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Presupposition Processing andthe (Re)activation of NegatedConceptsKevin S. Autrya & William H. Levinea

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Presupposition Processing and the(Re)activation of Negated Concepts

Kevin S. Autry and William H. LevineDepartment of Psychology

University of Arkansas

Negated words take longer to recognize than non-negated words following

sentences with negation, suggesting that negated concepts are less active. The

present experiments tested the possibility that this reduced activation would not

persist beyond immediate testing. Experiment 1 used a probe task and materials

similar to those used in previous research but manipulated the timing of the probe.

The negation effect was present at 0ms, replicating previous studies, but not at

500ms or 1,000ms, suggesting that unlicensed negated concepts are initially

reduced in activation but then reactivated by presuppositional processing.

Experiment 2 produced similar results when activation was measured during

ongoing comprehension and reading time was controlled, and Experiment 3

demonstrated that these effects occur when negation is unlicensed but not when it is

licensed. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the reduced

activation seen from unlicensed negation is short-lived.

INTRODUCTION

Early research on the processing of negation demonstrated that verifying the truth

of a sentence against pictures (Clark & Chase, 1972; Gough, 1961; Just &

Carpenter, 1971) or general world knowledge (Sherman, 1973; Wason, 1961)

takes more time when the sentence contains a semantic negation (e.g., no, not)

535

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kevin S. Autry, Department of

Psychology, University of Arkansas, Memorial Hall 216, Fayetteville, AR 72702, USA. E-mail:

[email protected]

Discourse Processes, 51:535–564, 2014

Copyright q Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 0163-853X print/1532-6950 online

DOI: 10.1080/0163853X.2013.871192

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mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2013.871192

compared with an equivalent affirmative sentence. Negation not only delays

verification but also leads to longer reading times than affirmatives (Glenberg,

Robertson, Jansen, & Johnson-Glenberg, 1999). These effects on verification and

reading times can both be attributed to the processes involved in representing

negation. For example, to comprehend the sentence in (1),

(1) The star isn’t above the plus

(2) above (star, plus)

(3) : above (star, plus)

the reader would first need to extract the proposition representing the affirmative

state of affairs that is being denied by the negation, as in (2). Only after this

proposition is constructed would the reader be able to attach a negation operator

(i.e., : ) to reverse the truth value of the proposition, as in (3). Neither of these steps

is necessary for comprehending an affirmative statement and can therefore account

for the slower verification and reading times demonstrated in the literature.

In addition to reversing the truth value of a proposition, the negation operator

also appears to limit the activation of concepts within its scope by shifting focus

elsewhere (MacDonald & Just, 1989). Therefore, the affirmative state of affairs

should be less active when the sentence is negated than when it is non-negated

(i.e., a negation effect).1 Several studies have provided support for this negation

effect, the most prominent being the results reported by MacDonald and Just. In

their study, subjects read sentences in which one of two direct objects was

negated (e.g., Almost every weekend, Elizabeth bakes bread but no cookies) and

immediately completed a probe recognition or naming task in which the probe

was either the negated (e.g., cookies) or non-negated noun (e.g., bread). On both

measures, subjects took less time to respond to concepts when they were non-

negated than when they were negated. Based on the assumption of the probe tasks

that speed of responding is a function of the activation level of the probe word,

these results suggest the negated concepts were less active in the subjects’ mental

representation of the sentences than the non-negated concepts.

A similar study by Kaup (2001) provided further evidence for the negation

effect. In one experiment, subjects read passages that included a sentence

describing the creation of one item but not another (e.g., Sarah is building a chair

but not a table2), followed by a probe recognition task in which the probes were

the direct objects of the target sentence. The results replicated those of

MacDonald and Just (1989): A negation effect emerged such that subjects were

1It is worth noting that although the negated concept should be reduced in activation, it should still

be more active than an unmentioned baseline (see ironic suppression, e.g., Wegner & Erber, 1992).2This is translated from the original German used by Kaup (2001).

536 AUTRY AND LEVINE

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faster to respond to the non-negated than the negated nouns, providing

converging evidence that negation limits the activation of concepts within its

scope. In a second experiment using the same methodology, subjects read

sentences that described the destruction of one item but not another (e.g., Peter

burns the old bed but not the big cupboard). In the case of destruction sentences,

there was still a negation effect, but it was reduced in magnitude compared with

the creation sentences. This suggests the presence of the negation operator and

what is asserted by a sentence each influence the activation of a negated concept.

In the case of a creation sentence like Sarah is building a chair but not a table,

what is asserted is a situation in which a chair is present or will be soon but in

which there is no table. Kaup argued this situational presence (cf. van Dijk &

Kintsch, 1983; Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998) was critical for the negation effect to

emerge. By contrast, in the case of a destruction sentence like Peter burns the bed

but not the cupboard, what is asserted is a situation in which a cupboard continues

to exist but a bed will soon no longer exist. In the latter case, the still-present

negation effect was proposed by Kaup to be due to the negation operator making

information within its scope less accessible, but the reduction in size of the

negation effect was attributed to the imminent nonexistence of the bed.

