ERPs reveal sensitivity to hypothetical contexts in spoken discourse.
We used event-related potentials to examine the interaction between two dimensions of discourse comprehension: (i) referential dependencies across sentences (e.g. between the pronoun 'it' and its antecedent 'a novel' in: 'John is reading a novel. It ends quite abruptly'), and (ii) the distinction between reference to events/situations and entities/individuals in the real/actual world versus in hypothetical possible worlds. Cross-sentential referential dependencies are disrupted when the antecedent for a pronoun is embedded in a sentence introducing hypothetical entities (e.g. 'John is considering writing a novel. It ends quite abruptly'). An earlier event-related potential reading study showed such disruptions yielded a P600-like frontal positivity. Here we replicate this effect using auditorily presented sentences and discuss the implications for our understanding of discourse-level language processing.
Dwivedi
Veena D
VD
Department of Applied Linguistics, Brock University, Niagara, Ontario, Canada. vdwivedi@brocku.ca
Drury
John E
JE
Molnar
Monika
M
Phillips
Natalie A
NA
Baum
Shari
S
Steinhauer
Karsten
K
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult