Less Is Not More: Neural Responses to Missing and
Superfluous Accents in Context

Diana V. Dimitrova1,2,3, Laurie A. Stowe1, Gisela Redeker1,
and John C. J. Hoeks1

Abstrakt

■ Prosody, particularly accent, aids comprehension by drawing
attention to important elements such as the information that
answers a question. A study using ERP registration investigated
how the brain deals with the interpretation of prosodic promi-
nence. Sentences were embedded in short dialogues and con-
tained accented elements that were congruous or incongruous
with respect to a preceding question. In contrast to previous
Studien, no explicit prosodic judgment task was added. Robust
effects of accentuation were evident in the form of an “accent
positivity” (200–500 msec) for accented elements irrespective
of their congruity. Our results show that incongruously accented
Elemente, das ist, superfluous accents, activate a specific set
of neural systems that is inactive in case of incongruously un-

accented elements, das ist, missing accents. Superfluous ac-
cents triggered an early positivity around 100 msec poststimulus,
followed by a right-lateralized negative effect (N400). This re-
sponse suggests that redundant information is identified imme-
diately and leads to the activation of a neural system that is
associated with semantic processing (N400). No such effects were
found when contextually expected accents were missing. In einem
later time window, both missing and superfluous accents trig-
gered a late positivity on midline electrodes, presumably related
to making sense of both kinds of mismatching stimuli. Diese
results challenge previous findings of greater processing for miss-
ing accents and suggest that the natural processing of prosody
involves a set of distinct, temporally organized neural systems. ■

EINFÜHRUNG
In spoken communication, speakers use prosody—the
melody and rhythm of speech—in ways that help the
listener understand the message. The function of prosody
is very prominent in West Germanic languages such as
Dutch, Deutsch, and English (Vallduvi, 2002; Ladd, 1996)
where speakers assign pitch accents to the most impor-
tant information in the utterance (the focus element) Und
leave less important parts unaccented (the background
Elemente). Languages differ in the exact instantiation of ac-
cent on elements in focus, so we will use the generic term
“focus accent” to refer to the phenomenon in this article.
As an answer to the question, What did the club give
to the player?, the sentence They gave (background) A
BONUS (focus) to the player (background) has an ap-
propriate focus accent, which emphasizes the segment
that answers the question, while a sentence would be
inappropriate in which background information receives
a focus accent instead, as in They gave (background)
a bonus (focus) to the PLAYER (background). In diesem
sense, accents “focus” the listenerʼs attention to the
most important information ( Wilson & Wharton, 2006),
facilitating utterance interpretation (reviewed in Cutler,

1University of Groningen, 2Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuro-
Bildgebung, Die Niederlande, 3Radboud University Nijmegen

Dahan, & Van Donselaar, 1997). The function of focus
accent in guiding attention to what is important is also
clear from the fact that implausible information that is
unaccented tends not to be noticed (Wang, Bastiaansen,
Yang, & Hagoort, 2011).

The distinction between focus and background informa-
tion within an utterance, also called “information structure,”
derives from the discourse context, which determines
which information is familiar and therefore backgrounded.
In context, listeners may expect the important information
in a certain position within the sentence to be marked pro-
sodically as focus. Nooteboom and Kruyt (1987) have
shown that listeners are capable of recognizing inappro-
priate accentuation in context: in their off-line rating study,
listeners rejected sentences containing unaccented ele-
ments which were expected to be in focus (“missing” focus
accents). Oddly, they tolerated accents on background ele-
gen (“superfluous” background accents), despite the fact
that focus accent is hypothesized to have the effect of fo-
cusing attention on important information. This pattern
brings to mind the famous minimalist principle of design
that “less is more.” Here, less marking of information struc-
ture than necessary, as by a missing accent, leads to more
processing difficulty. Intuitively, Jedoch, one would have
expected that more marking of information structure, als
by a superfluous accent, would be more noticeable and
hence increase processing costs.

© 2012 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Zeitschrift für kognitive Neurowissenschaften 24:12, S. 2400–2418

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This sort of behavioral data reported by Nooteboom
and Kruyt is important but relies on a conscious judg-
ment. ERPs have been used in a number of recent studies
to investigate the neural substrates of the processing of
linguistic prosody. ERPs are useful because they directly
measure brain activity; changes in neural processing re-
lated to various conditions can reveal the time point at
which a difference is recognized without the need for
an explicit task, as well as giving an indication about the
nature of the brain responses involved.

Two linguistic functions of prosody have received the
most attention in the ERP literature to date: the process-
ing of prosodic boundaries and the use of pitch accents
for focus marking (siehe Tabelle 1 for an overview). Prosodic
boundaries, typically consisting of slowed speech tempo
and a pitch change, serve to divide speech into segments,
usually at syntactic boundaries. The processing of pro-
sodic boundaries per se, as compared with a sequence
without a break, consistently evokes an early positivity
resembling the P2 component for acoustic differences (Li,
Wang, & Lu, 2010), and a late positive component, manche-
times called the closure positive shift (CPS; Steinhauer &
Friederici, 2001; Steinhauer, Ändern, & Friederici, 1999).

Im Gegensatz, it is less clear which electrophysiological
components underlie the interaction of focus and ac-
centuation. Because focus accent is a potential guide to
important information during language comprehension,
a number of recent studies have used ERPs to investigate
how this information is processed, in particular the re-
sponse to missing focus accents and superfluous back-
ground accents. An extensive list of neural components
(responses with different latencies, polarities, and scalp
distributions) has been reported in the literature, inter-
preted as reflecting various neural processes (siehe Tabelle 1).
We believe this variation is present because of the large
differences in materials, Methoden, and experimental de-
signs used in previous studies, rather than a large variability
in the way focus accent is processed. Most important in
our eyes, in all but two previous ERP studies, Teilnehmer
had to explicitly judge the prosodic well-formedness of
the stimuli.

First let us examine the variability among studies. An
the one hand, some studies (Bögels, Schriefers, Vonk, &
Chwilla, 2011; Heim & Ändern, 2006; Magne et al., 2005;
Hruska & Ändern, 2004; Toepel & Ändern, 2004) found effects
with a negative polarity. These have frequently been inter-
preted as evidence for difficulty in semantic processing be-
cause of a mismatch with the context, producing an effect
similar to the N400, an increased negativity seen over cen-
tral and parietal electrodes in response to words that do not
fit semantically (Kutas & Hillyard, 1980). Der zweite Teil
of Table 1 lists studies that specifically address the relation-
ship between semantic processing and focus, indicated by
either syntactic structure (z.B., clefts) or by intonation.

Alternativ, as suggested by Magne et al. (2005), Die
negativity could be interpreted as a task-related effect such
as the “contingent negative variation” (CNV), a negativity

that reflects the cognitive preparation for an upcoming
stimulus to which the participant must react (Rugg & Coles,
1996; Walter, Cooper, Aldridge, McCallum, & Winter, 1964).
The fact that negativities have been found in studies in
which an explicit judgment has been used makes this a
plausible alternative to the N400 and leads to a completely
different view of why the negativity occurs. Bedauerlicherweise,
it is difficult to tell the two effects apart. The CNV has
approximately the same scalp distribution as the N400;
it can be more prolonged in duration and has an onset la-
tency varying between 260 Und 470 ms (Folmer, Billings,
Diedesch-Rouse, Gallun, & Lew, 2011). If the negativity
disappears when no explicit judgment task is carried out,
that would suggest that the explicit task contributes to
the effect and that the reported negativity should be con-
sidered a CNV rather than an N400.

A number of positivities have also been reported either
instead of or in addition to negativities. Their interpretation
has also varied widely, but most often involving reference
to the CPS or P600 components. Several studies (Toepel,
Pannekamp, & Ändern, 2007; Hruska & Ändern, 2004; Toepel &
Ändern, 2004) have attributed positivities elicited by focus
elements to the CPS component, a positivity found in re-
sponse to prosodic parsing (Pannekamp, Toepel, Ändern,
Hahne, & Friederici, 2005; Steinhauer & Friederici, 2001;
Steinhauer et al., 1999), which they then reinterpreted as
a marker of information segmentation at focus positions.
Because focus elements in these studies often occurred
at phrase boundaries that give rise to prosodic parsing, Die
exact underlying source of the CPS remains ambiguous.

