Similar time courses for word form and meaning preactivation during sentence comprehension

Abstract

Current psycholinguistic research generally acknowledges that aspects of sentence comprehension benefit from neural preactivation of different types of information. However, despite strong support from a number of studies, routine specific word form preactivation has been challenged by Ito, Corley, Pickering, Martin, and Nieuwland (2016). They suggest that word form prediction is contingent upon having enough processing time and resources (afforded by slower input rates) to progress through unidirectional, productionlike stages of comprehension to arrive at word forms via semantic feature preactivation. This conclusion is based on findings from their ERP study, which used a related anomaly paradigm and reported form preactivation at a slow (700 ms) word presentation rate but not a faster one (500 ms). The present experimental design is a conceptual replication of Ito et al. (2016), testing young adults by measuring ERP amplitudes to unpredictable words related either semantically/associatively or orthographically to predictable sentence continuations, relative to unrelated continuations. Results showed that, at a visual presentation rate of two words per second, both types of related words show similarly reduced N400s, as well as varying degrees of increased posterior post‐N400 positivity. These findings indicate that word form preactivation during sentence comprehension is detectable along a similar time course as semantic feature preactivation, and such processing does not necessarily require additional time beyond that afforded by near‐normal reading rates.

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