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Abstract

Spoken language rapidly conveys information over time. Current theories hold that listeners make continuous predictions about the importance and timing of information as it arrives, but the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms remain unclear. The goal of this ongoing project is to examine whether linguistic cues guide anticipatory attention toward upcoming linguistic information. Participants heard an Early Focus question ('Which man was wearing the hat?') or a Late Focus question ('What hat was the man wearing?'), focusing either an Early Target or a Late Target word in the following sentence ('The man on the CORNER was wearing the DARK hat'; target words in all caps). Previous findings (Beier & Ferreira, 2022) revealed faster reaction times to the Early Target word when focused with the Early Focus question than when defocused with the Late Focus question, and vice versa for the Late Target word. This study extends these findings by additionally recording EEG and observing changes in neural dynamics associated with attentional allocation, including anticipatory alpha suppression. We predict that alpha amplitude prior to the Early and Late target words will vary as a function of whether they were focused through the preceding questions. Furthermore, we will test whether alpha prior to each target word correlates with the amplitude of the N400 elicited by the target words, as well as with memory for the target words in a subsequent memory test. Overall, this study integrates interdisciplinary lines of research by investigating the role of anticipatory attention mechanisms in language comprehension.