Year: 1994
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: We present two sets of event-related potential (ERP) data on separate aspects of sentence processing. The first set focuses on the disambiguation of biased am-biguous words by right-context information (biased ambiguous words are words that have a clearly dominant and subordinate meaning). The ERP data provide both converging and contrasting evidence with results obtained in eye-movement studies. The ERP data converge with these studies by showing that when the right-context is consistent with the subordinate meaning, processing effects are observed at the point of disambiguation, whereas no effect is seen when the dominant meaning is confirmed (cf. Dopkins, Morris, & Rayner, 1992; Frazier & Rayner, 1990). The ERP data contrast with eye-movement data (cf. Rayner & Duffy, 1986) by showing that processing effects do obtain at the level of biased ambiguous words preceded by neutral sentential contexts. The second set of ERP data focuses on neurophysiological manifestations of syntactic processing. These data show an ERP effect to syntactic violations that is qualitatively different from the well-known N400 effect to violations of seman-
Source: Max Planck Digital Library
Authors: Peter Hagoort, Colin Brown
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W765341954