Negation and Inhibition

Our understanding of the neural and cognitive foundations of representing and understanding sentential negation is sparse. Recently, Beltrán, Muñetón-Ayala, and de Vega (2018) proposed that understanding sentential negation might reuse the neural circuitry of response inhibition. Consequently, they argued that the processing of negative sentences should consume inhibitory resources. Since inhibitory resources are limited, they hypothesized that processing negative sentences (compared to processing affirmative sentences) would result in a reduced efficiency regarding response inhibition behavior. To test this assumption, Beltrán et al. applied the stop-signal paradigm. While reading hand-related action sentences (polarity: negative vs. affirmative) in a word-by-word manner, the participants received a go signal. In some of the trials, this go signal was followed by a stop signal, demanding the inhibition of the response to the go signal. As expected, the estimated stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) was significantly longer in trials with negative sentences than in trials with affirmative sentences, indicating that response inhibition was less efficient in negative sentences. In the light of the current debate on the importance of replicating effects reported in the literature, we aimed at reproducing the described findings. The materials and the procedure stayed the same, except that we translated the sentences into German.