Department of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China.
Neurosci Lett. 2012 Feb 21;510(1):38-42. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2011.12.065. Epub 2012 Jan 9.
The present study investigates whether the complement falsity elicited by strong non-factive verbs and the false belief activated by a standard nonverbal false belief task produce similar electrophysiological activities in the brain. The hypothesis is based on the notion that both complement falsity and false belief involve decoupling a false mental representation from reality. Some previous studies have reported a behavioral correlation between children's false belief reasoning and interpretation of strong non-factive verbs together with their false complements, but a neural basis for this correlation has not been found. Our event-related potential (ERP) results with normal adults showed that both nonverbal false belief and strong non-factive verb comprehension elicited a negative late slow waveform divergence compared to their respective baselines. Although these slow waves due to the two types of stimuli had slightly different scalp distributions, both were regarded as reflecting primarily frontal activation. Such ERP similarity provides evidence for a common neural basis shared by nonverbal false belief reasoning and comprehension of strong non-factive verbs.
本研究旨在探讨强非事实动词所引发的补语虚假和标准非言语虚假信念任务所激活的虚假信念是否会在大脑中产生类似的电生理活动。这一假设基于这样一种观点，即补语虚假和虚假信念都涉及将虚假的心理表征与现实分离。一些先前的研究报告了儿童虚假信念推理与强非事实动词及其虚假补语的解释之间的行为相关性，但尚未发现这种相关性的神经基础。我们对正常成年人的事件相关电位 (ERP) 结果显示，与各自的基线相比，非言语虚假信念和强非事实动词理解都会引起负晚慢波发散。尽管这两种类型的刺激产生的慢波在头皮分布上略有不同，但都被认为主要反映了额叶的激活。这种 ERP 相似性为非言语虚假信念推理和强非事实动词理解所共有的共同神经基础提供了证据。
