ABSTRACT

Sentence comprehension can be facilitated when readers anticipate the upcoming word. Notwithstanding, it remains uncertain if only the most expected word is anticipated, as postulated by the serial graded hypothesis, or if all probable words are pre-activated, as proposed by the parallel probabilistic hypothesis. To test these contrasting accounts, we compared the processing of expected and unexpected words with second-best words, i.e. the second most expected word in a sentence. The results, from 30 participants, revealed a graded facilitation effect for the expected words, indexed by the N400 mean amplitude, which was the least negative for the most expected words, intermediate for second-best words, and most negative for unexpected words. The Post-N400 Positivity analysis did not reveal any significant effects. The facilitation effect found for the most expected and second-best words suggests that readers can pre-activate multiple candidates during sentence comprehension.

摘要

当读者预期即将出现的单词时，可以促进句子理解。尽管如此，仍然不确定是否只有最预期的单词是预期的，如串行分级假设所假设的那样，或者是否所有可能的单词都被预先激活，如并行概率假设所提出的那样。为了测试这些对比说明，我们将预期和意外词的处理与次优词（即句子中第二大预期词）的处理进行了比较。来自 30 名参与者的结果揭示了预期单词的分级促进效应，由 N400 平均幅度索引，对于最预期的单词来说负面最少，对于第二好的单词来说是中间的，而对于意外的单词来说是最负面的。N400 后阳性分析未显示任何显着影响。