Work

Processing temporal presuppositions: an event-related potential study

Year: 2016

Type: article

Abstract: The ability to efficiently process presuppositions, which contain information that the speaker believes to be in the background to the conversation, is essential for effective communication. To get a deeper understanding of the nature and the time-course of temporal presupposition processing, we examined event-related potential evoked by the word again in two types of sentence contexts. The word again was presented in contexts that supported a presupposition (e.g. Jake had tipped a maid at the hotel once before. Today he tipped a maid at the hotel again … ) or violated it (e.g. Jake had never tipped a maid at the hotel before. Today he tipped a maid at the hotel again … ). The presupposition violation was associated with increased amplitudes of the P3b/P600 but not the N400 component. We argue for the centrality of the P3b/P600 component for presupposition processing. These findings demonstrate rapid integration of lexical presuppositions with contextual knowledge.

Source: Language Cognition and Neuroscience

DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2016.1209531

Authors: Olessia Jouravlev, Laura Stearns, Leon Bergen, Marianna Eddy, Edward Gibson, Evelina Fedorenko

Institutions: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Wellesley College, Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center, Massachusetts General Hospital

Language: English

Topic: Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: Simons Center for the Social Brain, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

OpenAlex ID: W2503965350