Incremental Comprehension Examined in Event-related Potentials: Word-to-Text Integration and Structure Building

ABSTRACT

The study of word-to-text integration (WTI) provides a window on incremental processes that link the meaning of a word to the preceding text. We review a research program using event-related potential indicators of WTI at sentence beginnings, thus localizing sources of integration to prior text meaning independently of the current sentence. The results led to the following conclusions. First, integration occurs when the word being read cues the retrieval of a text meaning from memory. Second, when the word does not cue retrieval, new structure building rather than integration is the default at sentence beginnings. Third, integration depends on a highly accessible text memory. The immediate preceding sentence provides the primary source for integration; however, instructions that encourage attention to thematic elements enable influences of global text meaning. Finally, contrary to the role that prediction may play in comprehension generally, prediction has a limited role in WTI at sentence beginnings.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. We developed this title manipulation idea following a comment by Art Graesser suggesting our task might not have encouraged deep processing.

2. The contrary claim of high prediction at the beginning of a sentence may be based on a confusion in the application of the given/new strategy to comprehension. Given information (from prior context) aids the comprehender’s effort to understand the current sentence. And given information is more often in the beginnings of sentences. However, there is no reason to assume that the comprehender tries to predict this information. Rather, as pointed out by Haviland and Clark (1974) in their description of the given/new strategy, the comprehender searchers memory of the previous context to find a match with the meanings of the currently read or heard sentence segments.

3. Plausibility, a more familiar concept, is a cousin to integrability. It differs in its application to propositional meaning (e.g., a sentence meaning is plausible or not), whereas integrability is measured on a word or some sentence fragment prior to the completion of the sentence in which it occurs.

4. A caveat here is that the corpus analysis reported takes into account only the antecedent word as the relevant context. Of course, the entire preceding sentence is part of the relevant context, as we have emphasized. When this is done overall predictability will increase. But there is no reason to expect that difference between sentence beginnings and later parts of the sentence will disappear.