Stimulus onset asynchrony and the timeline of word recognition: Event-related potentials during sentence reading

Abstract

Article in press in Neuropsychologia [http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.04.011] Please note that this unproofed preprint may be subject to minor changes. [May 5, 2012] SOA and the Timeline of Word Recognition 2 AbstractThree ERP experiments examined the effect of word presentation rate (i.e., stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA) on the time course of word frequency and predictability effects in sentence reading. In Experiments 1 and 2, sentences were presented word-by-word in the screen center at an SOA of 700 and 490 ms, respectively. While these rates are typical for psycholinguistic ERP research, natural reading happens at a considerably faster pace. Accordingly, Experiment 3 employed a near-normal SOA of 280 ms, which approximated the rate of normal reading. Main results can be summarized as follows: (1) The onset latency of early frequency effects decreases gradually with increasing presentation rates. (2) An early interaction between top-down and bottom-up processing is observed only under a nearnormal SOA. (3) N400 predictability effects occur later and are smaller at a near-normal (i.e., high) presentation rate than at the lower rates commonly used in ERP experiments. (4) ERP morphology is different at the shortest compared to longer SOAs. Together, the results point to a special role of a near-normal presentation rate for visual word recognition and therefore suggest that SOA should be taken into account in research of natural reading.

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

“…Therefore, it is possible that comprehenders do use argument role information to predict an upcoming verb, but they simply cannot do so quickly enough when the verb appears immediately following the arguments. This idea is consistent with previous findings that timing manipulations can modulate predictability effects (e.g., Dambacher et al, 2012;Ito, Corley, Pickering, Martin, & Nieuwland, 2016;Kutas, 1993;Wlotko & Federmeier, 2015). Under this view, the N400's sensitivity to argument role reversals should depend on (i) the predictability of the verb and (ii) the amount of time available for comprehenders to incorporate information about the arguments' roles in their verb predictions.…”

“…Instead, they provide empirical support for Laszlo and Federmeier's (2009) proposal that "quantitative shifts in the timing of processing can potentially lead to qualitative differences in what particular facets of semantics come to be linked up with a given input" (p.32) and highlight the importance of timing considerations in the study of prediction (cf. Dambacher et al, 2012;Wlotko & Federmeier, 2015). Note, however, that the present proposal is distinct from 'good-enough' models of language comprehension (e.g., Christianson, Hollingworth, Halliwell, & Ferreira, 2001;Ferreira, Bailey, & Ferraro, 2002), or any model which posits that detailed syntactic information may be ignored during comprehension (e.g., Townsend & Bever, 2001).…”

Occipital and orbitofrontal hemodynamics during naturally paced reading: An fNIRS study

“…This, however, is problematic for the investigation of sentence processing, because slow presentation rates lead to unnatural processing strategies. For instance, an early interaction between predictability and word frequency occurs only at natural, but not at artificially slow reading rates (Dambacher et al, 2012). This is in line with Bar et al's (2006) proposal that slow presentation rates engage a largely bottom-up driven processing strategy, which prevents the OFC from becoming active.…”

“…Stimuli were taken from Dambacher et al (2009Dambacher et al ( , 2012. Each participant read 144 sentence units.…”

“…High predictability was defined by a cloze-completion probability greater than 0.5 (mean = .8), and low predictability by a probability lower than 0.1 (mean = .01). None of the cloze-test subjects participated in the present experiment (see Dambacher et al, 2012, for further details about the material).…”