https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5239-7335
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ABSTRACT
Sentence comprehension can be facilitated when readers anticipate the upcoming word. Notwithstanding, it remains uncertain if only the most expected word is anticipated, as postulated by the serial graded hypothesis, or if all probable words are pre-activated, as proposed by the parallel probabilistic hypothesis. To test these contrasting accounts, we compared the processing of expected and unexpected words with second-best words, i.e. the second most expected word in a sentence. The results, from 30 participants, revealed a graded facilitation effect for the expected words, indexed by the N400 mean amplitude, which was the least negative for the most expected words, intermediate for second-best words, and most negative for unexpected words. The Post-N400 Positivity analysis did not reveal any significant effects. The facilitation effect found for the most expected and second-best words suggests that readers can pre-activate multiple candidates during sentence comprehension.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Maria Amorim for assistance with ERP data collection and Susana Araújo for assistance with task programming. We also thank the support of the Research Center for Psychological Science (CICPSI) at Universidade de Lisboa.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Note that in the linear mixed effects model presented we did not directly compare the mean amplitude of the N400 between unexpected and the most expected words. Yet, in an additional model we compared the processing of the most expected words with the second-best words and with the unexpected words and both the effects were statistically significant.