The Automatic but Flexible and Content-Dependent Nature of Syntax.

Laura Jiménez-Ortega,David Hernández-Gutiérrez,Esperanza Badaya,Francisco Muñoz,Pilar Casado,Sabela Fondevila,Manuel Martín-Loeches,José Sánchez-García

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2021.651158

Abstract

Syntactic processing has often been considered an utmost example of unconscious automatic processing. In this line, it has been demonstrated that masked words containing syntactic anomalies are processed by our brain triggering event related potential (ERP) components similar to the ones triggered by conscious syntactic anomalies, thus supporting the automatic nature of the syntactic processing. Conversely, recent evidence also points out that regardless of the level of awareness, emotional information and other relevant extralinguistic information modulate conscious syntactic processing too. These results are also in line with suggestions that, under certain circumstances, syntactic processing could also be flexible and context-dependent. However, the study of the concomitant automatic but flexible conception of syntactic parsing is very scarce. Hence, to this aim, we examined whether and how masked emotional words (positive, negative, and neutral masked adjectives) containing morphosyntactic anomalies (half of the cases) affect linguistic comprehension of an ongoing unmasked sentence that also can contain a number agreement anomaly between the noun and the verb. ERP components were observed to emotional information (EPN), masked anomalies (LAN and a weak P600), and unmasked ones (LAN/N400 and P600). Furthermore, interactions in the processing of conscious and unconscious morphosyntactic anomalies and between unconscious emotional information and conscious anomalies were detected. The findings support, on the one hand, the automatic nature of syntax, given that syntactic components LAN and P600 were observed to unconscious anomalies. On the other hand, the flexible, permeable, and context-dependent nature of the syntactic processing is also supported, since unconscious information modulated conscious syntactic components. This double nature of syntactic processing is in line with theories of automaticity, suggesting that even unconscious/automatic, syntactic processing is flexible, adaptable, and context-dependent.

Highlights

Syntactic processing has been considered a paramount example of unconscious automatic processing (Fodor, 1983; Hauser et al, 2002), an idea supported by empirical evidence (Hasting and Kotz, 2008; Batterink and Neville, 2013; Jiménez-Ortega et al, 2014; Lucchese et al, 2017)
Three hundred sixty sentences were created as experimental stimuli following the Spanish canonical order of determiner – noun – verb
The present study aimed to explore the possible double nature of syntactic parsing: automatic, but flexible and adaptable to context

Summary

Introduction

Syntactic processing has been considered a paramount example of unconscious automatic processing (Fodor, 1983; Hauser et al, 2002), an idea supported by empirical evidence (Hasting and Kotz, 2008; Batterink and Neville, 2013; Jiménez-Ortega et al, 2014; Lucchese et al, 2017). Following that unconsciously processed stimuli impact cognitive processes at several levels, such as language comprehension and decision-making (for reviews see:Dehaene et al, 2006; Van den Bussche et al, 2009; Kiefer et al, 2011; Smith et al, 2015; Perlovsky and Schoeller, 2019), evidence has shown that unconscious emotional information can as well affect processes such as decision-making, semantics, and syntax, and trigger long-lasting cerebral processes (Naccache et al, 2005; Gibbons, 2009; Yang et al, 2017). This supports an extensive and rich interweaving between emotion and cognition, even at the unconscious level

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