{"pk":49353,"title":"What You Ask Affects What You Get: Task-Dependent ERPs in the Processing of Syntactically Ambiguous Sentences","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Two experiments investigated how task demands influence sentence processing mechanisms, as reflected in neural responses at the disambiguating word. Participants read garden-path sentences with late-closure ambiguity (e.g., While the man hunted the deer ran into the woods) and answered comprehension questions while their brainwaves were recorded. Experiment 1 used standard questions (e.g., Did the man hunt the deer?), while Experiment 2 used \"explicit\" questions (e.g., Did the sentence explicitly say that the man hunted the deer?) to reduce inference-based responses. Results showed a typical P600 effect for ambiguous sentences in Experiment 1, indicating syntactic reanalysis. In Experiment 2, responses showed an N400 followed by Sustained Frontal Negativity, suggesting a shift toward plausibility evaluation and increased processing load. The explicit questions appear to alter underlying sentence processing mechanisms, prompting more effortful resolution of interpretive conflict beyond initial syntactic reanalysis.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Linguistics; Language Comprehension; Language understanding; Semantics of language; Syntax"}],"section":"Papers with Poster Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/54p3407w","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Zhiying","middle_name":"","last_name":"Qian","name_suffix":"","institution":"Florida State University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49353/galley/37314/download/"}]}