title: The on-line processing of socio-emotional information in prototypical scenarios: inferences from brain potentials.
abstract: Little is known about the time course of the mechanisms involved in the on-line processing of socio-emotional information. We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate this issue using vignettes that described prototypical, social scenarios. An initial sentence established the social context and the following target sentence ended with a critical word that informed the reader of the character's socio-emotional response to the situation. Critical words that mismatched rather than matched with a character's expected feelings elicited a larger ERP negativity (N400) ~200-500 ms after word onset, followed by a larger frontal positivity. Dipole source modeling results indicated that an anterior temporal lobe source accounted for the N400-like effect, which we attribute to the increased demands of integrating general knowledge about social situations (e.g. scripts) with personal- and context-specific information. An additional mediofrontal source contributed to the later ERP effect and presumably reflects high-level mindreading functions. Together, these findings indicate that readers rapidly infer and evaluate on-line a character's likely socio-emotional response based on the prototypical information provided by the text.
authors: Department of Cognitive and Biological Psychology, University of Tübingen, Friedrichstr. 21, 72072 Tübingen, Germany. hartmut.leuthold@uni-tuebingen.de
authors: Hartmut
authors: H
authors: Leuthold
authors: Ruth
authors: R
authors: Filik
authors: Kirsty
authors: K
authors: Murphy
authors: Ian G
authors: IG
authors: Mackenzie
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