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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 22, 2026

Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies

Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies

Published on: May 9, 2019

Semantic illusion depends on information structure: ERP evidence.

Lin Wang¹, Peter Hagoort, Yufang Yang

¹Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Datun Road 4A, Beijing, 100101, China.

|June 9, 2009

Summary

Information structure, distinguishing new (focused) from given (non-focused) information, enhances semantic processing. Event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed a full N400 effect for focused words, indicating greater cognitive resources are allocated to new information.

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Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies

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Investigating the Effects of Antipsychotics and Schizotypy on the N400 Using Event-Related Potentials and Semantic Categorization

Investigating the Effects of Antipsychotics and Schizotypy on the N400 Using Event-Related Potentials and Semantic Categorization

Published on: November 19, 2014

Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Psycholinguistics
Linguistics

Background:

Speakers convey information not only through propositional content but also by structuring it into focused (new) and non-focused (given) elements.
Information structure plays a crucial role in how listeners process spoken language and allocate cognitive resources.
Understanding the neural underpinnings of information structure's impact on semantic processing is essential for psycholinguistics.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the role of information structure in semantic processing.
To examine how focused versus non-focused information affects the brain's response to semantic anomalies.
To explore the neural mechanisms underlying the facilitation of semantic processing by information structure.

Main Methods:

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured in participants.
Participants listened to wh-question-answer pairs where the answer contained a critical word.
Critical words were manipulated for semantic appropriateness (appropriate vs. inappropriate) and information structure (focus vs. non-focus).

Main Results:

A significant N400 effect, indicative of semantic processing, was observed for semantically inappropriate words.
The N400 effect was maximal when critical words were in the focus position.
A reduced N400 effect was found for critical words in the non-focus position, consistent with the semantic illusion effect.

Conclusions:

Information structure significantly modulates semantic processing.
Focused information receives greater cognitive resources, leading to a more robust neural response to semantic anomalies.
The findings suggest that information structure acts as a facilitator for semantic integration by prioritizing the processing of new information.