Dissociable effects of prediction and integration during language comprehension: evidence from a large-scale study using brain potentials

Mante S Nieuwland; Dale J Barr; Federica Bartolozzi; Simon Busch-Moreno; Emily Darley; David I Donaldson; Heather J Ferguson; Xiao Fu; Evelien Heyselaar; Falk Huettig; E Matthew Husband; Aine Ito; Nina Kazanina; Vita Kogan; Zdenko Kohút; Eugenia Kulakova; Diane Mézière; Stephen Politzer-Ahles; Guillaume Rousselet; Shirley-Ann Rueschemeyer; Katrien Segaert; Jyrki Tuomainen; Sarah Von Grebmer Zu Wolfsthurn

doi:10.1098/rstb.2018.0522

Dissociable effects of prediction and integration during language comprehension: evidence from a large-scale study using brain potentials

Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2020 Feb 3;375(1791):20180522. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2018.0522. Epub 2019 Dec 16.

Authors

Mante S Nieuwland^{1

2

3}, Dale J Barr⁴, Federica Bartolozzi^{1

3}, Simon Busch-Moreno⁵, Emily Darley⁶, David I Donaldson⁷, Heather J Ferguson⁸, Xiao Fu⁵, Evelien Heyselaar^{1

9}, Falk Huettig¹, E Matthew Husband¹⁰, Aine Ito^{3

10}, Nina Kazanina⁶, Vita Kogan³, Zdenko Kohút¹¹, Eugenia Kulakova¹², Diane Mézière³, Stephen Politzer-Ahles^{10

13}, Guillaume Rousselet⁴, Shirley-Ann Rueschemeyer¹¹, Katrien Segaert^{8

14}, Jyrki Tuomainen⁵, Sarah Von Grebmer Zu Wolfsthurn⁶

Affiliations

¹ Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
² Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
³ School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
⁴ Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK.
⁵ Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, London, UK.
⁶ School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
⁷ Psychology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK.
⁸ School of Psychology, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.
⁹ School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
¹⁰ Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
¹¹ Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK.
¹² Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK.
¹³ Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, People's Republic of China.
¹⁴ Centre for Human Brain Health, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.

Abstract

Composing sentence meaning is easier for predictable words than for unpredictable words. Are predictable words genuinely predicted, or simply more plausible and therefore easier to integrate with sentence context? We addressed this persistent and fundamental question using data from a recent, large-scale (n = 334) replication study, by investigating the effects of word predictability and sentence plausibility on the N400, the brain's electrophysiological index of semantic processing. A spatio-temporally fine-grained mixed-effect multiple regression analysis revealed overlapping effects of predictability and plausibility on the N400, albeit with distinct spatio-temporal profiles. Our results challenge the view that the predictability-dependent N400 reflects the effects of either prediction or integration, and suggest that semantic facilitation of predictable words arises from a cascade of processes that activate and integrate word meaning with context into a sentence-level meaning. This article is part of the theme issue 'Towards mechanistic models of meaning composition'.

Keywords: N400; plausibility; predictability; semantic similarity.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Attention / physiology
Brain / physiology*
Comprehension / physiology*
Electroencephalography
Evoked Potentials / physiology
Forecasting
Humans
Language*
Semantics