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ERP subsequent memory effect for spoken narratives: Effects of contrast focus accent on memory for alternatives
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Poster C11 in Poster Session C, Wednesday, October 25, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
Katharina Spalek1, Regine Bader2, Sandra Glaser2, Gerrit Höltje2, Axel Mecklinger2; 1Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, 2Universität des Saarlands
Linguistic focus indicates that alternatives are relevant for interpretation (Krifka, 2008). The utterance “I think we’ll have [CHAMPAGNE]” with the bird.” – with capital letters indicating contrastive focus accent – informs us about the drink chosen but also implies that there might have been other drinks on offer, like sherry, white wine, port wine … (The example (and the drinks menu) is taken from the sketch “Dinner for One” which is traditionally shown on German TV on New Year’s Eve.) Listeners remember alternatives better when focus is produced with a contrastive accent, improving both recognition (Fraundorf et al., 2010) and recall (Koch & Spalek, 2021, Tjuka et al., 2020). We investigated the underlying mechanisms with the subsequent memory effect (SME) paradigm. Usually, SMEs are observed in the study phase of memory tasks where participants learn lists of words. In event-related potential (ERP) studies, words that are later remembered are associated with more positive going ERP activity (300-800 ms post stimulus onset) during encoding than words that are later forgotten. Here, we investigated whether the SME elicited by contrastive focus predicts later recall of alternatives. Methods: 49 native young German adults participated. The data of participants who contributed five or more observations per design cell were analysed (n = 31). Eighty spoken narratives were presented. First, three items were mentioned. One of these was later repeated with contrastive or neutral focus accent. ERPs were computed time-locked to the onset of the focused word (ex. (1), trigger = +; n.b. original stimuli were presented in German): (1) Felix examined peas, beans and onions in his garden. He tended his garden regularly. He watered the +peas/+PEAS. After ten narratives, recall questions were given (ex. (2)): (2) Which pieces of vegetable grew in the garden? In critical trials (n = 64), participants had to recall the three items. We tested for a SME on a focused word when one vs. two of its alternatives were remembered and for an interaction with the focus condition. Cases where 0 alternatives were remembered, were not included, because they occurred only infrequently. Results: An ANOVA with RECALL (1, 2 alternatives), FOCUS (contrastive vs. neutral), HEMISPHERE (left vs. right), and REGION (anterior vs. posterior) yielded a significant interaction of HEMISPHERE, FOCUS and RECALL. Follow-up analyses revealed an interaction of FOCUS and RECALL in the left hemisphere, in the form of an SME for contrastive, but not neutral focus. Discussion: Brain activity during a focused word predicts memory performance for focus alternatives when the focus is produced with a contrastive accent: The ERP measured at the focused element is indicative of the number of remembered alternatives. We believe that contrastive accent makes alternatives more salient, retrospectively increasing their representation strength - presumably by strengthening memory consolidation at a post-encoding stage (Anderson et al., 2006). References: Anderson et al. (2006). PNAS, 103(5). Fraundorf et al. (2010). JML, 63(3). Koch & Spalek (2021). Memory & Cognition, 49(7). Krifka (2008). Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 55(3-4). Tjuka et al. (2020). Laboratory Phonology, 11(1).
Topic Areas: Meaning: Discourse and Pragmatics, Prosody