Distinct neural correlates for pragmatic and semantic meaning   processing: An event-related potential investigation of scalar   implicature processing using picture-sentence verification

doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2012.10.042

CORC > 北京大学 > 心理与认知科学学院

	Distinct neural correlates for pragmatic and semantic meaning processing: An event-related potential investigation of scalar implicature processing using picture-sentence verification
	Politzer-Ahles, Stephen ; Fiorentino, Robert ; Jiang, Xiaoming ; Zhou, Xiaolin
刊名	脑研究
	2013
关键词	Scalar implicature Pragmatics ERP Sustained negativity N400 LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION BRAIN POTENTIALS TIME-COURSE N400 ERP VIOLATIONS INFERENCES DISCOURSE CONTEXT SYNTAX
DOI	10.1016/j.brainres.2012.10.042
英文摘要	The present study examines the brain-level representation and composition of meaning in scalar quantifiers (e.g., some), which have both a semantic meaning (at least one) and a pragmatic meaning (not all). We adopted a picture-sentence verification design to examine event-related potential (ERP) effects of reading infelicitous quantifiers for which the semantic meaning was correct with respect to the context but the pragmatic meaning was not, compared to quantifiers for which the semantic meaning was inconsistent with the context and no additional pragmatic meaning is available. In the first experiment, only pragmatically inconsistent quantifiers, not semantically inconsistent quantifiers, elicited a sustained posterior negative component. This late negativity contrasts with the N400 effect typically elicited by nouns that are incongruent with their context, suggesting that the recognition of scalar implicature errors elicits a qualitatively different ERP signature than the recognition of lexico-semantic errors. We hypothesize that the sustained negativity reflects cancellation of the pragmatic inference and retrieval of the semantic meaning. In our second experiment, we found that the process of re-interpreting the quantifier was independent from lexico-semantic processing: the N400 elicited by lexico-semantic violations was not modulated by the presence of a pragmatic inconsistency. These findings suggest that inferential pragmatic aspects of meaning are processed using different mechanisms than lexical or combinatorial semantic aspects of meaning, that inferential pragmatic meaning can be realized rapidly, and that the computation of meaning involves continuous negotiation between different aspects of meaning. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.; Neurosciences; SCI(E); SSCI; 7; ARTICLE; 134-152; 1490
语种	英语
内容类型	期刊论文
源URL	[http://ir.pku.edu.cn/handle/20.500.11897/227020]
专题	心理与认知科学学院
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Politzer-Ahles, Stephen,Fiorentino, Robert,Jiang, Xiaoming,et al. Distinct neural correlates for pragmatic and semantic meaning processing: An event-related potential investigation of scalar implicature processing using picture-sentence verification[J]. 脑研究,2013.
APA	Politzer-Ahles, Stephen,Fiorentino, Robert,Jiang, Xiaoming,&Zhou, Xiaolin.(2013).Distinct neural correlates for pragmatic and semantic meaning processing: An event-related potential investigation of scalar implicature processing using picture-sentence verification.脑研究.
MLA	Politzer-Ahles, Stephen,et al."Distinct neural correlates for pragmatic and semantic meaning processing: An event-related potential investigation of scalar implicature processing using picture-sentence verification".脑研究 (2013).