title: Comprehending how visual context influences incremental sentence processing: Insights from ERPs and picture-sentence verification.
abstract: To re-establish picture-sentence verification-discredited possibly for its over-reliance on post-sentence response time (RT) measures-as a task for situated comprehension, we collected event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as participants read a subject-verb-object sentence, and RTs indicating whether or not the verb matched a previously depicted action. For mismatches (vs. matches), speeded RTs were longer, verb N400s over centro-parietal scalp larger, and ERPs to the object noun more negative. RTs (congruence effect) correlated inversely with the centro-parietal verb N400s, and positively with the object ERP congruence effects. Verb N400s, object ERPs, and verbal working memory scores predicted more variance in RT effects (50%) than N400s alone. Thus, (1) verification processing is not all post-sentence; (2) simple priming cannot account for these results; and (3) verification tasks can inform studies of situated comprehension.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Interaction Technology Excellence Cluster, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany. knoeferl@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de
authors.forename: Pia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Knoeferle
authors.forename: Thomas P
authors.initials: TP
authors.lastname: Urbach
authors.forename: Marta
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kutas
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult