Parafoveal words can modulate sentence meaning: Electrophysiological evidence from an RSVP-with-flanker task

During natural reading, readers can take up some visual information from not-yet-fixated words to the right of the current fixation and it is well-established that this parafoveal preview facilitates the subsequent foveal processing of the word. However, the extraction and integration of word meaning from parafoveal words and their possible influence on the semantic content of the sentence are controversial. In the current study, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in the RSVP-with-flankers paradigm to test whether and how updates of sentential meaning, based only on parafoveal information, may influence the subsequent foveal processing. In Chinese sentences, the congruency of parafoveal and foveal target words with the sentence was orthogonally manipulated. In contrast to previous research, we also controlled for potentially confounding effects of parafoveal-to-foveal repetition priming (identity preview effects) on the N400. Crucially, we found that the classic effect of foveal congruency on the N400 component only appeared when the word in preview had been congruent with sentence meaning; in contrast, there was no N400 as a function of foveal incongruency when the preview word had also been incongruent. These results indicate that sentence meaning rapidly adapts to parafoveal preview, altering the semantic context for the subsequently fixated word. We also show that correct parafoveal preview generally attenuates the N400 once a word is fixated, regardless of congruency. Taken together, our findings underline the highly generative and adaptive framework of language comprehension.