Anomalies at the Borderline of Awareness: An ERP Study

摘要

Behaviorally, some semantic anomalies, such as those usednto demonstrate N400 effects in ERPs, are easy to detect. However,nsome, such as “after an air crash, where should the survivorsnbe buried?” are difficult. The difference has to do with thenextent to which the anomalous word fits the general context. Wenasked whether anomalies that are missed elicit an ERP that couldnbe taken as indicating unconscious recognition, and whethernboth types elicit an N400 effect when they are detected. Wenfound that difficult anomalies having a good fit to general contextndid not produce an N400 effect, whereas control “easy-to-detect”nanomalies did. For difficult anomalies, there was no evidence fornunconscious detection occurring. The results support a qualitativendistinction in the way the two types of anomalies are processed,nand the idea that semantic information is simply notnutilized (shallow processing) when difficult anomalies arenmissed. ■