Barbara Kaup

Effects of negation and situational presence on the accessibility of text information.

In 2 experiments, participants read narratives containing a color term that was mentioned either within the scope of an explicit negative or not, and with the described situation being such that the color was either present or not. Accessibility of the color term was measured by means of a probe-recognition task either 500 ms (Experiment 1) or 1,500 ms (Experiment 2) after participants read the sentence mentioning color. After the 500-ms delay, the accessibility of the color term was influenced by the structure of the sentence. After the 1,500-ms delay, the accessibility was influenced by the content of the described situation. These results are consistent with the view that comprehenders construct a linguistic representation of the text as well as a situation model in which only present properties are represented. An alternative account, according to which comprehenders only construct a perceptual simulation of the described situation, is discussed.

Experiential simulations of negated text information

We investigated the question of whether comprehenders mentally simulate a described situation even when this situation is explicitly negated in the sentence. In two experiments, participants read negative sentences such as There was no eagle in the sky, and subsequently responded to pictures of mentioned entities in the context of a recognition task. Participants’ responses following negative sentences were faster when the depicted entity matched rather than mismatched the negated situation. These results suggest that comprehenders simulate the negated situation when processing a negated sentence. The results thereby provide further support for the experiential-simulations view of language comprehension.

Negation and its impact on the accessibility of text information

Prior experiments have shown that sentences such as (1) Mary bakes bread but no cookies lead to a reduced accessibility of the concept mentioned in the negated phrase, whereas sentences such as (2) Elizabeth burns the letters but not the photographs do not. In the present article, two explanations for this result are investigated. According to situation model theory (Johnson-Laird, 1983; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983), the reason is that the entity mentioned within the negated phrase in (2) is not absent from the described situation. According to discourse representation theory (Kamp, 1981), in contrast, the negation operator in (2) does not reduce the accessibility of the negated concept, because the corresponding discourse referent is not introduced but merely referred to within the operator’s scope. In two experiments, participants were presented with narrative texts including negation sentences that either introduced or referred to entities, and that either described a situation in which only the nonnegated or only the negated entity was present. The accessibility of the relevant concepts was measured by means of a probe recognition task. The results support the situation models explanation.

Event-related Potential Correlates of Negation in a Sentence–Picture Verification Paradigm

In a sentencepicture verification paradigm, participants were presented in a rapid-serial-visual-presentation paradigm with affirmative or negative sentences (e.g., In the front of the tower there is a/no ghost) followed by a matching or mismatching picture. Response latencies and event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured during reading and verification. An enhanced negative shift in the ERPs for the subject noun (i.e., ghost) in negative, compared to affirmative sentences, was found during reading. We relate this ERP deflection to enhanced processing demands required by the negative particle no. Although this effect suggests a direct impact of negation on language processing, results for picture processing reveal that negation is not immediately integrated into sentence meaning. When the delay of picture presentation was short (250 msec), verification latencies and ERPs evoked by the picture showed a priming effect independent of whether the sentence contained a negation. Unprimed pictures (foreground object not mentioned in the sentence) led to longer latencies and higher N400 amplitudes than primed pictures (foreground object mentioned in the sentence). Main effects of negation showed up only in a late positive-going ERP effect. In contrast, when the delay was long (1500 msec), we observed main effects of truth value and negation in addition to the priming effect already in the N400 time window, that is, negation is fully integrated into sentence meaning only at a later point in the comprehension process. When negation has not yet been integrated, verification decisions appear to be modulated by additional time-consuming reanalysis processes.

Emotional Valence and Physical Space : limits of Interaction

According to the body-specificity hypothesis, people associate positive things with the side of space that corresponds to their dominant hand and negative things with the side corresponding to their nondominant hand. Our aim was to find out whether this association holds also true for a response time study using linguistic stimuli, and whether such an association is activated automatically. Four experiments explored this association using positive and negative words. In Exp. 1, right-handers made a lexical judgment by pressing a left or right key. Attention was not explicitly drawn to the valence of the stimuli. No valence-by-side interaction emerged. In Exp. 2 and 3, right-handers and left-handers made a valence judgment by pressing a left or a right key. A valence-by-side interaction emerged: For positive words, responses were faster when participants responded with their dominant hand, whereas for negative words, responses were faster for the nondominant hand. Exp. 4 required a valence judgment without stating an explicit mapping of valence and side. No valence-by-side interaction emerged. The experiments provide evidence for an association between response side and valence, which, however, does not seem to be activated automatically but rather requires a task with an explicit response mapping to occur.