If the positivity reflects information segmentation rather
than prosodic parsing, it ought not to vary across sen-
tence position. The prosodic parsing account suggests
that the CPS will only occur at clear prosodic boundaries.
Existing attempts to disentangle whether the positiv-
ity depends on the sentence position of focus accents
(Magne et al., 2005) have not supported either of the
two views of the CPS. Although Magne et al. report dis-
tinct effects for prosodic mismatches in medial sentence
Position (which they interpreted as a P300) and in final
sentence position (N400), no evidence for a CPS-like
positivity was found. It is thus important to further inves-
tigate how these positivities are correlated with focus and
boundary processing as well as to carry out an experi-
ment in which focus accent does not occur at a prosodic
boundary.

Unlike the CPS positivity that occurs irrespective of
prosodic congruity, other positivities have been found in
response to the incongruity of focus accents in context
(Schumacher & Baumann, 2010). Such positivities may
have a distinct neural source related to the processing of
prosodic incongruity and can be interpreted as belong-
ing to the P600 family, positivities that are found when
language processing becomes effortful or reanalysis or re-
pair is necessary (Brouwer, Fitz, & Hoeks, 2012; Burkhardt,
2007; Hoeks, Stowe, & Doedens, 2004; Kaan, Harris, Gibson,
& Holcomb, 2000; Hagoort, Braun, & Groothusen, 1993;

Dimitrova et al.

2401

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Tisch 1. Overview of Previous ERP Studies on Prosody Processing

Study

Focus—Accent

Task

Paradigm

Conditions

Effect

Interpretation

Possible Problems

Hruska et al., 2001

Prosodic

(Deutsch)

Auditiv; question–
answer pairs

Superfluous accent

None

Missing accent

NEG-POS

N400-P600

Hruska & Ändern, 2004

Prosodic

(Deutsch)

Toepel & Ändern, 2004

Comprehension

(Deutsch)

Auditiv; question–

answer pair

Auditiv; dialogues
with contrastive/
neutral focus

Prosodic

Magne et al., 2005

Prosodic

(French)

Auditiv; question–
answer pairs

Superfluous accent

POS

CPS

Missing accent

Superfluous

Missing

Superfluous

Missing

Medial superfluous

Final superfluous

Medial missing

Final missing

NEG-POS

NEG-POS

POS

POS

N400-P600

NEG-CPS

CPS

CPS

NEG-POS

NEG-CPS

POS

NEG

POS

NEG

NEG

POS

POS

POS

P3a + P3b

N400/CNV

P3b

N400/CNV

EN

CPS

Heim & Ändern, 2006

Comprehension

Auditiv; isolated

Accent

(Deutsch)

sentences with even

Superfluous

Missing

Toepel et al., 2007

Prosodic

Auditiv; dialogues

Superfluous

(Deutsch)

with contrastive focus

Missing

Visual NEG-POS N400-CPS

Semantics—Prosody Mismatch

Wang, Hagoort, &

Comprehension

Yang, 2009
(Chinese)

Reading; dialogues
with semantically
in/appropriate
focus/nonfocus

Focus inappropriate
vs. appropriate

NEG

N400

Time-locking (1D)

Nonfocus inappropriate

None (NEG)

( Very reduced N400)

Boundary position unclear

vs. appropriate

Appropriate nonfocus

NEG

Larger N400

(vs. focus)

Time-locking (1A)

Matching (2A, B)

Boundary (3)

Matching (2A, B)

Time-locking (1A)

Matching (2A)

Time-locking (1B)

Matching (2A)

Boundary (3)

Time-locking (1A, C)

Matching (2A, B)

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Wang et al., 2011

None reported

(Dutch)

Auditiv; dialogues
with prosodic/
semantic mismatch

Missing

Superfluous

None

NEG

Focus accent > no accent

NEG

Nonfocus accent = no

None

accent

N400

N400

Time-locking (1D)

Matching (2B)

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M

Sem. incongruent

NEG

N400

Mismatch prosodic/
syntactic break

Match prosodic/
syntactic break

Prosodic break

POS

POS

POS

CPS

Time-locking (1e)

(Rechts) CPS

Matching (2A, B)

CPS (larger with object verbs)

Time-locking (1F )

Prosodic Boundaries

Kerkhofs, Vonk,
Schriefers, &
Chwilla, 2007
(Dutch)

Bögels, Schriefers,
Vonk, Chwilla,
& Kerkhofs,
2009 (Dutch)

Li et al., 2010
(Chinese)

None

Auditiv; dialogues,
with prosodic/
syntactic mismatch

Comprehension

Auditiv; prosodic
breaks in single
Sätze

Boundary (3)

Time-locking (1D)

Matching (2A)

Comprehension

Auditiv; dialogues
with prosodic/
syntactic mismatch

Missing prosodic boundary NEG

LAN

Superfluous prosodic

NEG

LAN + N400

boundary

NEG = negative shift in ERPs; POS = positive shift in ERPs; EN = expectancy negativity; LAN = left anterior negativity; 1a = time-locking to sentence onset; 1b = time-locking to focus accent onset; 1c =
time-locking to verb onset; 1d = time-locking to target onset; 1e = time-locking to offset of word before boundary; 1f = time-locking to onset of stressed syllable before break; 2a = targets not matched for
frequency; 2b = targets not matched for lexical stress position; 3 = targets at phrase boundary.

Prosodic boundary

POS

P2 (fronto-central)

Boundary (3)

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Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992). The functional interpretation
of these positivities must take into account whether they
reflect the processing of focus accents per se or are rather
elicited by prosodic incongruity.

Endlich, the positivity seen in a number of studies may
actually be related to the P300 component, as suggested
by Magne et al. (2005). The P3 is a broadly distributed
positive deflection that is seen in response to novel or
unexpected stimuli primarily when participants are in-
structed to pay attention to the stimuli. The P3 has been
divided into two parts: the P3a, which is thought to be
evoked by the identification of task-related novel events,
and the P3b, which is generally linked to task-related de-
cision processes (Picton, 1992; Donchin & Coles, 1988).
Examining prosody processing when no secondary task
is included should shed light on the extent to which
novelty and decision-related processes can account for
the positivity reported in these studies.

Biphasic responses have also been reported, im
form of a negativity followed by a positivity. These have
been generally interpreted as an N400, followed by either
a CPS or a P600. Interpreting biphasic responses is diffi-
cult because of the same issues already discussed above
for negativities and positivities taken alone. Zum Beispiel,
the CNV is often followed by a positive component called
the CNV-Resolution, which is claimed to reflect executive
functions that re-establish a cognitive equilibrium such
as set-shifting or resetting motor programs ( Jackson,
Jackson, & Roberts, 1999). Daher, the negativity may re-
flect expectation violation, and the positivity the resolu-
tion of the decision process. All in all, it is difficult to
establish whether the findings of previous studies reflect
the natural processing of prosody in context.

We have already mentioned that the choice of task
may play a role in the variety of responses reported in the
Literatur. The task-related nature of the CNV and P300
emphasize this possibility. Tatsächlich, there is evidence that
changing the metalinguistic task modifies the neural re-
sponse to linguistic prosody. Toepel and Alter (2004)
showed that neutral accents in a contrastive context (manche
sort of an underspecified, z.B., missing accent) did not
affect processing relative to contrastive accents when par-
ticipants performed a comprehension task focusing on
content but led to a significant biphasic (negative–positive)
ERP pattern when listeners performed a prosodic judg-
ment task. For contrastive accents in a neutral context
(some sort of an overspecified, z.B., superfluous accent),
a negativity was seen for the comprehension task as
opposed to a late positivity for the prosodic judgment
Aufgabe. This pattern of no negative effect for a superfluous
accent accompanied by a clear negativity for a missing
accent has been reported a number of times in the litera-
ture in studies using a prosodic judgment task; one goal
of the current experiment is to see whether less prosodic
marking of focus (missing accent) indeed corresponds
to more processing effort when no explicit prosodic judg-
ment task is employed.

