Rueschemeyer, Shirley-Ann orcid.org/0000-0001-6432-0917, Gardner, Tom and Stoner, Cat (2015) The Social N400 effect:how the presence of other listeners affects language comprehension. Psychonomic bulletin & review. pp. 128-134. ISSN 1069-9384
Abstract
During conversation, it is necessary to keep track of what others can and cannot understand. Previous research has focused largely on understanding the time course along which knowledge about interlocutors influences language comprehension/production rather than the cognitive process by which interlocutors take each other's perspective. In addition, most work has looked at the effects of knowledge about a speaker on a listener's comprehension, and not on the possible effects of other listeners on a participant's comprehension process. In the current study, we introduce a novel joint comprehension paradigm that addresses the cognitive processes underlying perspective taking during language comprehension. Specifically, we show that participants who understand a language stimulus, but are simultaneously aware that someone sitting next to them does not understand the same stimulus, show an electrophysiological marker of semantic integration difficulty (i.e., an N400-effect). Crucially, in a second group of participants, we demonstrate that presenting exactly the same sentences to the participant alone (i.e. without a co-listener) results in no N400-effect. Our results suggest that (1) information about co-listeners as well as the speaker affect language comprehension, and (2) the cognitive process by which we understand what others comprehend mirrors our own language comprehension processes.
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Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2014. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Sciences (York) > Psychology (York) |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 24 May 2016 13:26 |
Last Modified: | 25 Dec 2024 00:12 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0654-x |
Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.3758/s13423-014-0654-x |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:99967 |
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