Day 119 of 150 Language Difficulty 6/10
Comprehenders pre-activate features of likely upcoming words
Quick answer
Comprehenders pre-activate features of likely upcoming words. Today's question (Anticipation in sentence processing) asks about a finding from Federmeier, K. D., & Kutas, M. in 1999. The correct option is Belong to the same semantic category as the expected word — full explanation, primary source, and glossary cross-links below.
Today's question
Federmeier and Kutas (1999) found that the N400 ERP to a sentence-final word is reduced even for unexpected words when those words:
Reveal the answer and explanation
Correct: B — Belong to the same semantic category as the expected word
Federmeier and Kutas (1999) compared sentence completions like 'They wanted to make the hotel look more like a tropical resort. So along the driveway they planted rows of ___' expecting 'palms' against same-category alternatives ('pines') and unrelated words ('tulips'). Both unexpected words elicited a larger N400 than the expected one, but unexpected within-category words elicited a smaller N400 than unexpected out-of-category words. The graded pattern argued that comprehenders pre-activate features of likely upcoming words, not just the exact lexical item, supporting predictive accounts of sentence processing.
About the source
Federmeier, K. D., & Kutas, M. (1999). A rose by any other name: Long-term memory structure and sentence processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 41(4), 469–495.
Every Cognition Bible question cites a primary source — a paper, book chapter, or monograph that exists, that we can point to on Google Scholar, and whose finding the question accurately summarizes. No fabricated authority strings, no name-drops without paper-level grounding.
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