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On the predictability of event boundaries in discourse: An ERP investigation

When reading a text describing an everyday activity, comprehenders build a model of the situation described that includes prior knowledge of the entities, locations, and sequences of actions that typically occur within the event. Previous work has demonstrated that such knowledge guides the processi...

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Autores principales: Delogu, Francesca, Drenhaus, Heiner, Crocker, Matthew W.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5809541/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29159678
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13421-017-0766-4
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author Delogu, Francesca
Drenhaus, Heiner
Crocker, Matthew W.
author_facet Delogu, Francesca
Drenhaus, Heiner
Crocker, Matthew W.
author_sort Delogu, Francesca
collection PubMed
description When reading a text describing an everyday activity, comprehenders build a model of the situation described that includes prior knowledge of the entities, locations, and sequences of actions that typically occur within the event. Previous work has demonstrated that such knowledge guides the processing of incoming information by making event boundaries more or less expected. In the present ERP study, we investigated whether comprehenders’ expectations about event boundaries are influenced by how elaborately common events are described in the context. Participants read short stories in which a common activity (e.g., washing the dishes) was described either in brief or in an elaborate manner. The final sentence contained a target word referring to a more predictable action marking a fine event boundary (e.g., drying) or a less predictable action, marking a coarse event boundary (e.g., jogging). The results revealed a larger N400 effect for coarse event boundaries compared to fine event boundaries, but no interaction with description length. Between 600 and 1000 ms, however, elaborate contexts elicited a larger frontal positivity compared to brief contexts. This effect was largely driven by less predictable targets, marking coarse event boundaries. We interpret the P600 effect as indexing the updating of the situation model at event boundaries, consistent with Event Segmentation Theory (EST). The updating process is more demanding with coarse event boundaries, which presumably require the construction of a new situation model. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.3758/s13421-017-0766-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-58095412018-02-22 On the predictability of event boundaries in discourse: An ERP investigation Delogu, Francesca Drenhaus, Heiner Crocker, Matthew W. Mem Cognit Article When reading a text describing an everyday activity, comprehenders build a model of the situation described that includes prior knowledge of the entities, locations, and sequences of actions that typically occur within the event. Previous work has demonstrated that such knowledge guides the processing of incoming information by making event boundaries more or less expected. In the present ERP study, we investigated whether comprehenders’ expectations about event boundaries are influenced by how elaborately common events are described in the context. Participants read short stories in which a common activity (e.g., washing the dishes) was described either in brief or in an elaborate manner. The final sentence contained a target word referring to a more predictable action marking a fine event boundary (e.g., drying) or a less predictable action, marking a coarse event boundary (e.g., jogging). The results revealed a larger N400 effect for coarse event boundaries compared to fine event boundaries, but no interaction with description length. Between 600 and 1000 ms, however, elaborate contexts elicited a larger frontal positivity compared to brief contexts. This effect was largely driven by less predictable targets, marking coarse event boundaries. We interpret the P600 effect as indexing the updating of the situation model at event boundaries, consistent with Event Segmentation Theory (EST). The updating process is more demanding with coarse event boundaries, which presumably require the construction of a new situation model. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.3758/s13421-017-0766-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Springer US 2017-11-20 2018 /pmc/articles/PMC5809541/ /pubmed/29159678 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13421-017-0766-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Article
Delogu, Francesca
Drenhaus, Heiner
Crocker, Matthew W.
On the predictability of event boundaries in discourse: An ERP investigation
title On the predictability of event boundaries in discourse: An ERP investigation
title_full On the predictability of event boundaries in discourse: An ERP investigation
title_fullStr On the predictability of event boundaries in discourse: An ERP investigation
title_full_unstemmed On the predictability of event boundaries in discourse: An ERP investigation
title_short On the predictability of event boundaries in discourse: An ERP investigation
title_sort on the predictability of event boundaries in discourse: an erp investigation
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5809541/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29159678
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13421-017-0766-4
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