Day 60 of 150 Language Difficulty 5/10
The N400 marks semantic surprise around 400 ms after a word
Quick answer
The N400 marks semantic surprise around 400 ms after a word. Today's question (N400 ERP component) asks about a finding from Kutas, M., & Hillyard, S. A. in 1980. The correct option is A negative deflection peaking around 400 ms (N400) — full explanation, primary source, and glossary cross-links below.
Today's question
Kutas & Hillyard (1980) discovered that the EEG/ERP component that grows larger when a sentence ends with a semantically anomalous word ("He spread his warm bread with socks") is:
Reveal the answer and explanation
Correct: B — A negative deflection peaking around 400 ms (N400)
The N400 is a negative-going waveform centred over centro-parietal scalp, peaking around 400 ms after a semantically unexpected word. Amplitude scales with cloze probability: easier-to-predict words elicit smaller N400s; out-of-context endings elicit large ones. The component has become the canonical electrophysiological marker of semantic prediction and integration in language comprehension and is routinely used to study aphasia, second-language processing, and discourse-level expectations. The P600 (a separate, later positivity) indexes syntactic reanalysis instead.
About the source
Kutas, M., & Hillyard, S. A. (1980). Reading senseless sentences: Brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity. Science, 207(4427), 203–205.
Every Cognition Bible question cites a primary source — a paper, book chapter, or monograph that exists, that we can point to on Google Scholar, and whose finding the question accurately summarizes. No fabricated authority strings, no name-drops without paper-level grounding.
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