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Who are you talking about? Tracking discourse-level referential processing with event-related brain potentials.

Mante S Nieuwland¹, Marte Otten, Jos J A Van Berkum

¹Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 15, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands. m.s.nieuwland@uva.nl

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

|February 7, 2007

Summary

This study shows event-related brain potentials (ERPs) can track referential ambiguity in spoken language. This ERP effect specifically reflects deeper situation model ambiguity, not superficial textbase ambiguity, during discourse comprehension.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Psycholinguistics
Computational Linguistics

Background:

Referential ambiguity in discourse comprehension is a known challenge.
Previous event-related brain potentials (ERPs) research identified a frontal negative shift for ambiguous nouns.
The nature of this ERP effect (situation model vs. textbase ambiguity) remained unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether ERPs can selectively track referential ambiguity at the situation model level.
To differentiate between deep situation model ambiguity and superficial textbase ambiguity using ERPs.
To determine if semantic manipulations preventing referential ambiguity also abolish the ERP effect.

Main Methods:

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during spoken discourse comprehension.
Nouns were presented in three conditions: referentially ambiguous, referentially nonambiguous but with two entities ('double bound'), and unambiguous control.
Semantic manipulations were used to create referentially nonambiguous but entity-rich contexts.

Main Results:

Referentially ambiguous nouns elicited a frontal negative shift compared to control words.
Nouns that were referentially nonambiguous but associated with two discourse entities did not elicit this ERP effect.
The ERP effect was specific to referential ambiguity relevant to the situation model.

Conclusions:

ERPs can selectively track referential ambiguity during spoken discourse comprehension.
The observed ERP effect reflects deeper situation model ambiguity, not superficial textbase ambiguity.
This finding has implications for understanding the cognitive mechanisms of discourse processing.