Previous studies have shown that during comprehension readers activate words beyond the unfolding sentence. An open question concerns the mechanisms underlying this behavior. One proposal is that readers mentally simulate the described event and activate related words that might be referred to as the discourse further unfolds. Another proposal is that activation between words spreads in an automatic, associative fashion. The empirical support for these proposals is mixed. Therefore, theoretical accounts differ with regard to how much weight they place on the contributions of these sources to sentence comprehension. In the present study, we attempted to assess the contributions of event simulation and lexical associations to discourse reading, using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Participants read target words, which were preceded by associatively related words either appearing in a coherent discourse event (Experiment 1) or in sentences that did not form a coherent discourse event (Experiment 2). Contextually unexpected target words that were associatively related to the described events elicited a reduced N400 amplitude compared to contextually unexpected target words that were unrelated to the events (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, a similar but reduced effect was observed. These findings support the notion that during discourse reading event simulation and simple word associations jointly contribute to language comprehension by activating words that are beyond contextually congruent sentence continuations.

中文翻译：

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在展开的句子之外激活单词：事件模拟和单词联想对语篇阅读的贡献。

先前的研究表明，在理解过程中，读者会激活展开句子之外的单词。一个悬而未决的问题涉及这种行为的潜在机制。一种建议是，读者在心理上模拟所描述的事件并激活可能被称为话语的相关词语进一步展开。另一个建议是单词之间的激活以自动，关联的方式传播。这些建议的实证支持参差不齐。因此，关于这些来源对句子理解的贡献有多重要，理论上的解释是不同的。在本研究中，我们尝试使用事件相关的脑电势（ERP）评估事件模拟和词汇联想对语篇阅读的贡献。参加者阅读目标词，在其之前加上关联的单词，它们出现在连贯的语篇事件中（实验1）或出现在没有形成连贯的语篇事件中的句子中（实验2）。与与事件无关的上下文意外目标词相比，与所描述的事件相关联的上下文意外目标词引起的N400幅度减小。在实验2中，观察到了类似但降低的效果。这些发现支持以下观点：在话语阅读过程中，事件模拟和简单单词联想会通过激活超出上下文一致的句子连续范围的单词来共同促进语言理解。