Poster B30, Tuesday, August 20, 2019, 3:15 – 5:00 pm, Restaurant Hall
The robustness of prediction effects based on article-elicited negativity in spoken language comprehension depends on the communicative intentions of listeners and speakers
Angèle Brunellière1, Laurence Delrue2;1University of Lille, CNRS, UMR 9193 - Sciences Cognitives et Sciences Affectives, 2University of Lille, CNRS, UMR 8163 - Savoirs Textes Langage
Natural speech flow is very fast in everyday communication, yet listeners seem to understand the message conveyed by speakers effortlessly and efficiently. Neuronal mechanisms underlying top-down predictions at different linguistic levels (phonological, lexical, syntactic, semantic) about the upcoming input (Pickering and Garrod, 2007) may account for such a paradox. Although the rapidity of natural speech in everyday communication could cause listeners to generate top-down predictions, the role of predictive mechanisms is not clearly established in spoken-language comprehension (Huettig, & Mani, 2016). The goal of the present study was to explore how robust are prediction effects based on article-elicited negativity in spoken language comprehension and whether their robustness is dependent on communicative intentions of listeners and speakers. We conducted two event-related potential (ERP) experiments during which French-speaking participants listened to semantically constraining sentences predicting a target word which was not presented. In the two ERP experiments, we focused on a negativity time-locked to an article which could be either in agreement or in disagreement with the gender of the expected, yet not presented, word. In a passive listening task, the amplitude of the negativity elicited by the recognition of the article was not affected by its gender-agreement with the expected noun. In contrast, when listeners were asked to judge the speaker’s communicative intention, prediction effects were found on the negativity with a stronger amplitude for the prediction-inconsistent article. However, this pattern was only observed when the speaker’s communicative intention was strong. Therefore, it appears that prediction effects based on article-elicited negativity in spoken language comprehension are flexible and dependent upon the communicative intentions of listeners and speakers.
Themes: Meaning: Lexical Semantics, Meaning: Discourse and Pragmatics
Method: Electrophysiology (MEG/EEG/ECOG)