Reading Comprehension and predictability effects on sentence processing: an event-related potential study

TABULLO, ÁNGEL; SHALOM, DIEGO; SEVILLA, YAMILA; GATTEI, CAROLINA; PARÍS, LUIS; WAINSELBOIM, ALEJANDRO

Mind, brain and education

Wiley-Blackwell

Año: 2019

Electrophysiology studies have identifiedtwo event-related potentials that are modulated by predictiveprocesses during language comprehension: the N400and a frontal positivity. The N400 is smaller when wordsare presented within highly restrictive sentences, indicatingreduced lexical retrieval costs. Violations of strongpredictions generate larger frontal positivities, possiblyreflecting inhibitory processes. More skilled comprehendersmay exhibit enhanced predictive processing, but thispossibility has seldom been investigated with event-relatedpotentials (ERPs). We analyzed the association betweenpredictability ERP modulations and reading comprehensionabilities. Twenty-four undergraduate students wereexposed to strongly and weakly constraining sentences,ending with an expected or unexpected final word. Theircomprehension skills were assessed with a cloze task. Bettercomprehenders showed smaller N400s for expected words,and larger posterior positivities for unexpected endings,in strongly constraining contexts. These effects correlatedwith reading comprehension scores. The results suggest thatbetter comprehenders take more advantage of predictionsto reduce retrieval costs, and allocate more resources topostlexical integration processes.