Psychological science
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Psychological science · Dec 2008
When the truth is not too hard to handle: an event-related potential study on the pragmatics of negation.
Our brains rapidly map incoming language onto what we hold to be true. Yet there are claims that such integration and verification processes are delayed in sentences containing negation words like not. ⋯ As in affirmative sentences, false words elicited a larger N400 ERP than did true words in pragmatically licensed negated sentences (e.g., "In moderation, drinking red wine isn't bad/good..."), whereas true and false words elicited similar responses in unlicensed negated sentences (e.g., "A baby bunny's fur isn't very hard/soft..."). These results suggest that negation poses no principled obstacle for readers to immediately relate incoming words to what they hold to be true.