If the real world were irrelevant, so to speak: The role of propositional truth-value in counterfactual sentence comprehension

Cognition

Volumn 122, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 102-109

  Nieuwland, Mante S ^a   Martin, Andrea E ^a  

^a BASQUE CENTER ON COGNITION   (Spain)

Author keywords

Contextual relevance; Counterfactual conditionals; Event related potentials; Language comprehension; N400; Propositional truth value; Real world knowledge

Indexed keywords

ADULT; ARTICLE; COMPREHENSION; EVENT RELATED POTENTIAL; FEMALE; GOVERNMENT; HUMAN; MALE; NORMAL HUMAN; PRIORITY JOURNAL; RUSSIAN FEDERATION; SEMANTIC MEMORY; SPEECH; UNITED STATES;

COMPREHENSION; ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY; EVOKED POTENTIALS; FEMALE; HUMANS; LANGUAGE; MALE; MENTAL PROCESSES; YOUNG ADULT;

EID: 81055140349     PISSN: 00100277     EISSN: 18737838     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2011.09.001     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. Altmann G.T.M., Kamide Y. Incremental interpretation at verbs: Restricting the domain of subsequent reference. Cognition 1999, 73:247-264.
2. Altmann G.T.M., Mirković J. Incrementality and prediction in human sentence processing. Cognitive Science 2009, 33(4):583-609.
3. Braine M.D.S., O'Brien D.P. A theory of If: A lexical entry, reasoning program, and pragmatic principles. Psychological Review 1991, 98:182-203.
4. Byrne R.M.J. Mental models and counterfactual thoughts about what might have been. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2002, 6(10):426-431.
5. Byrne R.M.J. Précis of the rational imagination: How people create alternatives to reality. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2007, 30:439-480.
6. Byrne R.M.J., Johnson-Laird P.N. 'If' and the problems of conditional reasoning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2009, 13(7):282-287.
7. Camblin C.C., Gordon P.C., Swaab T.Y. The interplay of discourse congruence and lexical association during sentence processing: Evidence from ERPs and eye tracking. Journal of Memory and Language 2007, 56:103-128.
8. Cook A., Myers J.L. Processing discourse roles in scripted narratives: The influences of context and world knowledge. Journal of Memory and Language 2004, 50:268-288.
9. Cosmides L., Tooby J. Consider the source. The evolution of adaptations for decoupling and metarepresentation. Metarepresentations 2000, 53-115. Oxford University Press, Oxford. D. Sperber (Ed.).
10. Coulson S. Semantic Leaps: Frame-Shifting and Conceptual Blending in Meaning Construction 2001, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
11. Davis C.J., Perea M. BuscaPalabras: A program for deriving orthographic and phonological neighborhood statistics and other psycholinguistic indices in Spanish. Behavior Research Methods 2005, 37:665-671.
12. de Vega M., Urrutia M., Riffo R. Cancelling updating in the comprehension of counterfactuals embedded in narratives. Memory & Cognition 2007, 35:1410-1421.
13. Delong K.A., Urbach T.P., Kutas M. Probabilistic word pre-activation during language comprehension inferred from electrical brain activity. Nature Neuroscience 2005, 8:1117-1121.
14. Evans J.S.B.T. The heuristic-analytic theory of reasoning: Extension and evaluation. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 2006, 13(3):378-395.
15. Federmeier K.D., Kutas M. A rose by any other name: Long-term memory structure and sentence processing. Journal of Memory and Language 1999, 41:469-495.
16. Ferguson, H.J., Sanford, A.J. & Leuthold, H. (2007). Real-world interference in detecting violations of counterfactual and negated worlds. Poster presented at Cognitive Neuroscience Society Annual meeting. New York, NY.
17. Ferguson H.J., Sanford A.J. Anomalies in real and counterfactual worlds: An eye-movement investigation. Journal of Memory and Language 2008, 58:609-626.
18. Ferguson H.J., Sanford A.J., Leuthold H. Eye-movements and ERPs reveal the time-course of processing negation and remitting counterfactual worlds. Brain Research 2008, 1236:113-125.
19. Ferguson H.J., Scheepers C., Sanford A.J. Expectations in counterfactual and theory of mind reasoning. Language and Cognitive Processes 2010, 25(3):297-346.
20. Filik R. Contextual override of pragmatic anomalies: Evidence from eye movements. Cognition 2008, 106(2):1038-1046.
21. Fischler I., Bloom P., Childers D., Roucos S., Perry N. Brain potentials related to stages of sentence verification. Psychophysiology 1983, 20:400-409.
22. Gerrig R.J., O'Brien E.J. The scope of memory-based processing. Discourse Processes 2005, 39(2-3):225-242.
23. Gerrig R.J., Prentice D.A. The representation of fictional information. Psychological Science 1991, 2:336-340.
