How is sentence processing affected by external semantic and syntactic information? Evidence from event-related potentials.

<h4>Background</h4>A crucial question for understanding sentence comprehension is the openness of syntactic and semantic processes for other sources of information. Using event-related potentials in a dual task paradigm, we had previously found that sentence processing takes into conside...

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Autores principales: Annekathrin Schacht, Manuel Martín-Loeches, Pilar Casado, Rasha Abdel Rahman, Alejandra Sel, Werner Sommer
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2010
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/6c9cba8f82884bcb9e7bba0ee949c5cb
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Sumario:<h4>Background</h4>A crucial question for understanding sentence comprehension is the openness of syntactic and semantic processes for other sources of information. Using event-related potentials in a dual task paradigm, we had previously found that sentence processing takes into consideration task relevant sentence-external semantic but not syntactic information. In that study, internal and external information both varied within the same linguistic domain-either semantic or syntactic. Here we investigated whether across-domain sentence-external information would impact within-sentence processing.<h4>Methodology</h4>In one condition, adjectives within visually presented sentences of the structure [Det]-[Noun]-[Adjective]-[Verb] were semantically correct or incorrect. Simultaneously with the noun, auditory adjectives were presented that morphosyntactically matched or mismatched the visual adjectives with respect to gender.<h4>Findings</h4>As expected, semantic violations within the sentence elicited N400 and P600 components in the ERP. However, these components were not modulated by syntactic matching of the sentence-external auditory adjective. In a second condition, syntactic within-sentence correctness-variations were combined with semantic matching variations between the auditory and the visual adjective. Here, syntactic within-sentence violations elicited a LAN and a P600 that did not interact with semantic matching of the auditory adjective. However, semantic mismatching of the latter elicited a frontocentral positivity, presumably related to an increase in discourse level complexity.<h4>Conclusion</h4>The current findings underscore the open versus algorithmic nature of semantic and syntactic processing, respectively, during sentence comprehension.