The Present Study

The goal of this study is to investigate whether listeners
are sensitive to the appropriateness of prosody in the
discourse and whether they process missing and super-
fluous accents in the same way when no prosodic judgment
task is employed. Using a strictly controlled naturalistic
paradigm, the study focuses on the interaction of prosody
and the information structure provided by the linguistic
context in short dialogues in Dutch (for materials, sehen
Tisch 2). In one version, the context question sets up a
contrast set on the direct object; the resolution of this
choice is given in the answer where the direct object is in
focus, whereas in the second version, the question context
includes a contrast on the prepositional object, and the di-
rect object in the answer is background information instead.
The intonation pattern of the answer is either congruent or
incongruent with the context-dependent foregrounding.

To avoid interference from task-related effects that may
arise because of the judgment of prosodic congruity, Par-
ticipants performed a comprehension task on a limited
number of trials that aimed to guarantee overall atten-
tion to the semantic coherence of the dialogues. Special
care was taken to control for the following factors known
to affect ERP responses: sentences were matched for
Länge (in words), syntactic structure, target lemma fre-
quency, target plausibility, and target expectedness. Der
last two factors were of special interest: plausibility and
expectedness (see Section 2 of Table 1), because it has
been shown that they interact with focus accent ( Wang
et al., 2011) and affect the amplitude of the N400 com-
ponent more generally. All target nouns had lexically
stressed initial syllables with long vowels, which reduced
variance in word and accent identification points and
allowed us to measure accent processing exclusively
without any lexical stress variation (Ladd, Mennen, &
Schepman, 2000). ERPs were time-locked to the acoustic
onset of each target word rather than to the sentence
onset, which would lead to jitter that could mask effects
which are relatively short-lasting. Because congruous and
incongruous sentences were identical (siehe Tabelle 2), Die
baseline should not be an issue. Most importantly and in
contrast to previous studies, special care was taken to
place targets away from intonational phrase boundaries
by placing the finite verb at the end of the sentence and
making sure that no prosodic breaks were present at or
close to the onset and offset of targets, as these may elicit
a CPS (Steinhauer et al., 1999). We believe that by having
taken these measures, our study provides an uncluttered
view on the neural substrate underlying prosody process-
ing in context.

In line with earlier findings in the literature showing a
shallow processing of unaccented and backgrounded in-
Formation (Li & Ren, 2012; Wang et al., 2011), it is hypoth-
esized that in normal processing, missing accents will not
be more noticeable than superfluous accents. Auf der
basis of the known function of focus accent, welches ist

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Tisch 2. Experimental Materials

Accent

Direct Object

Prepositional Object

Focus Direct Object

Question 1

1A (congruous)

1B (incongruous)

Did the club give a bonus or a fine to

They gave a BONUS to

They gave a bonus to

the player?

the player.

the PLAYER.

Heeft de club een premie of een boete

aan de speler gegeven?

Ze hebben een PREMIE
aan de speler gegeven.

Ze hebben een premie

aan de SPELER gegeven.

Prepositional Object Question 2

2B (incongruous)

2A (congruous)

Did the club give a bonus to the player

They gave a BONUS to

They gave a bonus to

or to the trainer?

the player.

the PLAYER.

Heeft de club een premie aan de speler

of aan de trainer gegeven?

Ze hebben een PREMIE

aan de speler gegeven.

Ze hebben een premie aan
de SPELER gegeven.

Questions introduced a contrastive focus on the direct object (Question 1) or on the prepositional object (Question 2). Answers had congruous
accentuation (1A, 2A) or incongruous accentuation (1B, 2B). Incongruous answers always included a missing accent (1B: “bonus”) and a superfluous
accent (1B: “PLAYER”). Accented elements are displayed in capitals, focus elements in bold; original Dutch stimuli are displayed in italics. The linear
order of the contrastive elements in the question (z.B., “bonus” and “fine”) was counterbalanced across trials.

to draw attention to important information, we expect the
semantic content of the accented lexical item to be
attended and the presence of an incongruous accent
on background information to be noted. It is possible that
missing accents will be responded to in the same way, Aber
if there is a difference in processing, superfluous accents
should require more processing resources than missing
accents.

METHODEN

Teilnehmer

Twenty-nine right-handed Dutch native speakers (13 men,
age = 18–29 years, mean = 21 Jahre) with normal or
corrected-to-normal vision and without any reported
neurological, psychiatric, Anhörung, or language impairments
were paid for participating. Participants signed a written
informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of
Helsinki. An additional six participants (two men) war
not included because they did not meet predefined in-
clusion criteria (a minimum of 60% artifact free trials for
any electrode used in the analysis in any condition). An
average, the analysis was performed on 85% valid data
over all conditions.

Stimuli

Stimulus construction started with 120 dialogue items (A
question followed by an answer) in Dutch, the language
used in this study, as illustrated in Table 2. Each question
contained a contrastive set with a target noun (selected in
the answer; bonus) and a nontarget noun (not selected in
the answer; fine). To avoid variability in word identifica-
tion points, both words had a syllable-initial lexical stress

and equivalent average lemma frequencies (taken from
the CELEX corpus; Baayen, Piepenbrock, & Van Rijn,
1993). Across conditions, contrast sets in the questions
referred either to the direct object (“bonus or fine”) oder zu
the prepositional object (“to the player or to the trainer”);
the resolution of the choice represented the focus in the
Antwort. Two further versions of each question were cre-
ated, in which the linear order of the two contrasted items
(z.B., “… bonus or fine …”) was reversed (z.B., “… fine or
bonus…”); these versions were counterbalanced to avoid
effects of linear presentation. Questions were followed
by answers that were either prosodically congruous with
a focus accent on one of the contrasted elements (answers
(A) in Table 2) or prosodically incongruous with a focus
accent on a backgrounded element from the question
(answers (B) in Table 2). None of the answers contained
semantically inappropriate information. Of interest in
these answers were the direct object (d.h., bonus) Und
the prepositional object (d.h., player).

The plausibility of all target words was tested in Off-
line Study 1 (“plausibility study”) mit 96 non-Linguistics
students who did not participate in the ERP experiment.
Participants rated how plausible each target (bonus) Und
nontarget ( fine) was to serve as an answer to the ques-
tion (on a scale of 1 = very poor fit to 7 = very good fit).
We also measured target expectedness by having partici-
pants indicate which word of the contrast pair (bonus or
fine) they would select as the best answer to the ques-
tion. On the basis of the results presented in Table 3,
Die 120 dialogue items were assigned to four item-groups
mit 30 dialogues each. Target-related factors did not
differ significantly between conditions or across lists (alle
ps > .24).

To investigate prosody processing in naturally elicited
Rede, experimental stimuli were recorded as dialogues

Dimitrova et al.

2405

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Tisch 3. Stimulus Characteristics

Direct Object

Prepositional Object

Sentence

Item Group

Frequency

Plausibility

Expectancy

Frequency

Plausibility

Expectancy

Words

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

1.1

1.1

1.0

1.1

5.1

5.3

5.1

5.3

0.45

0.48

0.42

0.45

1.2

1.2

1.1

1.3

5.2

5.1

5.1

5.3

0.49

0.44

0.44

0.48

7.9

7.9

8.2

8.0

Characteristics of the four experimental item groups (Groups 1–4). Item group refers to group of items that all occur in the same condition across
lists. Frequency indicates lemma frequency in the CELEX lexical database (in number of occurrences per million). Plausibility is measured on a scale
aus 1 Zu 7 (1 = very bad fit, 7 = very good fit); scores are the results from Off-line Study 1 (plausibility study, n = 96; see Methods). Expectancy
refers to the proportion of participants who selected the target from the contrastive set as an answer to the question (0 = not selected, 1 = selected,
a score of 0.5 indicates that both elements in the contrastive pair are equally likely to be selected, see Off-Line Study 1 in Methods). Average number
of words per sentence is given under Words.

between two phonetically naive speakers: a male speaker
produced the questions and a female speaker produced
the answers. The speakers recorded clearly accented
dialogues as a unit, speaking at a natural speech rate
(6.4 syllables/sec) without any excessive emphasis. None
of the stimuli contained any disfluencies or phrase
boundaries; in fact, all utterances were produced as
a single intonational phrase (Gussenhoven, 2005). To
prevent unintended intonational differences between
Bedingungen, only congruous dialogues were recorded.
Incongruous dialogues were generated on the basis of
these congruous conditions by recombining questions
and answers.

