Electrophysiological Evidence for Sentence Comprehension - Wings

4.2. Experimental Design
4.2.1. ERP experiments
In order to confirm or reject the given hypotheses the total of six experiments were
conducted. In these experiments a difference in the electrophysiological response
between conditions is sought for. In addition, the results between the three groups of
participants were compared. This made the overall design of the study somehow
complicated. Figure 8 shows an overview of the design with ‘X’ designating the
experiment, in which a particular group of participants took part, and with lines showing
which experiments (i.e. their results) will be compared and which groups of participants
will be compared. In each experiment there are two conditions: the violation and the non-
violation condition.
Figure 8. The overview of the experiments and their participants
The experiments listed on Figure 8 are named after the target word, i.e. after the violation
condition. In the ‘case’ experiment there is a violation in case, in the ‘tense’ experiment
there is a violation in tense, etc. The experiments performed on children are named ‘case-
chi’ and ‘tense-chi’.
As shown on Figure 8, the six experiments fall into two categories regarding the
experimental design: the first four experiments utilize the within-group design in which
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