Comprehending surprising sentences: sensitivity of post-N400 positivities to contextual congruity and semantic relatedness

Abstract

ABSTRACT Any proposal for predictive language comprehension must address receipt of less expected information. While a relationship between the N400 and sentence predictability is well established, a clear picture is still emerging of the link between post-N400 positivities (PNPs) and processing of semantically unexpected words, as well as any relation to other not-specifically-linguistic and/or syntactic late positivities. The current study employs event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to congruent and anomalous words to assess the impacts of semantic relatedness and contextual plausibility on processing unpredictable sentences. We observe PNPs with different scalp topographies to plausible unexpected words unrelated to predictable continuations (anterior PNP) and to anomalous words, regardless of, but delayed by, relatedness (posterior PNP). We offer functional explanations that reconcile inconsistencies with reported PNP findings and place added constraints on the anterior PNP’s proposed link to inhibitory processing. We also suggest a testable general cognitive account for the posterior PNP.