The N400 is elicited by meaning changes but not synonym substitutions: Evidence from Persian phrasal verbs

Abstract

We tested two accounts of the cognitive process underlying the N400 event-related potential (ERP) component: one that it reflects meaning-based processing and one that it reflects the processing of specific words. The experimental design utilized separable Persian phrasal verbs, which form a strong, long-distance dependency, ideal for the study of probabilistic processing. In sentences strongly constraining for a particular interpretation, we show that only words that changed the expected meaning of the sentence increased N400 amplitude, while words that were synonyms of the most probable target word did not. The findings support an account of the N400 in which its underlying process is driven by the processing of meaning rather than of specific words. The findings also contribute to increasing the linguistic diversity and generalizability of cognitive research.