Tracking Colisteners' Knowledge States During Language Comprehension

Overview

Journal Psychol Sci

Specialty Psychology

Date 2018 Nov 17

PMID 30444681

Citations 12

Authors

Olessia Jouravlev

Rachael Schwartz

Dima Ayyash

Zachary Mineroff

Edward Gibson

Evelina Fedorenko

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

When we receive information in the presence of other people, are we sensitive to what they do or do not understand? In two event-related-potential experiments, participants read implausible sentences (e.g., "The girl had a little beak") in contexts that rendered them plausible (e.g., "The girl dressed up as a canary for Halloween"). No semantic-processing difficulty (no N400 effect) ensued when they read the sentences while alone in the room. However, when a confederate was present who did not receive the contexts so that the critical sentences were implausible for him or her, participants exhibited processing difficulty: the social-N400 effect. This effect was obtained when participants were instructed to adopt the confederate's perspective-and critically, even without such instructions-but not when performing a demanding comprehension task. Thus, unless mental resources are limited, comprehenders engage in modeling the minds not only of those individuals with whom they directly interact but also of those individuals who are merely present during the linguistic exchange.

Citing Articles

Social presence effect in language comprehension: evidence from event-related potential (ERP) research.

Yu T, Sui X, Li Y PeerJ. 2025; 13():e18798.

PMID: 39822981 PMC: 11737328. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.18798.

Linguistic inputs must be syntactically parsable to fully engage the language network.

Kauf C, Kim H, Lee E, Jhingan N, Selena She J, Taliaferro M bioRxiv. 2024; .

PMID: 38948870 PMC: 11212959. DOI: 10.1101/2024.06.21.599332.

Meaning as mentalization.

Forgacs B Front Hum Neurosci. 2024; 18:1384116.

PMID: 38855407 PMC: 11158629. DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2024.1384116.

Lexical-Semantic Content, Not Syntactic Structure, Is the Main Contributor to ANN-Brain Similarity of fMRI Responses in the Language Network.

Kauf C, Tuckute G, Levy R, Andreas J, Fedorenko E Neurobiol Lang (Camb). 2024; 5(1):7-42.

PMID: 38645614 PMC: 11025651. DOI: 10.1162/nol_a_00116.

Unveiling the need of interactions for social N400s and supporting the N400 inhibition hypothesis.

Sinha S, Del Goleto S, Kostova M, Debruille J Sci Rep. 2023; 13(1):12613.

PMID: 37537222 PMC: 10400652. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-39345-6.

References

Baron-Cohen S, Wheelwright S . The empathy quotient: an investigation of adults with Asperger syndrome or high functioning autism, and normal sex differences. J Autism Dev Disord. 2004; 34(2):163-75. DOI: 10.1023/b:jadd.0000022607.19833.00. View

Nieuwland M, van Berkum J . When peanuts fall in love: N400 evidence for the power of discourse. J Cogn Neurosci. 2006; 18(7):1098-111. DOI: 10.1162/jocn.2006.18.7.1098. View

Rueschemeyer S, Gardner T, Stoner C . The Social N400 effect: how the presence of other listeners affects language comprehension. Psychon Bull Rev. 2014; 22(1):128-34. DOI: 10.3758/s13423-014-0654-x. View

Kutas M, Hillyard S . Reading senseless sentences: brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity. Science. 1980; 207(4427):203-5. DOI: 10.1126/science.7350657. View

Brown-Schmidt S . The role of executive function in perspective taking during online language comprehension. Psychon Bull Rev. 2009; 16(5):893-900. DOI: 10.3758/PBR.16.5.893. View

Sebanz N, Knoblich G, Prinz W, Wascher E . Twin peaks: an ERP study of action planning and control in co-acting individuals. J Cogn Neurosci. 2006; 18(5):859-70. DOI: 10.1162/jocn.2006.18.5.859. View

van den Brink D, van Berkum J, Bastiaansen M, Tesink C, Kos M, Buitelaar J . Empathy matters: ERP evidence for inter-individual differences in social language processing. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2010; 7(2):173-83. PMC: 3277364. DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsq094. View

Scott T, Gallee J, Fedorenko E . A new fun and robust version of an fMRI localizer for the frontotemporal language system. Cogn Neurosci. 2016; 8(3):167-176. DOI: 10.1080/17588928.2016.1201466. View

Baron-Cohen S, Wheelwright S, Hill J, Raste Y, Plumb I . The "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" Test revised version: a study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2001; 42(2):241-51. View

10.

Tanner D, van Hell J . ERPs reveal individual differences in morphosyntactic processing. Neuropsychologia. 2014; 56:289-301. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.02.002. View

11.

Lane L, Ferreira V . Speaker-external versus speaker-internal forces on utterance form: do cognitive demands override threats to referential success?. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2008; 34(6):1466-81. PMC: 2654616. DOI: 10.1037/a0013353. View

12.

Heller D, Grodner D, Tanenhaus M . The role of perspective in identifying domains of reference. Cognition. 2008; 108(3):831-6. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2008.04.008. View

13.

Brown-Schmidt S, Gunlogson C, Tanenhaus M . Addressees distinguish shared from private information when interpreting questions during interactive conversation. Cognition. 2008; 107(3):1122-34. PMC: 2491908. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2007.11.005. View

14.

. PSYCHOLOGY. Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science. 2015; 349(6251):aac4716. DOI: 10.1126/science.aac4716. View

15.

Dawson G, Fernald M . Perspective-taking ability and its relationship to the social behavior of autistic children. J Autism Dev Disord. 1987; 17(4):487-98. DOI: 10.1007/BF01486965. View

16.

Hagoort P . Interplay between syntax and semantics during sentence comprehension: ERP effects of combining syntactic and semantic violations. J Cogn Neurosci. 2003; 15(6):883-99. DOI: 10.1162/089892903322370807. View

17.

Westley A, Kohut Z, Rueschemeyer S . "I know something you don't know": Discourse and social context effects on the N400 in adolescents. J Exp Child Psychol. 2017; 164:45-54. DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2017.06.016. View

18.

Nieuwland M, van Berkum J . Individual differences and contextual bias in pronoun resolution: evidence from ERPs. Brain Res. 2006; 1118(1):155-67. DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2006.08.022. View

19.

Curran T, Tucker D, Kutas M, Posner M . Topography of the N400: brain electrical activity reflecting semantic expectancy. Electroencephalogr Clin Neurophysiol. 1993; 88(3):188-209. DOI: 10.1016/0168-5597(93)90004-9. View

20.

Hald L, Steenbeek-Planting E, Hagoort P . The interaction of discourse context and world knowledge in online sentence comprehension. Evidence from the N400. Brain Res. 2007; 1146:210-8. DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2007.02.054. View