But as evidenced previously,
for non-canonical word order, context information plays a licensing role (e.g., Bornkessel and Schlesewsky, 2006b and Weskott et al., 2011). Hence, for Experiment 1, we predicted that stories containing SO target sentences should be judged as easily comprehensible, independent of context type; whereas for stories containing OS target sentences, the preceding topic context was expected to improve comprehensibility judgments. Based on recent ERP studies, discourse organizational processes have arguably been reflected in modulations of ERPs around 400 and 600 ms during online sentence processing (see above). CH5424802 order Similar to offline comprehensibility judgments, we do not expect any modulations
by the preceding context type during online processing of SO sentences in Experiment 2. However, if the topic context creates a felicitous discourse environment for OS sentences as measured by offline comprehensibility judgments, we expect that in these sentences differential processing costs induced by the two discourse contexts should be visible during online processing. Therefore, due to direct contextual integration of the Ibrutinib concentration topic into the discourse model, processing costs for updating the current mental model should require less effort compared to the neutral context. This might be reflected in modulations of the late positivity as this ERP component has been proposed to reflect processing costs for updating and correcting the current discourse model (e.g., Bornkessel and Schlesewsky, 2006a, Burkhardt, 2007, Hung and Schumacher, 2012, Schumacher and Hung, 2012 and Wang and Schumacher, Fossariinae 2013). Note that we do not expect a modulation of the N400 due to the fact that all constituents are discourse-given, and hence, the linking of unexpected discourse referents is not required. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with short fictitious
stories. We conducted an offline comprehensibility judgment task to detect if the participants‘ judgment concerning the overall comprehensibility of stories containing either an SO or OS target sentence was affected by the preceding discourse context, a topic vs. neutral context. The individual behavioral judgment of the comprehensibility of each story was recorded. Twenty-eight German native speakers (19 female, M age 24 years, age range 20–34 years) participated in Experiment 1. Twenty-six participants were right-handed and two ambidextrous as assessed by a German version of the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory ( Oldfield, 1971). None reported any neurological disorder. All had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Participants were reimbursed or received course credits for participation. The experiment used a 2 × 2 within-subject design with the factors CONTEXT TYPE (TOPIC vs. NEUTRAL) and WORD ORDER (SO vs. OS).