Inhibition, prediction and their interaction with cognitive control and working memory in sentence comprehension

背景：句子处理的核心是不断产生语义和句法预期，并与当前遇到的证据进行对照。研究的两个领域有助于理解这些过程。(1)对预测加工的研究已经描绘出许多行为和脑电现象，表明预期和证据之间存在不匹配。例如，关于句子处理的脑电(EEG)研究表明，低概率的句子延续会导致处理困难，这在N400成分中变得明显。同样公认的是，视觉世界范式中的眼球运动可以反映出对预测的延续的敏感度。然而，不匹配的输入是如何处理的，以及根据新的证据如何修改预期的细节仍不清楚。其中，大多数关于基于期望的处理的文献忽略了这样一个事实，即失败的预测可能需要抑制高度期望的替代。到目前为止，对语义和句法表征的期望和抑制之间的交互作用还没有被很好地理解。(2)前人的研究表明，工作记忆容量越有限、认知控制效果越差的人对语境信息的敏感度越低。这些人可能患有表征激活和抑制之间的失衡，或者他们在抑制调节方面存在缺陷。目标：我们的项目是第一个同时解决这两个问题的：我们提出了两个视觉世界眼球跟踪和两个EEG实验来研究抑制-预测交互作用。四项实验中的每一项都将包括测试参与者的工作记忆能力和认知控制能力。计划中的研究有可能揭示导致低工作记忆容量和/或认知控制能力低下的人语言理解困难的功能机制。此外，本项目将研究的机制具有实际意义：例如，了解这些机制是为表现出理解缺陷的人设计重点培训计划的先决条件。

Background: Central to sentence processing is the continuous generation of semantic and syntactic expectations that are checked against currently encountered evidence. Two areas of research contribute to an understanding of these processes. (1) Research on predictive processing has delineated many behavioral and electroencephalographic phenomena that indicate a mismatch between expectations and evidence. E.g., electroencephelographic (EEG) studies on sentence processing have shown that low-probability sentence continuations cause processing difficulty that becomes manifest in the N400 component. It is also well-established that eye movements in the visual world paradigm can reflect sensitivity to predicted continuations. However, the details how mismatching input is processed and how expectations are modified in the light of new evidence are still unclear. Among others, most of the literature on expectation-based processing ignores the fact that failed prediction may require inhibiting a highly expected alternative. To date, the interaction between expectation and inhibition of semantic and syntactic representations is not well-understood. (2) Previous work has shown that people with more limited working memory capacity and less effective cognitive control are less sensitive to contextual information. These persons may suffer from an imbalance between activation and inhibition of representations or they may have a deficit in the regulation of inhibition.Goals: Our project is the first to address these two issues simultaneously: We propose two visual world eye-tracking and two EEG experiments that investigate the inhibition-prediction interaction. Each of the four experiments will include tests that measure participants' working memory capacity and cognitive control. The planned studies have the potential to uncover the functional mechanisms which cause language comprehension difficulties in people with low working memory capacity and/or low cognitive control.In addition, the mechanisms to be investigated in this project have practical relevance: for example, understanding these mechanisms is a prerequisite for designing focused training programs for persons showing comprehension deficits.