The exceptional nature of the first person in natural story processing and the transfer of egocentricity
Human language enables us to externalise self-internal information (e.g. emotions or beliefs that are not readily accessible to others). Thus, language bridges the gap between the self and the other (e.g. Frith and Frith, 2010) in a way that possibly no other communication system can provide. In many languages, the difference between the self and others is directly reflected in the distinction between first (“I”), second (“you”) and third person (“he, she”) marking. In the present study, we compared ERPs to first, second and third person pronouns during the comprehension of an audio-book version of The Little Prince. Our results revealed a strong P300 response following first person pronoun…
Domain-general neural correlates of dependency formation: Using complex tones to simulate language
There is an ongoing debate whether the P600 event-related potential component following syntactic anomalies reflects syntactic processes per se, or if it is an instance of the P300, a domain-general ERP component associated with attention and cognitive reorientation. A direct comparison of both components is challenging because of the huge discrepancy in experimental designs and stimulus choice between language and ‘classic’ P300 experiments. In the present study, we develop a new approach to mimic the interplay of sequential position as well as categorical and relational information in natural language syntax (word category and agreement) in a non-linguistic target detection paradigm using…