12 Build Learning through Inquiry in the Social Sciences Investigating Real-Time Processing of Natural Negation in Five-Year-Olds

Authors:

Aaron Arlanza, Briony Waite, Jesse Snedeker

Date Created:

2025-01-01

Course Title:

Professor:

Not specified

About Paper:

Negationisverycommonineverydaylanguageandgiveslanguage examinechildren’sneuralresponsestostatementswithandwithout users more ways to describe objects, events, and more by reversing natural negation. While we have not yet collected data from the truth meaning of sentences. Prior studies have found a children, we might find that patternsin children are similar to those processingcosttonegation; however,inadults,thiscostdisappears in adults. This would suggest that children, like adults, can quickly when negation is natural. Developmental work shows that update their unfolding sentence understanding to include negation. children produce negation words early, but it is unclear what Alternatively, we might find that negation incurs a processing cost they understand about how negation constricts the scope of a in young comprehenders even when it is natural. Our findings sentence. In our study, we investigate whether five-year-olds may lead to a greater understanding of how children understand quickly update their representation of an unfolding sentence to language in real time and the impact of stimuli naturalness in reflect the constraints of negation. We use the N400, an ERP developmental studies. component that indexes how easy or hard it is to access a word, to

Abstract:

Negationisverycommonineverydaylanguageandgiveslanguage examinechildren’sneuralresponsestostatementswithandwithout users more ways to describe objects, events, and more by reversing natural negation. While we have not yet collected data from the truth meaning of sentences. Prior studies have found a children, we might find that patternsin children are similar to those processingcosttonegation; however,inadults,thiscostdisappears in adults. This would suggest that children, like adults, can quickly when negation is natural. Developmental work shows that update their unfolding sentence understanding to include negation. children produce negation words early, but it is unclear what Alternatively, we might find that negation incurs a processing cost they understand about how negation constricts the scope of a in young comprehenders even when it is natural. Our findings sentence. In our study, we investigate whether five-year-olds may lead to a greater understanding of how children understand quickly update their representation of an unfolding sentence to language in real time and the impact of stimuli naturalness in reflect the constraints of negation. We use the N400, an ERP developmental studies. component that indexes how easy or hard it is to access a word, to

Source:

Harvard / Jerome Jarjoura, Tyler McNeill, Fabrisia Ambrosio / 2025

Topics:

negation, children, natural, sentence, real, processing, five, might, find, adult, quickly, developmental

Co-authors:

@aaronarlanza125 , @brionywaite126 , @jessesnedeker127