A total of 960 dialogues (120 dialogues × 2 linear orders ×
2 question types × 2 answer types) were assigned to
eight lists. Each participant was presented with one list
von 120 dialogues (30 items × 4 Bedingungen) using the
Latin square format. None of the participants listened to
more than one version of each sentence, and every par-
ticipant listened to the experimental stimuli in a pseudo-
randomized order excluding more than two consecutive
presentations of the same condition. In each list, half of
the dialogues had focus on the direct object (n = 60)
and the other half had focus on the prepositional object
(n = 60). In each focus condition, half of the answers were
prosodically congruous (focus was accented, n = 30),
whereas the other half were prosodically incongruous
(background was accented, n = 30). ERP processing dif-
ferences cannot be attributed to differences in the acous-
tic characteristics of the stimuli, because the congruous
and incongruous conditions were physically identical sen-
tences (1a = 2b, 1b = 2a). All stimuli were normalized in
loudness and analyzed acoustically.

An additional Off-line Study 2 (“prosodic congruity
study”) was created with a subset of the stimuli to test
whether mismatch conditions can be discriminated cor-
rectly. Seventeen Linguistics students that did not partici-
pate in the ERP study or Off-line Study 1 listened to
a subset of dialogues taken from all conditions and indi-
cated whether the question and the answer of a dialogue

matched (scale of 1 = very poor fit to 7 = very good fit).
No instruction was given with respect to prosodic well-
formedness. A repeated-measures ANOVA with Accented
Element (direct object vs. prepositional object) Und
Congruity (congruous vs. incongruous accent) as within-
participants factors showed a highly significant main effect
of Congruity, F(1, 16) = 245.6; P < .001, indicating that listeners were able to discriminate between congruous and incongruous prosody (average scores are given in Figure 1). No other effects were significant (all ps > .18).

Acoustic Analysis

Acoustic measures were performed using the software
package Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2010) and are dis-
played in Figure 2A and B. Accented direct objects and
prepositional objects had a longer acoustic duration
and a higher fundamental frequency (f0) relative to un-
accented ones. Segmental lengthening under accentuation

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Figur 1. Results of Off-line Study 2 (prosodic congruity study).
Off-line Study 2 tested whether listeners are able to differentiate
between congruous and incongruous conditions in recorded dialogues.
Participants indicated the overall match of question and answer on
a scale from 1 (= very poor fit) Zu 7 (= very good fit) without any
explicit instruction to attend to prosody.

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Figur 2. (A) Acoustic duration of target sentences. Average acoustic duration of segments in sentences with accented direct objects (1) Und
accented prepositional objects (2; in msec, standard deviation in brackets) and duration of accented (black bars) versus unaccented elements
(gray bars). Abkürzungen: start = interval from sentence onset until direct object onset; DO = duration of direct object; PO-DO = interval
from direct object offset until prepositional object onset; PO = duration of prepositional object; end = interval from prepositional object
offset until sentence offset. (B) Fundamental frequency and pitch excursion of target stimuli. The figure displays targetsʼ absolute fundamental
frequency values (f0, in Hz) and pitch excursion (difference between maximal and minimal f0) for accented (black) and unaccented (gray)
direct and prepositional objects.

was larger for direct objects (86 ms) than for preposi-
tional objects (36 ms). Accentuation also affected pitch
excursion (difference between f0 max and f0 min), welche
was higher for accented elements (80 Hz) than for un-
accented elements (28 Hz; Figure 2B).

The f0 contours of experimental stimuli were tran-
scribed according to the transcription of Dutch intonation
Konvention (Gussenhoven, 2005). Focus accents on di-
rect objects (Abbildung 3A) and on prepositional objects
(Abbildung 3B) showed the typical falling pitch contour for
Dutch focus accents. In the transcription of Dutch intona-
tion convention, the contour is transcribed as an H*L
accent where the letters indicate the direction of pitch
movement in the accented syllable, here a falling move-
ment from H (hoch) to L (niedrig) pitch, whereas the star
denotes the pitch of the tone target in the accented sylla-
ble, here H (hoch). Figur 3 shows that the signal did not
contain any disruptions of the f0 such as silent pauses or
phrase tones in the vicinity of targets that would indicate
a phrase boundary.

EEG Procedure and Recordings

After electrode application, participants were seated in
front of a computer screen in an electrically shielded room
and completed a practice session before the actual experi-
ment. Stimuli were presented auditorily via loudspeakers
and were divided in two blocks of 60 dialogues (approxi-
mate block duration was 12 min). To minimize eye move-
ment artifacts, participants fixated a black cross against a
gray background, which appeared 100 msec before stimu-
lus presentation and remained there until the end of the

dialogue. In jedem Versuch, a question was presented (average
Dauer = 2000 ms), followed by silence (500 ms), ein
Antwort (average duration = 2000 ms), and silence again
(1200 ms). To encourage attentive processing, partici-
pants performed a comprehension task on 25% of all trials
and indicated whether a probe word presented on the
screen was semantically related to the preceding dialogue.
Correct and incorrect responses were counterbalanced.
After the response (or after the last silence period in trials
without the comprehension task), four stars appeared on
the screen (Dauer = 2000 ms) to indicate that partici-
pants had the opportunity to blink.

The EEG was recorded at 250 Hz using a 64-channel cap
with Ag/AgCl electrodes, placed according to the interna-
tional extended 10–20 system (Electro Cap International,
Eaton, OH). All channels were amplified against the average
of all connected inputs of the amplifier (TMS International,
Enschede, Die Niederlande). The amplifier measured DC
without a high-pass filter but with a digital finite impulse re-
sponse filter (cutoff frequency of 67.5 Hz) to avoid aliasing
Effekte. After recording, electrodes were re-referenced to
the algebraic average of left and right mastoid electrodes.
Vertical eye movements and blinks were monitored via
electrodes below and above the left eye, and horizontal
movements from electrodes at the left and right canthus
of each eye. Impedances were kept below 5Ω. All data
were filtered off-line with a band-pass filter of 0.01–30 Hz.

EEG Analysis

Trials containing movement artifacts, ocular artifacts, oder
electrode drifts (determined by a ±75 μV voltage maximum)

Dimitrova et al.

2407

were rejected. Only participants with at least 60% valid data
in all conditions for any electrode used in the analyses
were included (n = 29). On average, EEG analysis was
performed on 85% data per condition (SD = 24%). Nummer
of rejected trials did not differ between conditions. ERPs
were time-locked to the acoustic onset of each target word
that was identical to the onset of its accented syllable.

ERP differences were identified in three time windows
post target onset: Early time window (100–220 msec),
N400 time window (300–500 msec), and late P600 time
window (700–1000 msec). Average ERPs for a number
of ROIs were computed as the average over several elec-
trodes. Lateral ROIs included left anterior (FP1, AF3, AF7,

F3, F5, F7), right anterior (FP2, AF4, AF8, F4, F6, F8), links
zentral (FC3, FC5, C3, C5, CP3, CP5), right central (FC4,
FC6, C4, C6, CP4, CP6), left posterior (P3, P5, P7, PO3,
PO7, O1), and right posterior (P4, P6, P8, PO4, PO8, O2).
Midline ROIs included anterior (FPz, AFz, Fz), zentral (FCz,
Cz, CPz), and posterior (Pz, POz, Pz).

Repeated-measures ANOVAs were conducted separately
for lateral and midline ROIs. ANOVAs for lateral electrodes
were calculated with four within-subject factors: Accent
(accented element vs. unaccented element), Congruity
(contextually congruous accent vs. contextually incon-
gruous accent), Anteriority (anterior vs. central vs. poste-
rior regions), and Hemisphere (left hemisphere vs. Rechts

Figur 3. (A) Plot of all pitch
contours of accented direct
Objekte. Black vertical lines
indicate the onset (dotted
Linie) and offset (solid line) von
direct objects, and gray lines
display the onset (dotted
Linie) and offset (solid line) von
prepositional objects. The small
arrows close to the 400-Hz line
display the standard deviation
of onset and offset times for
direct objects. (B) Plot of all
pitch contours of accented
prepositional objects. Gray
vertical lines indicate the onset
(dotted line) and offset (solid
Linie) of prepositional objects,
and black lines display the onset
(dotted line) and offset (solid
Linie) of direct objects. The small
arrows close to the 400 Hz line
display the standard deviation
of onset and offset times for
prepositional objects.

