Abstract
This event-related potentials (ERPs) study investigated online processes of integration of information relating to characters in narrative comprehension. The final sample included twenty-nine participants who read short third-person stories in which the plausibility of the characters’ actions was manipulated. Stories were administered in three conditions: a character-based congruent condition including a target word that was consistent with the character’s job; a character-based incongruent condition with a target word inconsistent with the character’s job; a character-based neutral condition, narrating the action of a character presented by his/her proper name without information about his/her job. Results comparing the ERPs elicited by the experimental conditions revealed a greater negative amplitude of the N400 in the right temporal regions in response to the character-based incongruent compared to the character-based congruent narratives. This finding shows that implicit background character-based information affects the N400, with readers rapidly using this information to comprehend narratives.
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AC designed the research, carried out the experiment, contributed to the interpretation of the results and wrote the paper. IA designed the research, carried out the experiment, contributed to the interpretation of the results and contributed to the writing of the Introduction and Discussion. DA processed the data, analyzed the results, contributed to the interpretation of the results and wrote Sects. 3.4, 3.5, and 4. AA carried out the experiment and contributed to the interpretation of the results. EC contributed to plan the study. VD carried out the experiment and contributed to the interpretation of the results. CM contributed to plan the study. SN designed the research and contributed to the interpretation of the results. VP carried out the experiment and contributed to the interpretation of the results. FF designed the research, supervised the recruitment of the participants, contributed to the interpretation of the results and contributed to the writing of the Introduction and Discussion.
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Chiera, A., Adornetti, I., Altavilla, D. et al. Does the character-based dimension of stories impact narrative processing? An event-related potentials (ERPs) study. Cogn Process 23, 255–267 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-021-01070-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-021-01070-1