24. Hagoort P., Hald L., Bastiaansen M., Petersson K.-M. Integration of word meaning and world knowledge in language comprehension. Science 2004, 304:438-441.
25. Johnson-Laird P.N., Byrne R.M.J. Conditionals: A theory of meaning, pragmatics and inference. Psychological Review 2002, 109:646-678.
26. Kahneman D., Miller D.T. Norm theory-Comparing reality to its alternatives. Psychological Review 1986, 93:136-153.
27. Kintsch W. The role of knowledge in discourse comprehension: A construction-integration model. Psychological Review 1988, 95(2):163-182.
28. Kounios J., Holcomb P.J. Structure and process in semantic memory: Evidence from event-related brain potentials and reaction times. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 1992, 121:459-479.
29. Kratzer A. An investigation of the lumps of thought. Linguistics and Philosophy 1989, 12:607-653.
30. Kutas M., Hillyard S.A. Reading senseless sentences: Brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity. Science 1980, 207(4427):203-205.
31. Kutas M., Van Petten C., Kluender R. Psycholinguistics electrified II: 1994-2005. Handbook of psycholinguistics 2006, 659-724. Elsevier, New York. 2nd ed. M. Traxler, M.A. Gernsbacher (Eds.).
32. Lewis D. Counterfactuals 1973, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
33. Montague R. The proper treatment of quantification in ordinary english. Formal philosophy: Selected papers of richard montague 1973, Yale University Press, New Haven. R. Thomason (Ed.).
34. Myers J.L., O'Brien E.J. Accessing the discourse representation during reading. Discourse Processes 1998, 26:131-157.
35. Nieuwland M.S., Ditman T., Kuperberg G.R. On the incrementality of pragmatic processing: An ERP investigation of informativeness and pragmatic abilities. Journal of Memory and Language 2010, 63:324-346.
36. Nieuwland M.S., Kuperberg G.R. When the truth isn't too hard to handle: An event-related potential study on the pragmatics of negation. Psychological Science 2008, 19(12):1213-1218.
37. Nieuwland M.S., Van Berkum J.J.A. When peanuts fall in love: N400 evidence for the power of discourse. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 2006, 18(7):1098-1111.
38. Otten M., Nieuwland M.S., Van Berkum J.J.A. Great expectations: Specific lexical anticipation influences the processing of spoken language. BMC Neuroscience 2007, 8:89.
39. Otten M., Van Berkum J.J.A. What makes a discourse constraining? Comparing the effects of discourse message and scenario fit on the discourse-dependent N400 effect. Brain Research 2007, 1153:166-177.
40. Roese N.J. Counterfactual thinking. Psychological Bulletin 1997, 121:133-148.
41. Sanford A.J., Garrod S.C. Memory-based approaches and beyond. Discourse Processes 2005, 39:205-223.
42. Searle J.R. The logical status of fictional discourse. New Literary History 1975, 6:319-332.
43. Stalnaker R.C. A theory of conditionals. American philosophical quarterly monograph series 1968, 98-112. Blackwell, Oxford. N. Rescher (Ed.).
44. Stewart A.J., Haigh M., Kidd E. An investigation into the online processing of counterfactual and indicative conditionals. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 2009, 62:2113-2125.
45. Tanenhaus M.K., Spivey-Knowlton M.J., Eberhard K.M., Sedivy J.C. Integration of visual and linguistic information in spoken language comprehension. Science 1995, 268(5217):1632-1634.
46. Tarski A. The semantic conception of truth. The philosophy of language 1944, 69-91. Oxford University Press, New York. A.P. Martinich (Ed.).
47. Turner M., Fauconnier G. Conceptual integration in counterfactuals. Conceptual structure, discourse, and language, II 1998, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford. J.-P. Koenig (Ed.).
48. Urbach T.P., Kutas M. Quantifiers more or less quantify online: ERP evidence for partial incremental interpretation. Journal of Memory and Language 2010, 63:158-179.
49. Van Berkum J.J.A. The neuropragmatics of "simple" utterance comprehension: An ERP review. Semantics and pragmatics: From experiment to theory 2009, 276-316. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. U. Sauerland, K. Yatsushiro (Eds.).
50. Van Berkum J.J.A., Holleman B., Nieuwland M.S., Otten M., Murre J. Right or wrong? The brain's fast response to morally objectionable statements. Psychological Science 2009, 20:1092-1099.
51. Van Petten C., Coulson S., Rubin S., Plante E., Parks M. Time course of word identification and semantic integration in spoken language. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 1999, 25:394-417.
52. Warren T., McConnell K., Rayner K. Effects of context on eye movements when reading about plausible and impossible events. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 2008, 34(4):1001-1010.
53. Wilson D., Sperber D. Truthfulness and relevance. Mind 2002, 111:583-632.