Streb J, Rösler F, Hennighausen E
Experimental and Biological Psychology, Philipps-University, Marburg, Germany.
Brain Lang. 1999 Nov;70(2):273-86. doi: 10.1006/brln.1999.2177.
The present study investigated event-related potential (ERP) effects of pronoun and proper name anaphors in both parallel and nonparallel discourse structures. Thirty-seven students processed 400 semantically different text passages. Each trial consisted of two sentences and a comprehension question. The first sentence introduced a protagonist who was referred to by an anaphoric word in the second sentence. The anaphoric word was either a pronoun or a repetition of the proper name of the protagonist and had either the same or a different syntactic role as its antecedent (subject or object). The sentences were presented word by word as rapid serial visual display. Event-related potentials were recorded from 61 scalp electrodes. In agreement with the parallel function strategy, nonparallel discourse structures required longer decision times and exhibited higher error rates than parallel structures. The ERPs revealed two effects: First, pronoun anaphors evoked a more pronounced negativity than proper name anaphors between 270 and 420 ms latency over the frontal cortex electrodes. Another relative negativity occurred between 510 and 600 ms over the parietal cortex electrodes. Second, anaphors in nonparallel positions were accompanied by a more pronounced negativity over the parietal cortex. These data support the idea that an anaphor in nonparallel position triggers extra processing steps, probably search processes in working memory which integrate currently encountered information with previously activated representations.
本研究调查了代词和专有名词指代在平行和非平行话语结构中的事件相关电位（ERP）效应。37名学生处理了400篇语义不同的文本段落。每个试验由两个句子和一个理解问题组成。第一句引入一个主人公，第二句用一个指代性词语来指代该主人公。指代性词语要么是一个代词，要么是主人公专有名词的重复，并且其句法角色与其先行词（主语或宾语）相同或不同。句子以快速序列视觉呈现的方式逐词呈现。通过61个头皮电极记录事件相关电位。与平行功能策略一致，非平行话语结构比平行结构需要更长的决策时间，并且错误率更高。ERP显示出两种效应：第一，在额叶皮层电极上，代词指代在270至420毫秒潜伏期内比专有名词指代诱发更明显的负波。在顶叶皮层电极上，在510至600毫秒之间出现另一个相对负波。第二，非平行位置的指代在顶叶皮层上伴随着更明显的负波。这些数据支持这样一种观点，即非平行位置的指代会触发额外的处理步骤，可能是工作记忆中的搜索过程，该过程将当前遇到的信息与先前激活的表征整合起来。
