Electrophysiological Evidence for Sentence Comprehension - Wings

In difference to the ‘case’ experiment, there is no difference in the negative deflection
between the conditions in the ‘tense’ experiment on the left frontal electrodes in the 300 –
500 ms interval. This can be related to the absence of any structural violation in the
stimulus sentences – no argument structure violation and no thematic role violation.
However, since there is a violation on the main verb (it is in the wrong form), the
integration costs of the sentences in the violation condition are higher, therefore, the P600
effect is obtained. A strong negative deflection is recorded on the left frontal electrodes
(F7, F3, FT7, FC3, T3, C3). This negative deflection starts late, at 500 ms, reaches
maximum at 650 ms (at F7) and lasts till the end of the epoch (Figure 21). Figure 22
shows P600 on the Pz electrode.
Figure 21. Average waveform for F7, F3, FT7, FC3 electrodes in the ‘tense’
experiment
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