Tracking Colisteners’ Knowledge States During Language Comprehension
Name
Jouravlev et al 2018 Psych Science.pdf
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2.79 MB
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Author(s)
Jouravlev, Olessia
Schwartz, Rachael
Ayyash, Dima
Mineroff, Zachary A
Gibson, Edward A
Fedorenko, Evelina G
Date Issued
November 2018
Journal
Psychological Science
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Citation
Jouraviev, Olessia et al. "Tracking Colisteners’ Knowledge States During Language Comprehension ."
Psychological Science 30, 1 (2019): 3-19 © 2018 The Authors
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
When we receive information in the presence of other people, are we sensitive to what they do or do not understand? In two event-related-potential experiments, participants read implausible sentences (e.g., “The girl had a little beak”) in contexts that rendered them plausible (e.g., “The girl dressed up as a canary for Halloween”). No semantic-processing difficulty (no N400 effect) ensued when they read the sentences while alone in the room. However, when a confederate was present who did not receive the contexts so that the critical sentences were implausible for him or her, participants exhibited processing difficulty: the social-N400 effect. This effect was obtained when participants were instructed to adopt the confederate’s perspective—and critically, even without such instructions—but not when performing a demanding comprehension task. Thus, unless mental resources are limited, comprehenders engage in modeling the minds not only of those individuals with whom they directly interact but also of those individuals who are merely present during the linguistic exchange. Keywords: communication; perspective taking; joint actions; social cognition; ERPs; N400; social N400; open data; open materials
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618807674
