Zhiqiang Yang, Hongshuang Nie, Kevin B Paterson, Sixiao Li, Lijing Chen
Results from the dyadic decision-making experiment showed that dyads demonstrated enhanced sensitivity to detect changes and were more likely to respond "change present" than better individuals, suggesting the dyadic decisions were not simply based on the judgment of the more sensitive member. Results from the follow-up experiment supported the effect of dyadic decision-making by indicating no difference in sensitivity and decision criterion between first and second judgments.
This study investigated the electrophysiological correlates of presuppositional inferences in contrastive focus during online reading. In a series of mini-discourses involving two characters, contrastive focus was marked by either the Chinese focus particle zhiyou (equivalent to only) or shi (equivalent to an it-cleft), which carry different presuppositions. Before the focus sentence, a critical context sentence was presented that was congruent with the zhiyou-presupposition (i.e., the two characters previously did the action together) or with the shi-presupposition (i.e., the other character previously did it alone). Participants read and listened to the discourses alongside a partner, as social context may potentially facilitate pragmatic inference. Results showed that the particle zhiyou elicited a larger LPC waveform following incongruent than congruent contexts, while the discourse-final word with shi-focus elicited a larger P300 following incongruent than congruent contexts. These findings suggest that presupposition violations of only-focus relate to early disconfirmation of pragmatic expectations, while presupposition violations of cleft-focus involve late-stage pragmatic integration during discourse update. These results highlight the role of focus particles in modulating presuppositional inference and offer insights into their distinct electrophysiological signatures.