Schedule of Events | Symposia

Sketchpad Series

Cognitive Control Recruitment by Linguistic Cues during Discourse Comprehension

Poster Session E - Monday, March 31, 2025, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Ma Angela Edith Montiel¹ (anmontie@ucsc.edu), Megan A. Boudewyn¹; ¹University of California, Santa Cruz

From a linguistics perspective, discourse connectives serve as cues about information. Causal connectives like “therefore” signal that upcoming information will be consistent with prior context, whereas concessive connectives like “nevertheless” signal that upcoming information will be contradictory to the previous context. From a cognitive neuroscience perspective, concessive connectives could be considered cues that alert the reader whether the upcoming information will be in conflict with the information received thus far. In other words, connectives may serve as a cognitive control signal to resolve future conflict. In this study, EEG data will be collected from 40 participants. Participants will read three-sentence stories in four conditions: contradictory causal (ICL), contradictory concessive (ICE), non-contradictory causal (CCL) or non-contradictory concessive (CCE). For example, “Elizabeth had a history exam on Monday. She took the test and aced/failed it. SO/YET, she went home and CELEBRATED wildly.” We will analyze ERPs and theta band power time-locked to the connectives and subsequent critical word. If connectives signal a need for domain-general cognitive control, we expect to see an increase in theta at the connective for concessive versus causal conditions. Alternatively, connectives may serve to facilitate processing later in the sentence when the conflict is encountered rather than as a preparatory signal. We expect to see this reflected as an increased positivity at the post-connective critical words specifically in the ICL condition relative to the ICE condition, in the absence of a theta difference at the concessive itself.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Semantic