Presentation
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Predicting Semantic and Phonological Information in Language Comprehension: Evidence from ERP Representational Similarity Analysis
Poster A129 in Poster Session A, Tuesday, October 24, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
Qingqing Qu12; 1Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 2Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Existing studies demonstrate that comprehenders can predict semantic information during language comprehension. Most evidence comes from highly-constraining context, in which a specific word is likely to be predicted. One question that has been investigated less is whether prediction can occur when prior context is less constraining for predicting specific words. Here, we aim to address this issue by examining the prediction of animacy features in low-constraining context, using electroencephalography (EEG), in combination with representational similarity analysis (RSA). In Chinese, a classifier follows a numeral and precedes a noun, and classifiers constrain animacy features of upcoming nouns. In the task, native Chinese Mandarin speakers were presented with either animate-constraining or inanimate-constraining classifiers followed by nouns. We quantified the similarity between patterns of neural activity following the classifiers. RSA results revealed that the similarity between patterns of neural activity following animate-constraining classifiers was greater than following inanimate-constraining classifiers, before the presentation of the nouns, reflecting pre-activation of animacy features of nouns. These findings provide evidence for the prediction of semantic features of upcoming words. Unlike semantic prediction, evidence for phonological prediction is less clear, and thus we aim to examine the prediction of phonological information in the processing of Chinese idioms using ERP RSA. The study utilizes four-character Chinese idioms, and phonological overlap was manipulated by varying the syllable at the idiom-final part between idiom pairs so that pairs of idioms share a syllable (i.e., within pairs) or not (between pairs). We quantified the similarity between patterns of neural activity of idioms for within and between pairs. RSA results revealed greater similarity in neural activity patterns for idioms within pairs, compared to between pairs, and critically this similarity effect was observed prior to encountering phonological overlap, providing evidence for the pre-activation of upcoming phonological information. These findings contribute to a growing understanding of linguistic prediction in language comprehension.
Topic Areas: Reading,