ERP Indicators of local and global text influences on word-to-text integration

ABSTRACT

In two ERP experiments we examined local (recent text) and global (centrality) text influences on word-to-text integration. Participants read words that appeared across a sentence boundary or in text-final position. In both cases, the word was either related (central) or unrelated (non-central) to the central theme of the passage. Additionally, words across a sentence boundary had an antecedent in the preceding sentence (local binding) or did not (baseline). Results indicate local-binding processes influence sentence-initial words with no additional effect of centrality, evidenced by a reduced N400 for central and non-central words with a local-binding opportunity relative to baseline. At text-final words, we observed a reduced P600 (Experiment 1) as well as an N400 (Experiment 2) for central relative to non-central words. This pattern suggests that integration across a sentence boundary is supported by local context and that over the course of continued reading, integration begins to reflect global text meaning.

KEYWORDS:

• Text comprehension
• local binding
• centrality
• N400/P600

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Kimberly Muth and Emily Lustig for their help with stimulus creation and data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Anne Helder http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8865-3513

Charles A. Perfetti http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0211-8518

Paul van den Broek http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9058-721X

Joseph Z. Stafura http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5616-6913

Regina C. Calloway http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8889-6977

Notes

1 Because the final word in the sentence that precedes the target sentence with the critical word differs between the baseline condition and the local binding conditions, we tested whether there were ERP differences between conditions on this final word. We tested all 6 clusters that showed a local binding effect (C3, Cz, C4, P3, Pz, P4). There were no differences between conditions at any cluster (ps range from .297 to .954). Topographical maps and ERP waveforms are provided as online supplementary files.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by NIH award R01HD058566-02 awarded to the University of Pittsburgh (Charles Perfetti, PI) and by the Netherlands Initiative Brain and Cognition (NIHC), a part of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) awarded to Leiden University (Paul van den Broek and Anne Helder) under grant number 056-33-010.