On the processing of pragmatic information: ERP effects of emphasis processing

This study investigates the pragmatic processing of emphasis using the event-related potential (ERP) technique. Participant reads one-character and two-character mini-discourses, wherein the target name is either emphasised or not. Firstly, results show that the emphasised name elicited a larger P2 than the non-emphasised name, which suggests that emphasis modulates the attention of readers. Secondly, the emphasised name elicited a larger P300 than the non-emphasised name, which suggests that emphasis enhances online discourse integration. The emphasised condition on the sentence-final word elicited a smaller P300 than the non-emphasised condition in the two-character discourse, but not in the one-character discourse. This result suggests that the integration of emphasis information is facilitated by a contrastive character. Thus, the effect of emphasis may occur after the onset of the target word and end late with the integration of discourse information on the sentence-final words, which suggests that pragmatic processing is flexible.