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2408

Zeitschrift für kognitive Neurowissenschaften

Volumen 24, Nummer 12

hemisphere). ANOVAs for midline ROIs included all fac-
tors except Hemisphere. ANOVAs were performed on
mean voltage values and adjusted with the Huynh–Feldt
correction for nonsphericity where appropriate. For direct
Objekte, a 200-msec prestimulus baseline correction was
calculated for segments with a duration of 1300 ms.
For prepositional objects, a 100-msec within-stimulus base-
line was chosen because processing differences were ex-
pected to have arisen after the perception of mismatches
on the direct object (for similar reasoning and proce-
dure, sehen, z.B., Mueller, 2009; Philips, Kazanina, & Abada,
2005).

ERGEBNISSE

Verhaltensergebnisse

Participants judged the semantic relatedness of a probe
word to the preceding dialogue in 25% of all trials. Par-
ticipants were attentive and comprehended dialogues
successfully (average accuracy of 87% correct). Task per-
formance was not affected by prosodic congruity.

ERP Results for Direct Objects

ERP analyses concentrate on the direct object, wohingegen
data for prepositional objects are regarded as exploratory:
half of the time, prepositional objects were preceded by
a direct object in a mismatch condition, which will have
contaminated their processing (vgl. Figure 2A for the aver-
age position of both elements in the sentence). Effects in-

volving scalp distribution will be reported only if modified
by the cognitive factors.

Statistical results are presented in Table 4, and ERP
waveforms for all conditions are displayed in Figure 4.
Marginally significant main effects or interactions (.05 ≤
p ≤ .10) will be reported in footnotes for future reference
but will not be followed up or interpreted.

