Presentation format affects the behavioural and neural processing costs of sentence reinterpretation

ABSTRACT

Although listening to speech and reading text rely on different lower-order cognitive and neural processes, much of the literature on higher-order comprehension assumes engagement of a common conceptual-semantic system which is unaffected by input modality. However, few studies have tested this assumption directly. Moreover, many neuroimaging studies of reading present sentences in an artificial, cognitively demanding word-by-word rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) format. We report behavioural and fMRI experiments investigating whether presentation format (Spoken, Written, or RSVP) modulates commonly reported behavioural and neural costs associated with reinterpretation of sentences that contain lexical ambiguities. Reinterpretation-related processing costs were exaggerated in the RSVP format, both for response times on a behavioural task and neural activation in left inferior frontal gyrus. Presentation format can interact with higher-order language processes in complex ways, and we urge language researchers to carefully consider the role of presentation format in study design and interpretation of research findings.

KEYWORDS:

• Ambiguity resolution
• language comprehension
• modality
• inferior frontal gyrus

Acknowledgements

This work was part of the first author’s doctoral dissertation at University College London, which was supported by an ESRC-MRC Multidisciplinary Studentship to LMB. An earlier version of this work was included in LMB’s PhD thesis submitted in 2019. The authors would like to thank Bonnie Kim for assistance with the experiment set up and data collection for Experiment 1.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of Experiment 1 and anonymised summary data that support the findings of Experiment 2 are openly available at the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/m87vg/. The raw data that support the findings of Experiment 2 of this study are available on request from the senior author, JEW. These data are not publicly available due to their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Economic and Social Research Council; Medical Research Council (MRC).