title: Do discourse global coherence and cumulated information impact on sentence syntactic processing? An event-related brain potentials study.
abstract: The present study aimed at exploring how two main primarily semantic factors of discourse comprehension, namely global coherence and amount of information cumulated across a passage, may impact on the sentential syntactic processing. This was measured in two event-related brain potentials (ERP) to grammatical (morphosyntactic) violations: anterior negativities (LAN) and posterior positivities (P600). Global coherence did not yield any significant effects on either ERP component, although it appeared advantageous to the detection of morphosyntactic errors. Anterior negativities were also unaffected by the amount of cumulated information. Accordingly, it seems that first-pass syntactic processes are unaffected by these discourse variables. In contrast, the first portion of the P600 was significantly modulated (increased) by the latter factor. This probably reflects bigger efforts to combine sentential information during situations highly demanding for working memory. Our results would suggest that processes involved in global discourse coherence appear relatively independent of the on-line syntactic and combinatorial mechanisms reflected in the LAN and the P600 components of the ERPs.
authors.affiliation: Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII, Madrid, Spain. Electronic address: dhernandez1@ucm.es.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hernández-Gutiérrez
authors.affiliation: Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII, Madrid, Spain; Psychobiology Department, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jiménez-Ortega
authors.affiliation: Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Sabela
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Fondevila
authors.affiliation: Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII, Madrid, Spain; Psychobiology Department, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Pilar
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Casado
authors.affiliation: Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII, Madrid, Spain; Psychobiology Department, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Francisco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Muñoz
authors.affiliation: Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII, Madrid, Spain; Psychobiology Department, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Martín-Loeches
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D008875:Middle Aged; D033262:Narration; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011897:Random Allocation; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Discourse processing; Global coherence; Semantics; Sentence processing; Syntax