Early Time Window 100–220 msec

A four-way interaction of Accent × Congruity × Anterior-
ity × Hemisphere, F(2, 56) = 3.223, P < .05, was found. Follow-up analyses with Anteriority as the split variable revealed an Accent × Congruity × Hemisphere inter- action that was significant on posterior, F(1, 28) = 6.935, p < .05, marginal on central, F(1, 28) = 3.817, p = .06, and not significant on anterior regions, F(1, 28) = .075, p = .79. Following up on the posterior interactions with Accent as the split variable, the interaction of Congruity × Hemi- sphere was not significant for accented direct objects, F(1, 28) = 2.54, p = .12, or for unaccented direct objects, F(1, 28) = 2.659, p = .11. The mean voltage data suggest that the Congruity × Hemisphere interaction is triggered by left-sided posterior positivities for incongruously accented direct objects relative to congruous ones, probably cou- pled with a greater positivity for incongruously accented elements on the right. When looking at the Congruity effect on posterior regions separately for accented and unaccented direct objects, we found that it is present only for accented direct objects, F(1, 28) = 3.492, p = .07, because of a positivity for incongruously accented Table 4. Statistical Results for Direct Objects Direct Object df F p F p F p 100–220 msec 300–500 msec 700–1000 msec Lateral ACC ACC × CONG CONG × ANT ACC × HEM CONG × HEM ACC × CONG × HEM ACC × CONG × ANT × HEM Midline ACC CONG × ANT 1, 28 1, 28 2, 56 1, 28 1, 28 1, 28 2, 56 1, 28 2, 56 6.207 3.388 3.513 7.466 4.416 .019 .076 .058 .011 .045 3.832 .06 3.256 3.223 .082 .048 9.292 3.569 .002 .069 u s e r o n 1 7 M a y 2 0 2 1 F values with p ≥ .1 are not included; marginal effects with .05 ≤ p < .10 are included for future reference. ACC = Accent; CONG = Congruity; ANT = Anteriority; HEM = Hemisphere. Dimitrova et al. 2409 9.726 .004 3.677 3.378 .065 .043 D o w n l o a d e d f r o m l l / / / / j t t f / i t . : / / h t t p : / D / o m w i n t o p a r d c e . d s f i r o l m v e h r c p h a d i i r r e . c c t . o m m / j e o d u c n o / c a n r a t r i t i c c l e e - p - d p d 2 f 4 / 1 2 2 4 / 2 1 4 2 0 / 0 2 1 4 9 0 4 0 4 / 6 1 4 8 7 7 o 8 c 5 n 0 _ 2 a / _ j 0 o 0 c 3 n 0 2 _ a p _ d 0 0 b 3 y 0 g 2 u . e p s t d o f n b 0 y 7 S M e I p T e m L i b b e r r a 2 r 0 2 i 3 e s / j / f . t D o w n l o a d e d f r o m l l / / / / j f / t t i t . : / / h t t p : / D / o m w i n t o p a r d c e . d s f i r o l m v e h r c p h a d i i r r e . c c t . o m m / j e o d u c n o / c a n r a t r i t i c c l e e - p - d p d 2 f 4 / 1 2 2 4 / 2 1 4 2 0 / 0 2 1 4 9 0 4 0 4 / 6 1 4 8 7 7 o 8 c 5 n 0 _ 2 a / _ j 0 o 0 c 3 n 0 2 _ a p _ d 0 0 b 3 y 0 g 2 u . e p s t d o f n b 0 y 7 S M e I p T e m L i b b e r r a 2 r 0 2 i 3 e s / j t / . f u s e r o n 1 7 M a y 2 0 2 1 Figure 4. ERP waveforms for direct objects. ERPs are time-locked to the onset of the direct object with a prestimulus baseline of −200 to 0 msec and show waveforms to accented (black) and unaccented (gray) direct objects. Solid lines represent congruous accentuation, and dotted lines represent incongruous accentuation. elements (superfluous accents) relative to congruously accented elements. No Congruity effect was found for incongruously unaccented direct objects (missing accents; F(1, 28) = .725, p = .4). N400 Time Window 300–500 msec There was a main effect of Accent, F(1, 28) = 6.207, p < .05, showing that accented direct objects elicited positive waveforms relative to unaccented ones. There was a three- way interaction of Accent × Congruity × Hemisphere, F(1, 28) = 4.416, p < .05, showing a significant Congruity × Hemisphere interaction for accented elements, F(1, 28) = 11.807, p < .01, but not for unaccented elements, F(1, 28) = .319, p = .58. Post hoc tests on accented direct objects revealed a significant Congruity effect at right sites, F(1, 28) = 4.8, p < .05, but not at left sites, F(1, 28) = .190, p = .67. The mean voltage values in Figure 5 show that the Congruity effect was a right-lateralized negativity for incongruously accented elements (super- fluous accents on background elements) as compared with congruously accented ones (focus accents). No such negative effect was elicited by incongruously unaccented elements (missing accents on focus elements; cf. Figure 6). For midline electrodes, there was a main effect of Accent, F(1, 28) = 9.726, p < .01, indicating that ERPs to ac- cented direct objects were more positive than ERPs to un- accented ones. No other main effects or interactions were significant. Late P600 Time Window 700–1000 msec For lateral electrodes, the Congruity × Anteriority inter- action was significant, F(2, 56) = 9.292, p < .01. Follow-up comparisons suggest that this is because of a marginal effect of Congruity (incongruous more positive than 2410 Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Volume 24, Number 12 congruous) on posterior regions, F(1, 28) = 3.842, p = .06, and the absence of such an effect on anterior and cen- tral regions (all p values > .1).1 On midline electrodes,
there was also a significant interaction of Congruity ×
Anteriority, F(2, 56) = 3.378, P < .05; together these sug- gest that irrespective of whether the accent is missing or superfluous, direct objects with incongruous accentuation were more positive than congruous direct objects, but only at posterior sites. No other effects were significant. ERP Results for Prepositional Objects As mentioned above, the analysis of prepositional objects has an exploratory character because the ERPs to the prepositional object will be affected by the processing of the preceding violation on the direct object. Statistical results are presented in Table 5, and ERP waveforms for all four conditions are displayed in Figure 7. Early Time Window 100–220 msec On lateral electrodes, there was a Congruity × Hemisphere interaction, F(1, 28) = 5.420, p < .05, but follow-ups did not reveal a statistically reliable Congruity effect (all ps >
.42). According to the means, the interaction must have
been due to a positivity for incongruous elements over
the right hemisphere and a negativity over the left hemi-
Kugel. A Congruity × Anteriority interaction, F(2, 56) =
4.158, P < .05, did not show significant differences on any region (all ps > .18). The means suggest that the inter-
action came about by an anterior negativity and a pos-
terior positivity for incongruous elements. On midline
Elektroden, there was a main effect of Accent, F(1, 28) =
6.314, P < .05, showing a positivity for accented preposi- tional objects relative to unaccented ones. No other effects reached significance.2 N400 Time Window 300–500 msec The ERPs for prepositional objects did not show the negativity that we found in this time window for direct ob- jects but predominantly rather large positive-going waves starting around 300 msec that were elicited for both ac- cented and unaccented incongruous elements [Accent × Congruity × Anteriority × Hemisphere, F(2, 56) = 3.361, p < .05]. Follow-up analyses suggested that this interaction D o w n l o a d e d f r o m l l / / / / j t t f / i t . : / / h t t p : / D / o m w i n t o p a r d c e . d s f i r o l m v e h r c p h a d i i r r e . c c t . o m m / j e o d u c n o / c a n r a t r i t i c c l e e - p - d p d 2 f 4 / 1 2 2 4 / 2 1 4 2 0 / 0 2 1 4 9 0 4 0 4 / 6 1 4 8 7 7 o 8 c 5 n 0 _ 2 a / _ j 0 o 0 c 3 n 0 2 _ a p _ d 0 0 b 3 y 0 g 2 u . e p s t d o f n b 0 y 7 S M e I p T e m L i b b e r r a 2 r 0 2 i 3 e s / j / . t f u s e r o n 1 7 M a y 2 0 2 1 Figure 5. ERP waveforms for accented direct objects: superfluous versus congruous accents. Incongruously accented elements (superfluous accents, dotted line) elicited early left-lateralized positive effects at posterior sites (100–220 msec) and a right-lateralized centro-posterior negativity (N400, 300–700 msec) as compared with congruously accented elements (solid line). Between 700 and 1000 msec, incongruously accented elements triggered a late posterior positivity (P600). Dimitrova et al. 2411 D o w n l o a d e d f r o m l l / / / / j f / t t i t . : / / h t t p : / D / o m w i n t o p a r d c e . d s f i r o l m v e h r c p h a d i i r r e . c c t . o m m / j e o d u c n o / c a n r a t r i t i c c l e e - p - d p d 2 f 4 / 1 2 2 4 / 2 1 4 2 0 / 0 2 1 4 9 0 4 0 4 / 6 1 4 8 7 7 o 8 c 5 n 0 _ 2 a / _ j 0 o 0 c 3 n 0 2 _ a p _ d 0 0 b 3 y 0 g 2 u . e p s t d o f n b 0 y 7 S M e I p T e m L i b b e r r a 2 r 0 2 i 3 e s / j / . f t u s e r o n 1 7 M a y 2 0 2 1 Figure 6. ERP waveforms for unaccented direct objects: missing versus congruous accents. Incongruously unaccented elements (dotted line) elicited a late posterior positive effect (P600) with a latency of 700–1000 msec poststimulus onset as compared with congruously unaccented elements (solid line). No other effects were significant. resulted from centro-posterior positivities associated with incongruity, for both accented and unaccented words, with the effects for accented words larger at right hemisphere sites. These positivities were accompanied by anterior negativities that were larger for unaccented words, most clearly so at left frontal sites. For midline electrodes, ac- cented prepositional objects elicited a positivity relative to unaccented ones that was reflected in a main effect Table 5. Statistical Results for Prepositional Objects Prepositional Object df F p F p F p 100–220 msec 300–500 msec 700–1000 msec Lateral ACC ACC × ANT CONG × ANT CONG × HEM ACC × ANT × HEM ACC × CONG × ANT × HEM Midline ACC ACC × ANT CONG × ANT 1, 28 2, 56 2, 56 1, 28 2, 56 2, 56 1, 28 2, 56 2, 56 4.027 .055 .04 .027 4.158 5.420 3.315 6.314 .018 9.732 7.281 9.942 7.195 3.361 14.924 5.214 6.789 .004 .007 .002 .002 .049 .001 .017 .009 4.391 19.591 6.014 3.801 6.714 13.308 4.727 .045 .000 .013 .061 .015 .001 .021 F values with p ≥ .1 are not included; marginal effects with .05 ≤ p < .10 are included for future reference. ACC = Accent; CONG = Congruity; ANT = Anteriority; HEM = Hemisphere. 