Abstract
In experiments investigating the processing of true and false negative sentences, it is often reported that polarity interacts with truth-value, in the sense that true sentences lead to faster reaction times than false sentences in affirmative conditions whereas the same does not hold for negative sentences. Various reasons for this difference between affirmative and negative sentences have been discussed in the literature (e.g., lexical associations, predictability, ease of comparing sentence and world). In the present study, we excluded lexical associations as a potential influencing factor. Participants saw artificial visual worlds (e.g., a white square and a black circle) and corresponding sentences (i.e., “The square/circle is (not) white”). The results showed a clear effect of truth-value for affirmative sentences (true faster than false) but not for negative sentences. This result implies that the well-known truth-value-by-polarity interaction cannot solely be due to long-term lexical associations. Additional predictability manipulations allowed us to also rule out an explanatory account that attributes the missing truth-value effect for negative sentences to low predictability. We also discuss the viability of an informativeness account.
Highlights
When processing sentences, people often encounter difficulties
Considering that the N400 is an eventrelated potential (ERP) component that is usually interpreted as reflecting processes integral to sentence comprehension—for example lexical semantic or compositional semantic processes in direct interaction with discourse or world-knowledge (e.g., Dudschig et al, 2016a, b a/b; Nieuwland & Van Berkum, 2006; Hagoort et al, 2004)—instead of later reasoning processes, these results indicate that the truth-value-by-polarity interaction is probably not solely related to late verification processes
To gain more information with respect to these two factors, we examined the processing of true or false affirmative and negative sentences in contexts controlled for lexical associations with varying predictability
Summary
False sentences that convey information that is not true (e.g., “Zebras are dotted”) are especially difficult to process. We see processing difficulties for sentences that contain a negation (e.g., Dudschig et al, 2018, 2019; Fischler et al, 1983; Kaup & Dudschig, 2020; Kaup et al, 2006). The two factors typically interact when it comes to processing difficulties. The pattern that emerges shows an advantage of true over false affirmatives, but curiously the same is not true for negative sentences. True sentences (e.g., “Zebras are not dotted”)
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