The interplay of discourse congruence and lexical association during sentence processing: Evidence from ERPs and eye tracking

Abstract

Five experiments used ERPs and eye tracking to determine the interplay of word-level and discourse-level information during sentence processing. Subjects read sentences that were locally congruent but whose congruence with discourse context was manipulated. Furthermore, critical words in the local sentence were preceded by a prime word that was associated or not. Violations of discourse congruence had early and lingering effects on ERP and eye-tracking measures. This indicates that discourse representations have a rapid effect on lexical semantic processing even in locally congruous texts. In contrast, effects of association were more malleable: Very early effects of associative priming were only robust when the discourse context was absent or not cohesive. Together these results suggest that the global discourse model quickly influences lexical processing in sentences, and that spreading activation from associative priming does not contribute to natural reading in discourse contexts.

Fig. 1

Difference wave ERPs for nine of the 29 electrode sites. The traces are time-locked to the presentation of the target. The effect of discourse congruence (Incongruent–Congruent) for associated words and unassociated words are shown separately. In this and the following figure, the first row contains frontal electrodes, the second consists of central electrodes, and the final row shows posterior electrodes. Midline electrodes are shown in the center column with electrodes over the left of the scalp in the left column and electrodes over the right of the scalp in the right column. Negative is plotted up.

Fig. 2

Difference wave ERPs for nine of the 29 electrode sites. The traces are time-locked to the presentation of the target. The effect of association (Unassociated–Associated) for congruent words and incongruent words are shown separately.