Negation is often used to correct statements (e.g. There is no dog here). Therefore, alternatives to the negated state of affairs (e.g. There is a wolf instead) are likely relevant to the comprehension of negative statements. Evidence suggests that particularly plausible alternatives (e.g. no dog → wolf) have a preferential activation status after negative statements, compared to after affirmation (Capuano et al., 2023). However, it is so far unclear whether this status is driven by the inhibition of implausible alternatives or rather by the enhanced activation of plausible alternatives. In order to answer this question, we designed a priming study to investigate the time course of the activation of words in different relations to a negated entity. In this study, we auditorily presented prime sentences with a negated entity (e.g. “There is no apple”), followed by a written lexical decision task at different Inter-Stimulus Intervals (0 ms or 750 ms) with words in different relations to the negated entity (e.g. negated entity: “apple”, or good alternative: “pear”, or worse alternative: “seed”, or unrelated: “bottle”). A pilot study showed a (non-significant) pattern of activations consistent with the selective inhibition of worse alternatives. The pilot was used to perform a power analysis for the main study. The data is currently being collected and should be finalized before the conference.


References

Capuano, F., Sorg, T., & Kaup, B. (2023). Activation levels of plausible alternatives in conversational negation. Memory & Cognition, 1-12.