2412 Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Volume 24, Number 12 D o w n l o a d e d f r o m l l / / / / j f / t t i t . : / / h t t p : / D / o m w i n t o p a r d c e . d s f i r o l m v e h r c p h a d i i r r e . c c t . o m m / j e o d u c n o / c a n r a t r i t i c c l e e - p - d p d 2 f 4 / 1 2 2 4 / 2 1 4 2 0 / 0 2 1 4 9 0 4 0 4 / 6 1 4 8 7 7 o 8 c 5 n 0 _ 2 a / _ j 0 o 0 c 3 n 0 2 _ a p _ d 0 0 b 3 y 0 g 2 u . e p s t d o f n b 0 y 7 S M e I p T e m L i b b e r r a 2 r 0 2 i 3 e s / j t f / . u s e r o n 1 7 M a y 2 0 2 1 Figure 7. ERP waveforms for prepositional objects. ERP waveforms are time locked to the onset of the prepositional object with a within-stimulus baseline of 0–100 msec poststimulus onset. The figure displays accented (black) and unaccented (gray) prepositional objects. Solid lines indicate congruous accentuation, and dotted lines indicate incongruous accentuation. of Accent, F(1, 28) = 14.924, p = .001. In addition, both accented [Accent × Anteriority, F(2, 56) = 5.214, p < .05] and incongruous prepositional objects [Congruity × Anteriority, F(2, 56) = 6.789, p < .01] triggered centro- posterior positivities. Late P600 Time Window 700–1000 msec Accented prepositional objects were more positive than unaccented ones because of a main effect of Accent, F(1, 28) = 4.391, p < .05. The positivity for accented elements had a centro-posterior distribution [Accent × Anteriority interaction, F(2, 56) = 19.591, p < .001; Accent effect at central sites, F(1, 28) = 4.237, p < .05, and at posterior sites, F(1, 28) = 35.282, p < .001]. Incongruous preposi- tional objects elicited posterior positivities relative to con- gruous ones [Congruity × Anteriority, F(2, 56) = 6.014, p < .05] that was due to a Congruity effect at posterior sites, F(1, 28) = 5.091, p < .05. On midline electrodes, accented prepositional objects were more positive than unaccented ones because of a main effect of Accent, F(1, 28) = 6.714, p < .05. The positivity was distributed at centro-posterior sites as revealed by an Accent × Anterior- ity interaction, F(2, 56) = 13.308, p = .001, with an Accent effect over central, F(1, 28) = 7.081, p < .05, and posterior regions, F(1, 28) = 30.403, p < .001. Summary of Results Accent (present vs. absent) and Congruity (match vs. mis- match) interacted with each other at the direct object in both the early and the N400 time windows, but not in the later time window. In the early time window (100– 220 msec), Congruity had an effect primarily on accented words: direct objects with superfluous accents elicited early positivities on left posterior sites, relative to direct objects with congruous accentuation. In the N400 time Dimitrova et al. 2413 window (300–500 msec), incongruent accents elicited a right-lateralized centro-posterior negativity. No such effect was obtained for incongruous unaccented words (missing accents). In the late P600 time window (700–1000 msec), there was no interaction and both types of incongruous prosody, that is, missing and superfluous accents, were more positive than congruous prosody. The exploratory analyses for the prepositional objects showed posterior positivities for incongruent relative to congruent prosody in the N400 and in the late time win- dow, similar to the positivity for incongruence elicited by the direct object. In general, the processing of accentua- tion was evident in a broadly distributed main effect of Accent (300–500 msec), showing a positivity for accented relative to unaccented direct objects. A positive Congru- ity effect was also apparent for accented prepositional objects but it started somewhat earlier (100–220 msec, 700–1000 msec). Because of the fact that the processing of the prepositional object is affected by the congruity of the direct object earlier in the sentence, the following dis- cussion addresses only ERP patterns associated with the direct objects. DISCUSSION The current study investigated the processing of linguis- tic prosody in context, particularly whether superfluous accents on background information and missing accents on focus information evoke distinct neural mechanisms in a natural paradigm without a prosodic task. Earlier studies have shown effects that we conjectured might be because of the specific tasks used in those studies. Additional variability in the results (see Table 1) may have resulted from issues involving the presence of prosodic boundaries and the time-locking and matching of stimuli, which we controlled in the current study. The neural correlate of accentuation was evident as a broadly distributed positivity for accented elements relative to unaccented elements which started around 300 msec post onset of the direct object and 100 msec post-onset of the prepositional object. The positivity is independent of whether accent is congruent with the context or not and replicates earlier reports (Wang et al., 2011; Heim & Alter, 2006) of a positivity associated with the occurrence of a pitch accent. The effect can be interpreted as belong- ing to the P200 component for the processing of physical characteristics of accented elements or to the P300 for the attentive processing of accented elements (Heim & Alter, 2006). In our view, this effect is best described as an “accent positivity,” which consists of a sensory aspect related to the processing of acoustic features as well as of a cognitive aspect, which implies the attentive processing of prosodic prominence. The accent positivity is indepen- dent of information structure and contextual congruity and suggests that focus accent is processed in a bottom–up manner. Possibly because of our strict time-locking and stim- ulus selection procedures, we were also able to discover very early effects (around 100 msec after target onset) for incongruous prosody, even in the absence of explicit instructions to attend to prosodic aspects of the stimuli. This early congruity effect (incongruous more positive than congruous) is present for accented words, but ab- sent for unaccented words and likely reflects top–down processing of focus accent based on contextual informa- tion. Further evidence for a more elaborate processing of superfluous accents than missing ones was the negativity in the N400 time window that was triggered by super- fluous accents but was absent for missing accents. This is not to say that missing accents on focused information went unrecognized. Both missing and superfluous ac- cents triggered a late posterior positivity, resembling the P600 component. Thus, the neural response to prosodic congruity is qualitatively different between superfluous and missing accents early on, but very similar in the later P600 time window. Our results are strikingly different from those reported in most previous studies, in which a prosodic judgment task was employed. These studies found that a missing ac- cent leads to more processing difficulty than a superfluous one. However, our results are consistent with Toepel and Alter (2004), who also found evidence for a clear differ- ence between the response to focus accent, depending on whether a prosodic judgment task was used or not. When no prosodic task was used, they found a broadly dis- tributed negativity for superfluous accents (see also Wang et al., 2011). In our experiment, the superfluous accents also gave rise to a negativity. However, there were also important differences. Toepel and Alter did not find any other effect of incongruity for either superfluous or missing accents. In contrast, we found evidence for an increased processing cost in both mismatch conditions: For super- fluous accents, there was an additional early positive effect (100–220 msec); for both types of incongruity there was a late posterior positivity (700–1000 msec). The use of stim- uli which were time-locked to the onset of the accented syllable of targets might have been responsible for our di- vergent results, as well as the avoidance of phrase bound- aries in the vicinity of targets, which allowed us to provide a clearer view on the neural correlates of processing focus accent per se. Adding a Prosodic Judgment Task The present results make it clear that specific, task-related neurocognitive mechanisms are active when a prosodic task is added (Table 1; current results; Toepel & Alter, 2004). In the Introduction, it was suggested that previous findings in studies employing a prosodic judgment task can be accounted for by what we know about task-related ERP components. Under a prosodic judgment task, a missing accent has most generally elicited a biphasic N400- P600 pattern (Hruska & Alter, 2004; Toepel & Alter, 2004; 2414 Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Volume 24, Number 12 D o w n l o a d e d f r o m l l / / / / j t t f / i t . : / / h t t p : / D / o m w i n t o p a r d c e . d s f i r o l m v e h r c p h a d i i r r e . c c t . o m m / j e o d u c n o / c a n r a t r i t i c c l e e - p - d p d 2 f 4 / 1 2 2 4 / 2 1 4 2 0 / 0 2 1 4 9 0 4 0 4 / 6 1 4 8 7 7 o 8 c 5 n 0 _ 2 a / _ j 0 o 0 c 3 n 0 2 _ a p _ d 0 0 b 3 y 0 g 2 u . e p s t d o f n b 0 y 7 S M e I p T e m L i b b e r r a 2 r 0 2 i 3 e s / j / . f t u s e r o n 1 7 M a y 2 0 2 1 Hruska, Alter, Steinhauer, & Steube, 2001; but see Magne et al., 2005), whereas a superfluous accent gives rise to (i) no effect (Hruska et al., 2001), (ii) a negativity (however, only with a comprehension task, Toepel & Alter, 2004), or (iii) a late positivity (Hruska & Alter, 2004). Missing and superfluous accents both represent viola- tions of the normal alignment of prosody and informa- tion structure, namely the use of information in focus with an accent and background information without an accent. Despite this, there is an apparent asymmetry in neural processing between missing and superfluous ac- cents, which becomes clear if one considers that their detection proceeds qualitatively differently, depending on the task at hand. With a prosodic judgment task, the listener may very well exploit the linguistic context, that is, the focus elements from the question, to predict the position of focus; thus, the detection of a missing accent where one is expected provides sufficient evidence for a prosodic mismatch decision. This may give rise to an effect like the CNV, which reflects the cognitive preparation for an upcoming stimulus to which the par- ticipant must react (cf. Magne et al., 2005). This negativ- ity is often followed by a positive component called the CNV-Resolution, which is claimed to reflect executive functions that re-establish a cognitive equilibrium such as set-shifting or resetting motor programs ( Jackson et al., 1999). Thus, the negativity often found for missing accents may reflect expectation violation, and the positivity could then index the resolution of the decision process: The participant becomes aware that the expected accent is indeed missing and that the stimulus is prosodically not well formed. Processing a superfluous accent in the prosodic judg- ment task condition is different. There is no “warning” sig- nal in the context that a critical stimulus is imminent and that a choice must be made at this particular point in the sentence. The superfluous accent is unexpected and most likely creates a surprise effect that might evoke a P300-like positivity for unexpected events (Picton, 1992; Donchin & Coles, 1988) rather than a CNV-like negativity for task- related expectation mismatch. In some cases, though, the superfluous accent may, for unknown reasons, escape detection altogether (Hruska et al., 2001). In summary, the findings in earlier studies seem to us to be artifacts of the added prosodic judgment task, obscuring the processes that are operational during “normal” speech processing. Processing Prosody in Context without a Prosodic Task Without a prosodic task that can modify the effects of incongruous prosody, we still find asymmetries in the processing of missing and superfluous accents. How- ever, these seem to go in the opposite direction, with superfluous accents noticed earlier than missing ones. Superfluous accents give rise to an early positivity and an N400-like negativity, whereas no such effects are ob- tained for missing accents. This does not mean that the missing accent was “missed”: We did find a later positiv- ity in response to both missing and superfluous accents. In addition, sentences with missing accents were clearly recognized as infelicitous in our Off-line Study 2. The exact nature of the late positivity is not completely clear. It resembles a P600, which has frequently been re- ported in cases where it is difficult to create a coherent representation for various reasons (Brouwer et al., 2012; Burkhardt, 2007; Hoeks et al., 2004; Kaan et al., 2000; Hagoort, et al., 1993; Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992). In line with previous accounts, we interpret the positivity for incongruous prosody as indicating effortful processing initiated to arrive at a coherent interpretation with respect to the preceding context; we will discuss this effect more extensively below. Superfluous accents also gave rise to prominent early ef- fects, triggering an early positive effect (100–220 msec post-onset). This early congruity effect has not been re- ported before, and we believe that it was because of our straightforward time-locking procedure and the extensive matching of experimental stimuli that we were able to detect it. The exact nature of this early positivity, however, is still a puzzle. It could be related to the P200 component evoked by changes in pitch direction (Friedrich, Kotz, Friederici, & Alter, 2004), but this seems unlikely as our positivity is triggered by accented elements (congruous focus accents vs. superfluous focus accents) in physically identical sentences, which differed only with respect to the preceding context. The positivity must thus be related to the incongruity with respect to the preceding discourse context. Exploration of the functional meaning of this early positive congruity effect must await further research. Around 300 msec after the onset of a direct object with superfluous accent, a right-lateralized centro-posterior negativity was found, which resembles a standard N400 effect superimposed on the positive main effect of accen- tuation. Under the standard view of the N400 (Kutas & Hillyard, 1980), this negativity might reflect semantic inte- gration demands caused by the interpretation of the pro- sodic mismatch and straightforwardly be interpreted as an N400 effect. That is, the superfluous accent may hinder the interpretation of background information as “given” and require its reinterpretation as “new” and in focus. Al- ternatively, Dutch focus accents can be used to indicate contrast when they occur in unexpected positions (Swerts, Krahmer, & Avesani, 2002). An unexpected accent might spur listeners to construct a contrastive interpretation for the element with a superfluous accent, and because con- trast is not supported by the context, additional effort may be necessary. These effects are also very similar to ef- fects seen in response to information structure mismatches such as in the repeated name penalty (LeDoux, Camblin, Swaab, & Gordon, 2006; Gordon, Grosz, & Gilliom, 1993). Using a reference form that is more prominent and elaborate than strictly required gives rise to an increase Dimitrova et al. 2415 D o w n l o a d e d f r o m l l / / / / j t t f / i t . : / / h t t p : / D / o m w i n t o p a r d c e . d s f i r o l m v e h r c p h a d i i r r e . c c t . o m m / j e o d u c n o / c a n r a t r i t i c c l e e - p - d p d 2 f 4 / 1 2 2 4 / 2 1 4 2 0 / 0 2 1 4 9 0 4 0 4 / 6 1 4 8 7 7 o 8 c 5 n 0 _ 2 a / _ j 0 o 0 c 3 n 0 2 _ a p _ d 0 0 b 3 y 0 g 2 u . e p s t d o f n b 0 y 7 S M e I p T e m L i b b e r r a 2 r 0 2 i 3 e s / j . f / t u s e r o n 1 7 M a y 2 0 2 1 in N400. For instance, in a sentence such as “Pam washed the dishes while Pam talked about politics,” the second occurrence of Pam (underlined), in a position where a reduced form (e.g., she) is more appropriate, engenders a significantly larger N400 than in a control sentence. In a similar vein, in the current experiment the superfluous accent signals that the word contains important new in- formation (e.g., Wilson & Wharton, 2006; Gussenhoven, 2005), which turns out not to be the case. Exactly how the N400 in response to superfluous accents should be interpreted is not completely clear: it is definitely a sign of additional difficulty as discussed above, but it may merely be a signal of an information structure mismatch or it may also reflect semantic activation or reprocessing. This should be looked into in future experiments. P600 as Reanalysis of Prosodic Incongruity As we have shown, late positivities were elicited by super- fluous and missing accents in this study, which likely reflect the effortful processing of incongruous prosody aimed at salvaging an ill-formed utterance, as listeners try to make sense of what the speaker just communicated. Previous studies on prosody processing have attributed similar late positivities to the CPS (see Table 1) that is implicated in the processing of prosodic boundaries (Steinhauer & Friederici, 2001) or in the information segmentation at focus positions in context (Hruska & Alter, 2004; Toepel & Alter, 2004). Unlike these CPS positivities, the late positivity in this study is clearly related to the processing of a mismatch be- tween prosody and context and is therefore analyzed as a P600 effect. Late positivities in the current study cannot be straightforwardly interpreted as being effects of closure positivity as our stimuli were strictly controlled to avoid confounds with boundary-induced effects. As shown in Figure 3A and B, none of the experimental conditions contained any silent pauses, breaks, or pitch changes in the signal in the vicinity of targets which could have been confounded with a CPS response for prosodic parsing. Moreover, the positivities do not exclusively occur at focus positions but are elicited by both focus and background elements with incongruous prosody; thus, they cannot be exclusively attributed to focus segmentation. Importantly, the comparison of congruous and incon- gruous conditions only used physically identical stimuli, and hence contextual congruity represents the only source of the positivity. The strongest evidence that late posi- tivities in the present experiment do not reflect boundary processing is the fact that they occur not only after incon- gruously accented targets (Ladd, 1986) but also after in- congruously unaccented targets. One might assume that accented words might generate the impression of a bound- ary because of their acoustic lengthening. However, no such segmental lengthening was measured for unaccented words, and these also gave rise to late positivities in the incongruous condition. The distribution of the positive congruency effect over posterior lateral and midline elec- trodes is identical in both conditions, which represents further evidence for its similar neural source. We argue that the late positivities in our data are part of the P600 family and reflect general processes of making sense that are activated by prosodic mismatches (similar to Schumacher & Baumann, 2010). These positivities mark the workings of a general mechanism for the extended analysis of complex information, in this case prosodically misrealized information, and its integration in the discourse (e.g., Brouwer et al., 2012; Hoeks, Hendriks, Redeker, & Stowe, 2010; Burkhardt, 2007). A number of the studies reported in the literature have found late positivities for prosodic mismatches (see Table 1), regardless of whether a prosodic task was carried out, which suggests that the presence of a prosodic task is not the main source of the late positivity, though future research using strictly con- trolled materials will be needed to determine whether this is the case. Conclusion The current study has demonstrated that when listeners are not engaged in a conscious prosodic judgment task, they respond more strongly to accented background in- formation than to unaccented focus information, and that this response is quite early (100 msec). This is not to say that listeners are unaware of missing accents as they clearly react to the incongruity of both sorts of contextual mismatch in a later stage of processing, underlining the importance of prosodic information to normal process- ing and integration of incoming information into the discourse context. Unlike previous studies in which a prosodic judgment task was used, however, our partici- pants did not find that “less is more.” Acknowledgments This work was supported by an Ubbo Emmius Grant awarded to Diana V. Dimitrova. We would like to thank the three anony- mous reviewers for their insightful suggestions, Ryan Taylor for technical assistance, and Myrte Gosen and Albert Everaarts for lending their voices to create the stimuli. Reprint requests should be sent to Diana V. Dimitrova, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Centre for Cog- nitive Neuroimaging, Kapittelweg 29, 6525 EN Nijmegen, The Netherlands, or via e-mail: d.dimitrova@donders.ru.nl. Notes 1. The Accent × Hemisphere interaction was marginally sig- nificant, F(1, 28) = 3.569, p = .07, reflecting a trend for accented elements to be more negative than unaccented elements on electrodes over the left hemisphere. 2. A number of marginal effects was found, including a main effect of Accent on lateral electrodes, F(1, 28) = 4.027, p = .06, because of a positivity for accented prepositional objects and an 2416 Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Volume 24, Number 12 D o w n l o a d e d f r o m l l / / / / j f / t t i t . : / / h t t p : / D / o m w i n t o p a r d c e . d s f i r o l m v e h r c p h a d i i r r e . c c t . o m m / j e o d u c n o / c a n r a t r i t i c c l e e - p - d p d 2 f 4 / 1 2 2 4 / 2 1 4 2 0 / 0 2 1 4 9 0 4 0 4 / 6 1 4 8 7 7 o 8 c 5 n 0 _ 2 a / _ j 0 o 0 c 3 n 0 2 _ a p _ d 0 0 b 3 y 0 g 2 u . e p s t d o f n b 0 y 7 S M e I p T e m L i b b e r r a 2 r 0 2 i 3 e s / j . / f t u s e r o n 1 7 M a y 2 0 2 1 interaction of Accent × Congruity × Anteriority × Hemisphere, F(2, 56) = 3.315, p = .06, most probably because of missing accents giving rise to a positivity on right anterior and central sites and to a negativity on right posterior sites. REFERENCES Baayen, H. 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Journal of Pragmatics, 38, 1559–1579. D o w n l o a d e d f r o m l l / / / / j f / t t i t . : / / h t t p : / D / o m w i n t o p a r d c e . d s f i r o l m v e h r c p h a d i i r r e . c c t . o m m / j e o d u c n o / c a n r a t r i t i c c l e e - p - d p d 2 f 4 / 1 2 2 4 / 2 1 4 2 0 / 0 2 1 4 9 0 4 0 4 / 6 1 4 8 7 7 o 8 c 5 n 0 _ 2 a / _ j 0 o 0 c 3 n 0 2 _ a p _ d 0 0 b 3 y 0 g 2 u . e p s t d o f n b 0 y 7 S M e I p T e m L i b b e r r a 2 r 0 2 i 3 e s / j / t . f u s e r o n 1 7 M a y 2 0 2 1 2418 Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Volume 24, Number 12

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