title: Electrophysiological evidence of interaction between contextual expectation and semantic integration during the processing of collocations.
abstract: Despite the potentially infinite creativity of language, many words are patterned in ordered strings called collocations. Final words of these clusters are highly predictable; in addition, their overall meaning can vary on the literality dimension, ranging from (figurative) idiomatic strings to literal strings. These structures thus offer a natural linguistic scenario to contrast ERP correlates of contextual expectation and semantic integration processes during comprehension. In this study, expected endings elicited a positive peak around 300ms compared to less expected synonyms, suggesting that the earlier recognition of the string leads to the specific pre-activation of the lexical items that conclude the expression. On the other hand, meaning variations of these fixed strings (either a literal or a figurative whole meaning) affected ERPs only around 400ms, i.e. in the frontal portion of the N400. These findings are discussed within a more general cognitive framework as outlined in Kok's (2001) dual categorization model.
authors.affiliation: BCBL, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Paseo Mikeletegi, 69, 20009 Donostia, Spain. n.molinaro@bcbl.eu
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Molinaro
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Carreiras
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001931:Brain Mapping; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D012660:Semantics; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult