Comprehending how visual context influences incremental sentence processing: Insights from ERPs and picture-sentence verification
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Updated: Jun 10, 2026

Using the Visual World Paradigm to Study Sentence Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Autism
Published on: October 3, 2018
Pia Knoeferle1, Thomas P Urbach, Marta Kutas
1Cognitive Interaction Technology Excellence Cluster, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany. knoeferl@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de
Abstract:
To re-establish picture-sentence verification-discredited possibly for its over-reliance on post-sentence response time (RT) measures-as a task for situated comprehension, we collected event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as participants read a subject-verb-object sentence, and RTs indicating whether or not the verb matched a previously depicted action. For mismatches (vs. matches), speeded RTs were longer, verb N400s over centro-parietal scalp larger, and ERPs to the object noun more negative. RTs (congruence effect) correlated inversely with the centro-parietal verb N400s, and positively with the object ERP congruence effects. Verb N400s, object ERPs, and verbal working memory scores predicted more variance in RT effects (50%) than N400s alone. Thus, (1) verification processing is not all post-sentence; (2) simple priming cannot account for these results; and (3) verification tasks can inform studies of situated comprehension.
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