TY - JOUR
T1 - Predictability speeds up the re-analysis process
T2 - An ERP investigation of gender agreement and cloze probability
AU - Loerts, Hanneke
AU - Stowe, Laurie A.
AU - Schmid, Monika S.
PY - 2013/9
Y1 - 2013/9
N2 - To investigate the timing relationship between lexical access and later processes, the present study compared event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to spoken Dutch sentences that were either correct or contained gender agreement violations on the article or adjective preceding the noun. The target noun was either unpredictable from the preceding sentence information (low cloze) or was preceded by a highly constraining context (high cloze) to investigate whether contextual constraints influence morphological processing of grammatical gender in real-time. In line with previous findings, gender violations elicited a clear P600 indicating processes of repair or re-analysis evoked by the gender mismatch. Low cloze items, independent of the gender mismatch, elicited an increased N400 reflecting lexical access and semantic integration difficulty. Interestingly, an interaction between gender mismatch and cloze probability occurred in the early portion of the P600 time window, with the P600 starting significantly later in the low cloze conditions as compared to the high cloze conditions, although they had the same amplitude in the later part of the window. These results indicate that semantic expectancy facilitates the late processes sensitive to syntactic violations, suggesting an interplay between semantics and syntax in later stages of processing and supporting interactive accounts of language comprehension.
AB - To investigate the timing relationship between lexical access and later processes, the present study compared event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to spoken Dutch sentences that were either correct or contained gender agreement violations on the article or adjective preceding the noun. The target noun was either unpredictable from the preceding sentence information (low cloze) or was preceded by a highly constraining context (high cloze) to investigate whether contextual constraints influence morphological processing of grammatical gender in real-time. In line with previous findings, gender violations elicited a clear P600 indicating processes of repair or re-analysis evoked by the gender mismatch. Low cloze items, independent of the gender mismatch, elicited an increased N400 reflecting lexical access and semantic integration difficulty. Interestingly, an interaction between gender mismatch and cloze probability occurred in the early portion of the P600 time window, with the P600 starting significantly later in the low cloze conditions as compared to the high cloze conditions, although they had the same amplitude in the later part of the window. These results indicate that semantic expectancy facilitates the late processes sensitive to syntactic violations, suggesting an interplay between semantics and syntax in later stages of processing and supporting interactive accounts of language comprehension.
KW - Auditory language processing
KW - Cloze probability
KW - Event-related potentials (ERPs)
KW - Grammatical gender
KW - N400
KW - P600
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84878726337&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2013.03.003
DO - 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2013.03.003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84878726337
SN - 0911-6044
VL - 26
SP - 561
EP - 580
JO - Journal of neurolinguistics
JF - Journal of neurolinguistics
IS - 5
ER -