Informative use of “not” is N400-blind
While sentences are generally processed incrementally, negation seems to be an exception!
Several studies have found that the N400 ERP component is not modulated by the presence of negation (Fischler et al., 1983; Haase et al., 2019; Lüdtke et al., 2008). Others have found that the N400 is sensitive to negation – when the negation is pragmatically licensed (Nieuwland et al., 2010; Nieuwland & Kuperberg, 2008; Schiller et al., 2017).
We investigate whether negation is processed incrementally when it is used informatively. We measured ERPs while participants guessed the meanings of novel pseudowords in a fast mapping novel word learning paradigm. In this scenario, negation is highly informative – if you make a wrong guess about the word’s meaning, a sentence like “A crilge is not a fish” can serve to correct your misunderstanding.
We found that under these conditions – even though the negation is highly informative – the N400 is still negation-blind! This indicates that negation is not being processed incrementally, even when it serves a salient discourse function – correcting wrong inferences about novel words.
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| RESEARCH |