Dissociable effects of prediction and integration during language comprehension: evidence from a large-scale study using brain potentials

Nieuwland, M. S. et al. (2020) Dissociable effects of prediction and integration during language comprehension: evidence from a large-scale study using brain potentials. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences, 375, 20180522. (doi: 10.1098/rstb.2018.0522) (PMID:31840593)

Abstract

Composing sentence meaning is easier for predictable words than for unpredictable words. Are predictable words genuinely predicted, or simply more plausible and therefore easier to integrate with sentence context? We addressed this persistent and fundamental question using data from a recent, large-scale (n = 334) replication study, by investigating the effects of word predictability and sentence plausibility on the N400, the brain's electrophysiological index of semantic processing. A spatio-temporally fine-grained mixed-effect multiple regression analysis revealed overlapping effects of predictability and plausibility on the N400, albeit with distinct spatio-temporal profiles. Our results challenge the view that the predictability-dependent N400 reflects the effects of either prediction or integration, and suggest that semantic facilitation of predictable words arises from a cascade of processes that activate and integrate word meaning with context into a sentence-level meaning.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: Funding: This work was partly funded by ERC starting grant no. 636458 to H.J.F.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Barr, Dr Dale and Rousselet, Dr Guillaume
• Authors: Nieuwland, M. S., Barr, D. J., Bartolozzi, F., Busch-Moreno, S., Darley, E., Donaldson, D. I., Ferguson, H. J., Fu, X., Heyselaar, E., Huettig, F., Husband, E. M., Ito, A., Kazanina, N., Kogan, V., Kohút, Z., Kulakova, E., Mézière, D., Politzer-Ahles, S., Rousselet, G., Rueschemeyer, S.-A., Segaert, K., Tuomainen, J., and Wolfsthurn, S. V. G. Z.
• College/School: College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Psychology & Neuroscience
• Journal Name: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences
• Publisher: The Royal Society
• ISSN: 0962-8436
• ISSN (Online): 1471-2970
• Published Online: 16 December 2019
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2019 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences 375:20180522
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy