CogSci 2025

August 02, 2025

San Francisco, United States

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keywords:

predictive processing

electroencephalography (eeg)

language comprehension

neuroscience

psychology

linguistics

Language comprehension often deviates from the literal meaning of the input, particularly when errors resembles more plausible alternatives. Such non-literal interpretations have been associated with a reduced N400 and increased P600, but it remains debated whether these effects reflect perceptual misrepresentation of the input or error correction. One way to tease apart these accounts is to examine how comprehenders adapt to a noisy linguistic environment. A perceptual error account predicts that increased exposure to noise leads to habituation to errors and more misperception, resulting in reduced N400 and P600 responses. In contrast, an error correction account predicts that comprehenders perform more error correction in noisy environments, leading to increased P600s, and potentially modulated N400s depending on the timing of the correction. In this study, we manipulated the proportion of errors in non-critical exposure sentences and measured ERP responses to different types of anomalies. The results replicated prior findings of reduced N400s for recoverable errors. Results in the P600 window were not replicated and it remains an open question which framework (error correction vs. perceptual error) best accounts for the data. Further, the results revealed substantial individual differences in processing words which may contain errors with implications for how participants adapted to additional noise in the environment.

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