Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Syntactic expectancy: an event-related potentials study.

José A Hinojosa1, Eva M Moreno, Pilar Casado

  • 1Human Brain Mapping Unit, Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain. hinojosa@pluri.ucm.es

Neuroscience Letters
|March 15, 2005
PubMed
Summary

Syntactic expectancies influence language processing. Unexpected syntactic structures elicit an N400 brainwave response, differing from expected structures, supporting distinct processing models.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Conveying (discrete) emotionality with novel words.

Journal of experimental psychology. General·2026
Same author

The Combined Role of Cognitive, Plasma, Volumetric and EEG Markers Along the Alzheimer's Disease Continuum in Down Syndrome.

Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR·2026
Same author

Gateway to Syntax: On the Neural Origins of the Left Anterior Negativity and Their Functional Implications.

Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.)·2026
Same author

Precise dose verification in proton therapy via F-18 activation measured with positron emission tomography imaging.

Physics in medicine and biology·2026
Same author

Replicating the unconscious working memory effect: a multisite Registered Report.

Neuroscience of consciousness·2026
Same author

Brain signal variability is reduced during self-face processing irrespective of emotional facial expressions: Evidence from multiscale entropy analysis.

Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior·2025

Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Computational Linguistics

Background:

  • Extensive research exists on semantic expectancies.
  • Limited investigation into syntactic expectancies' impact on language processing.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the influence of syntactic expectancies on sentence processing.
  • To examine brain responses to expected versus unexpected syntactic structures.

Main Methods:

  • Participants processed grammatically correct sentences with expected and unexpected syntactic structures.
  • Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured at critical words.

Main Results:

  • Syntactically unexpected words elicited a central negativity (N400) between 300-500 ms.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Syntactically expected words did not show this N400 response.
  • No significant differences were observed in earlier time windows.

    • Conclusions:

    • The brain differentiates processing for expected and unexpected syntactic structures.
    • Findings support models distinguishing syntactic processing pathways.