ERPs reveal sensitivity to hypothetical contexts in spoken discourse

作者：Dwivedi Veena D^*; Drury John E; Molnar Monika; Phillips Natalie A; Baum Shari; Steinhauer Karsten

来源：NeuroReport, 2010, 21(11): 791-795.

DOI：10.1097/WNR.0b013e32833cae0d

• anaphora
• event-related potentials
• hypothetical events
• modal auxiliary
• N400
• P600
• pronouns
• semantics
• spoken language
• syntax

We used event-related potentials to examine the interaction between two dimensions of discourse comprehension: (i) referential dependencies across sentences (e.g. between the pronoun 'it' and its antecedent 'a novel' in: 'John is reading a novel. It ends quite abruptly'), and (ii) the distinction between reference to events/situations and entities/individuals in the real/actual world versus in hypothetical possible worlds. Cross-sentential referential dependencies are disrupted when the antecedent for a pronoun is embedded in a sentence introducing hypothetical entities (e.g. 'John is considering writing a novel. It ends quite abruptly'). An earlier event-related potential reading study showed such disruptions yielded a P600-like frontal positivity. Here we replicate this effect using auditorily presented sentences and discuss the implications for our understanding of discourse-level language processing.

• 出版日期2010-8-4