Dissimilarity between discourse characters influences the processing of contrastive focus: An ERP study

The present study used event-related potentials to investigate effects of the similarity or dissimilarity of discourse referents on the processing of contrastive focus during Chinese reading. Participants first read a background story. They then were presented with a series of two-clause sentences using a RSVP paradigm. The first clause of each sentence included the names of two characters from the background story, who were either similar or dissimilar in terms of social category (which was specified in terms of age and gender). The second clause referred to one of these characters by name, using the Chinese focus particle “shi” to focus on this name or not. The results show that focused names elicit a larger P300 than non-focused names. Furthermore, discourse-final words elicited a larger P300 when the focused character was dissimilar rather than similar to the other character, with no effect in the non-focus condition. These findings replicate prior findings showing that the P300 is sensitive to the processing of contrastive focus during reading. The findings also show that the processing of contrastive focus is sensitive to similarity/dissimilarity between discourse referents, and that how this information is used may depend on the pragmatic implicatures associated with contrastive focus.