Effects of event knowledge in processing verbal arguments

Abstract

This research tests whether comprehenders use their knowledge of typical events in real time to process verbal arguments. In self-paced reading and event-related brain potential (ERP) experiments, we used materials in which the likelihood of a specific patient noun (brakes or spelling) depended on the combination of an agent and verb (mechanic checked vs. journalist checked). Reading times were shorter at the word directly following the patient for the congruent than the incongruent items. Differential N400s were found earlier, immediately at the patient. Norming studies ruled out any account of these results based on direct relations between the agent and patient. Thus, comprehenders dynamically combine information about real-world events based on intrasentential agents and verbs, and this combination then rapidly influences online sentence interpretation.Keywords sentence processing; psycholinguistics; language comprehension; event knowledge; self-paced reading; event-related potentials A number of recent studies have shown that comprehenders are sensitive to thematic fit, or the plausibility of a noun as an argument of a particular verb (e.g., Kamide, Altmann, & Haywood, 2003;McRae, Spivey-Knowlton, & Tanenhaus, 1998). But what is the mechanism that underlies this effect? On one well-established approach, the verb's lexical representation encodes information about typical fillers of its thematic roles, as well as information about the selectional restrictions that the verb imposes on its arguments. Thus when the verb is accessed it makes available information about appropriate role fillers, so that the interpretation of meaning relies crucially on this information from the verb's lexical representation. Another possibility, however, is that comprehenders dynamically compute an interpretation based on their knowledge of events and situations, relying on all available cues. In what follows we test this hypothesis, focusing on the issue of thematic fit. We begin by reviewing the work on that topic, and show that the full pattern of results is difficult to explain on a retrieval-based account. Instead, we argue that comprehenders rely on their knowledge of typical events and situations as they integrate information provided by not only the verb but other participants mentioned in discourse, in an attempt to generate expectancies 1 about upcoming words.© 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Corresponding author: Klinton Bicknell, kbicknell@ling.ucsd.edu, University of California, San Diego, Department of Linguistics #0108, 9500, Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA 92093-0108. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all leg...

Wait a second! delayed impact of argument roles on on-line verb prediction

“…1 N400 amplitude measures have provided some of the primary evidence that comprehenders can rapidly integrate various sources of contextual information to generate predictions. Many factors that are known to affect a word's cloze probability (e.g., negation 2 , sentence structure, event knowledge, world knowledge, message-level representations) have also been shown to modulate N400 amplitude (Bicknell, Elman, Hare, McRae, & Kutas, 2010;Hagoort, Hald, Bastiaansen, & Petersson, 2004;Kos, Vosse, van den Brink, & Hagoort, 2010;Otten, Nieuwland, & Van Berkum, 2007;Paczynski & Kuperberg, 2012;Van Berkum, 2009;Xiang & Kuperberg, 2015). For example, listeners presented with an utterance like 'Every 1 Federmeier and Kutas (1999) pointed out that the predictability of a word, as assessed by cloze probability, is not always identical to the predictability of the meaning (or semantic features) of that word.…”

Looking for a Location: Dissociated Effects of Event-Related Plausibility and Verb–Argument Information on Predictive Processing in Aphasia

“…For example, there is evidence from both self-paced reading and event-related potentials that younger adults rapidly make use of eventrelated world knowledge to integrate likely arguments, such as themes (Bicknell, Elman, Hare, McRae, & Kutas, 2010;Matsuki et al, 2011;Metusalem et al, 2012). Adults with aphasia are also faster at reading likely, compared with highly unlikely, verb arguments .…”

The Truth Before and After: Brain Potentials Reveal Automatic Activation of Event Knowledge during Sentence Comprehension

“…A substantial body of literature suggests that people automatically activate world knowledge associated with narrated events (e.g., Metusalem et al, 2012;Bicknell, Elman, Hare, McRae, & Kutas, 2010;McRae & Matsuki, 2009;Ferretti, Kutas, & McRae, 2007;Gerrig & O'Brien, 2005;Zacks & Tversky, 2001;Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998;Graesser, Millis, & Zwaan, 1997;Kintsch, 1988). In general, recruitment of world knowledge will facilitate understanding, as it will activate concepts that are relevant to or implicitly present in the described event and may be mentioned in the unfolding discourse (e.g., Kutas & Federmeier, 2011;Altmann & Mirković, 2009;McRae & Matsuki, 2009).…”