational (N400) component for this integration. The conceptual basis appears not to extend to predictive inferences.
authors.affiliation: Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. cyang@pitt.edu
authors.forename: Chin Lung
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Charles A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Perfetti
authors.forename: Franz
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Schmalhofer
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000295:instrumentation; D003071:Cognition; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D014825:Vocabulary