Root versus roof: automatic activation of location information during word processing

In four experiments, participants were presented with nouns referring to entities that are associated with an up or down location (e.g., roof, root). The required response either was compatible with the referent location or was not (e.g., upward vs. downward movement after reading roof). Across experiments, we manipulated whether the experimental task required word reading or not, as well as whether the response involved a movement or was stationary. In all experiments, participants’ responses were significantly faster in the compatible than in the incompatible condition. This strongly suggests that location information is automatically activated when nouns are being processed.

Representing a described sequence of events: a dynamic view of narrative comprehension.

This study explored the representation that readers construct when advancing through the description of an unfolding occurrence. In 3 experiments, participants read narratives describing a sequence of events and at a certain moment were tested for the accessibility of an entity from a past event. Entities were less accessible when the temporal distance between that past event and the current now point in the described world was relatively long than when it was shorter. This effect occurred when temporal distance was varied in terms of the duration of an intervening event but not when it was varied in terms of a temporal shift. The results suggest that the representation constructed for the description of an unfolding occurrence mimics its temporal structure. This is consistent with a dynamic view of narrative comprehension.

Evidence of fronto-temporal interactions for strategic inference processes during language comprehension.

We investigated how readers strategically infer context-appropriate information on the basis of the presented text and their world knowledge during passage reading. In the main experimental condition, participants were instructed to read short passages and to predict the development of the situation described in each passage during reading. To accomplish this task, we assumed that participants need to draw strategic inferences relevant to the contexts. Comparing this condition with a passage-reading condition without prediction, we found out that the left anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC) in Brodmann area 9/10 and the left anterior ventral inferior frontal gyrus (vIFG) in Brodmann area 47 elicited increased hemodynamic responses. These two regions are probably critical in coherence evaluation and in drawing strategic inferences. Additionally, we used dynamic causal modelling (DCM) to investigate the fronto-temporal interactions induced by the experimental conditions. Ten models with different plausible ways to modulate the connections between frontal and temporal regions were compared. The DCM results showed a consistent conclusion: The connectivity between the left posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and the left dorsal lateral inferior frontal gyrus (dIFG) were enhanced when participants made inferential predictions during reading. The results support the role of top-down influences mediated by the neural pathways between dIFG and pSTS in retrieving strategic inferences. With these findings we discuss functional roles of aPFC, vIFG and dIFG-pSTS connections in drawing strategic inferences.

Keep your hands crossed: the valence-by-left/right interaction is related to hand, not side, in an incongruent hand-response key assignment.

The body-specificity hypothesis (Casasanto, 2009) associates positive emotional valence and the space surrounding the dominant hand, and negative valence and the space surrounding the non-dominant hand. This effect has not only been found for manual responses, but also for the left and right side. In the present study, we investigated whether this compatibility effect still shows when hand and side carry incongruent information, and whether it is then related to hand or to side. We conducted two experiments which used an incongruent hand-response key assignment, that is, participants had their hands crossed. Participants were instructed to respond with their right vs. left hand (Experiment 1) or with the right vs. left key (Experiment 2). In both experiments, a compatibility effect related to hand emerged, indicating that the association between hand and valence overrides the one between side and valence when hand and side carry contradicting information.

Reading “Sun” and Looking Up: The Influence of Language on Saccadic Eye Movements in the Vertical Dimension

Traditionally, language processing has been attributed to a separate system in the brain, which supposedly works in an abstract propositional manner. However, there is increasing evidence suggesting that language processing is strongly interrelated with sensorimotor processing. Evidence for such an interrelation is typically drawn from interactions between language and perception or action. In the current study, the effect of words that refer to entities in the world with a typical location (e.g., sun, worm) on the planning of saccadic eye movements was investigated. Participants had to perform a lexical decision task on visually presented words and non-words. They responded by moving their eyes to a target in an upper (lower) screen position for a word (non-word) or vice versa. Eye movements were faster to locations compatible with the words referent in the real world. These results provide evidence for the importance of linguistic stimuli in directing eye movements, even if the words do not directly transfer directional information.