Complement Set Reference after Implicitly Small Quantities: An Event-Related Potentials Study

ABSTRACT

An anaphoric reference to the complement-set is a reference to the set that does not fulfil the predicate of the preceding sentence. Preferred reference to the complement-set has been found in eye movements when a character’s implicit desire for a high amount has been denied using a negative emotion. We recorded event-related potentials to examine if, when a character’s desire is denied with a negative emotion, the complement-set is immediately available for reference. Analysis of the N400 over posterior regions showed that although readers favored the reference-set after a positive emotion, there was no difference in responses between complement-set and reference-set references after a negative emotion. Processing of a complement-set reference did lead to an overall increase in negativity of the N400, suggesting that interpreting a complement-set reference incurred a general processing cost. This study provides novel data on the range of circumstances under which the complement-set is available.

Funding

This work was completed with the support of funding from the University of Bedfordshire’s Research Centre for Applied Psychology.

Notes

¹ Thirteen items were excluded from the analysis as they contained words not found in the corpus (http://lsa.colorado.edu/).

² Note that one behavioral data file was corrupted and therefore not available for inclusion in this reading time analysis.

Additional information

Funding

This work was completed with the support of funding from the University of Bedfordshire’s Research Centre for Applied Psychology.