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The Neural Signatures of Processing Counterfactual and Open Possibilities
Poster Session E, Sunday, September 14, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm, Field House
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Maxime Tulling1, Shiyu Li1, Loïc Rainville1; 1Université de Montréal (University of Montreal)
Introduction: A fundamental aspect of human language is our capacity to refer to situations that are open possibilities, like “maybe he grabbed the knife”, or counterfactual, e.g., “if only he had grabbed the knife”. Such non-actual statements are common in everyday language, yet we know little about how they are mentally represented. Factual information (e.g., “Mike grabbed the knife”) updates the mental model of the described situation to associate the object ‘knife’ with the entity ‘Mike’, increasing the accessibility of the concept ‘knife’ in probe-recognition tasks (Glenberg et al., 1987; Morrow et al., 1989; Zwaan & Madden, 2004) and eliciting increased neural responses associated with model updating (Speer et al., 2007; Tulling et al., 2021; Whitney et al., 2009). However, for counterfactual statements, situation model updating seems to be blocked (de Vega et al., 2007; de Vega & Urrutia, 2012), and both counterfactuals and open possibilities have independently been shown to lack electrophysiological responses that reflect model updating (Tulling et al., 2021; Urrutia et al., 2012). Yet, it remains unclear whether counterfactuals and open possibilities are treated similarly by the brain. This ongoing project uses the behavioral and electroencephalography (EEG) correlates of situation model updating as the lens to explore how these two types of non-actuality are represented and maintained in memory. Methods: Forty participants complete a probe-recognition task while reading six murder mysteries in French. Their accuracy, reaction time (RT), and brain responses (ERPs) are recorded. The stories are split into 30 blocks that include 72 key sentences combining three utterance types: FACTUAL, COUNTERFACTUAL, and POSSIBLE, with two object statuses: ASSOCIATED (e.g., ‘took’) or DISLOCATED (e.g., ‘dropped’). There are also 72 filler sentences and 36 distractors. Each target sentence is shown in six short, timed chunks (e.g., translated: It was | a bottle | of wine | And Mr. Green | maybe grabbed it (EEG window 1) | from the counter), surrounded by a full context and continuation sentence. After each block, a probe word appears, e.g., BOUTEILLE ‘bottle’ (EEG window 2), and participants respond as fast as possible if it occurred before. Reaction time will be analyzed with linear mixed-effects model with overall reading time and age as random factors. ERP-responses will be analyzed with a cluster-based permutation test time locked to the presentation of factual or non-actual association/dislocation (window 1), and to the probed word (window 2). Predicted results: In the FACTUAL condition, we expect a model updating effect in Window 1, 100-300ms after object association (Tulling et al., 2021; Urrutia et al., 2012). We also expect that dislocated concepts are less available than associated concepts, reflected in longer RTs in the probe-recognition task and stronger N400 responses in Window 2. For the COUNTERFACTUAL condition, we expect the opposite. For the POSSIBLE CONDITIONS we expect no situation updating and therefore expect no difference between the ASSOCIATED and DISLOCATED conditions in Window 1. Regarding concept accessibility, the question is whether both ASSOCIATED and DISLOCATED scenarios are represented simultaneously (remaining accessible), or whether only the described possibility is represented.
Topic Areas: Meaning: Discourse and Pragmatics, Reading