Referential retrieval and integration in language comprehension: An electrophysiological perspective

Referential processing is part and parcel of language comprehension, but in neurocognitive theories and models of comprehension it typically does not take center stage. Models informed by event-related potentials focus on semantic and syntactic processing in terms of the two most salient event-related potentials components, the N400 and P600, while experimental findings have implicated the Nref component-a frontal, sustained negativity-in referential processing. Extant accounts of the Nref assume it reflects processes involved in establishing reference or association at a distance, but an important open question remains how these mechanisms can be reconciled with existing neurocognitive models. We here offer a mechanistic account of referential processing grounded in retrieval-integration (RI) theory, an integrated theory of language comprehension with broad empirical coverage. On RI theory, the conceptual knowledge associated with an incoming word in context is retrieved from long-term memory (N400), and accordingly integrated into the unfolding utterance representation (P600). We here argue that word meaning is not only defined by the conceptual knowledge associated with a word, but also by its referential knowledge (its presuppositions). Whenever this referential knowledge is inconsistent with what is anticipated given the context, increased referential retrieval effort ensues (Nref). In contrast to extant accounts, we do thus not implicate the Nref in the establishment of reference itself, but instead attribute referential resolution to the integrative processes underlying the P600. The resultant referential RI theory integrates the N400, Nref, and P600 in a single model, and its predictions are consistent with extant empirical evidence on referential processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).