Search Abstracts | Symposia | Slide Sessions | Poster Sessions
When does truth matter: ERPs to words in declarative and counterfactual constructions
Poster Session C, Thursday, October 1, 10:45 am - 12:45 pm, Wangari Maathai
Lumi Kang1, Seana Coulson1; 1University of California San Diego
Counterfactual constructions require comprehenders to represent a hypothetical scenario while simultaneously maintaining knowledge about what is factually true, resulting in a dual representation of events. Prior ERP studies on counterfactual comprehension have largely focused on how readers evaluate information in consequent clauses, asking whether incoming information is interpreted relative to the hypothetical context or to real-world knowledge. However, much less is known about the processing of counterfactual antecedents. Counterfactual antecedents are theoretically important because they introduce a hypothetical scenario that may conflict with real-world knowledge. This allows us to ask whether early processing is driven by real-world knowledge, counterfactual marking, or the use of both. To explore this issue, we developed a stimulus set that manipulated real-world consistency in declarative and counterfactual sentences. Critical words appeared in the antecedent, where real-world consistency is first introduced (e.g., Since/If chess is/were a game of STRATEGY (real-world consistent)/CHANCE (real-world inconsistent)), and at the sentence-final position, where the proposition implied by the antecedent was integrated (e.g., chess masters always/would have impressive SKILLS (consistent)/LUCK (inconsistent)). Materials were normed using cloze completion tasks targeting either the antecedent or the sentence-final critical word. Critical words in the antecedent showed main effects of consistency as participants were more likely to produce consistent than inconsistent completions (p<0.001), construction (p<0.05), and an interaction (p<0.001) due to a larger consistency effect in declaratives than counterfactuals. At the sentence-final word, cloze responses showed only an effect of real-world consistency (p<0.001). To determine whether these predictability effects would be reflected in real-time language processing, we recorded EEG from 20 native English speakers reading these materials one word at a time. Participants judged sentence sensibility after each trial. ERPs time-locked to critical words in the antecedent revealed a significant consistency effect due to larger N400 to the inconsistent (chance) than consistent (strategy) continuations (p< 0.001). In contrast, ERPs time-locked to sentence-final words (skills/luck) revealed no reliable N400 effects, though separate planned comparisons suggested a trend towards consistency effects in declaratives (p<0.07), but not counterfactuals (p>0.15). This pattern aligns with prior work showing that once sufficient counterfactual context has been established, comprehenders anchor their interpretation to the fictive context rather than real-world truth. In sensibility judgments after each sentence, participants rated real-world consistent declaratives more sensible than inconsistent ones (p< 0.001). By contrast, consistency effects were absent in counterfactuals (p = .911). These data suggest participants' explicit judgments were less constrained by real-world truth in the counterfactual sentences than in declarative ones. Together, results suggest that real world knowledge strongly constrains the initial construction of the counterfactual, as ERPs to words in the antecedent were sensitive only to real-world consistency. By the sentence-final position, however, there was no evidence for consistency effects in the counterfactuals, suggesting that once the counterfactual context has been established, semantic retrieval is less influenced by real-world truth than it is in declarative constructions.
Topic Areas: Meaning: Discourse and Pragmatics, Syntax and Combinatorial Semantics