Although these and other studies (e.g., Hasson & Glucksberg, 2006; Kaup &

Zwaan, 2003) have provided evidence that negated concepts are represented at a

reduced level of activation, an idea proposed Levine and Hagaman (2008), the

pragmatic-inference hypothesis, predicts that contextual factors may lead to

negated concepts being just as active as non-negated concepts (for similar

proposals see Giora, Fein, Aschkenazi, & Alkabets-Zlozover, 2007; Nieuwland

& Kuperberg, 2008; Tian, Breheny, & Ferguson, 2010). For example, consider

the statement, Carol made a cake but not a pie. Without a context that

presupposes the baking of a pie either explicitly (e.g., Carol previously stated her

intention to make a pie) or implicitly (e.g., Carol is known for making pies), the

negation is unlicensed. This makes the statement seem infelicitous, because it

violates Grice’s (1975) maxims of quantity and relevance (e.g., there is no reason

to deny that Carol made a pie unless there was an expectation that Carol would

make a pie). The unlicensed negation predicates new information of Carol that is

underinformative because if Carol did not make a pie, then the truth of the

sentence is consistent with essentially an infinite number of states of reality.

Moreover, using negation to provide (underinformative) new information is

pragmatically odd (cf. Grice, 1975).

Because we expect people to include only relevant information in their

statements (Grice, 1975; Sperber & Wilson, 1986), when an underinformative

negation is used to introduce new information, one must infer the presupposition

that is being denied (e.g., that Carol had planned to make a pie) (Levine &

Hagaman, 2008; Tian et al., 2010). This processing is necessary for the

communication to remain coherent, but it comes at a cost: Additional processing

(RE)ACTIVATION OF NEGATED CONCEPTS 537

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must occur to infer the presupposition. This processing should increase the

activation of the negated concept, which is a component of the presupposition

being inferred, returning the negated concept closer to the activation level of non-

negated concepts. This general idea that context (or lack thereof) plays an

important role in the representation of negated concepts is not without precedent.

In fact, many studies have shown that sentences containing negation are

processed differently when they appear in isolation than when they appear in a

context with a relevant presupposition (Beukeboom, Finkenauer, & Wigboldus,

2010; Green, 1970; Johnson-Laird & Tridgell, 1973; Nieuwland & Kuperberg,

2008; Nieuwland & Martin, 2012; Tian et al., 2010; Wason, 1965).

Levine and Hagaman (2008) tested the pragmatic-inference hypothesis by

having subjects read short passages with a sentence containing two items from

the same taxonomic category or two items from different taxonomic categories,

as in (1a) and (1b) below. Each of these sentences was followed by an identical

reference sentence like (2) below that referred back to the non-negated concept

with a categorical anaphor.

(1a) Justin bought a mango but not an apple.

(1b) Justin bought a mango but not any water.

(2) He ate the fruit in his kitchen.

The reference sentence took longer to read when it was preceded by two items

from the same taxonomic category than when the items were from different

taxonomic categories. This reading time difference suggests that subjects were

considering the category-consistent, negated concepts (e.g., apple) as potential

antecedents, despite them being negated, and the availability of these negated

concepts for anaphoric reference suggests that they remained active (see also

Shuval & Hemforth, 2008). In a second experiment, subjects read passages like

those above in which the reference sentence’s presence was manipulated (i.e., a

sentence like (2) was present only half the time); at the end of the experiment,

subjects were given a surprise cued recall task using the anaphoric category labels

(e.g., fruit) as cues. Subjects were equally likely to recall negated and non-

negated concepts that were not referred to anaphorically and more likely to recall

negated concepts that had served as a distractor during anaphoric processing (as

in (1a) above) than non-negated concepts that were not referred to. These results

indicate that negated concepts were considered as anaphoric referents in manner

similar to non-negated distractors (e.g., Levine, Guzman, & Klin, 2000), which

demonstrates that negated concepts can persist at high levels of activation.

Given the hypothesis that additional inferential processing of presuppositions

will occur for unlicensed negation, the time at which the activation of the concept

is measured should be an important factor. At least two studies on this kind of

inferential processing have demonstrated that the processing of a sentence’s


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implicit presuppositions is completed after the processing of its assertions

(Hornby, 1974; Langford & Holmes, 1979) rather than before. It is unclear in the

existing literature whether this occurs because inferential processing is a serial

process (e.g., presupposition processing begins after assertion processing is

completed) or a simultaneous process (e.g., presupposition and assertion

processing begin at the same time, but presupposition processing takes longer to

complete). For the present purposes, we assume that presupposition processing is

not completed until some point after assertion processing. This should cause the

activation level of the negated concept to vary across time. In a sentence like Tina

prepared a lecture but not an activity, sometime after the negation occurs,

processing what is asserted (i.e., a lecture was prepared but not an activity) should

result in a shift of activation away from the negated concept (Kaup, 2001;

MacDonald & Just, 1989). At a later point, inferring the presuppositions

associated with the negation (e.g., was there an expectation that an activity would

be prepared?) should shift attention back to the negated concept because it is part

of the presupposition. Therefore, if activation is measured at an early point when

assertion processing is complete and presupposition processing is not, negated

concepts should be represented at a lower level of activation than non-negated

concepts. However, if activation is measured later, after presupposition

processing has been allowed to run to completion, then there should be a

reduced or negligible difference in the activation level of negated and non-

negated concepts.

Both experiments by Levine and Hagaman (2008) measured the activation of

negated concepts after a delay, allowing sufficient time for the presupposition

processing to increase the concept’s activation level. A related study by Autry

and Levine (2012) provided further evidence that negated concepts become

reactivated after a delay. In one experiment, subjects read a short context (e.g.,

Justin got up early to exercise. He jogged and stopped at the store afterward.)

followed by a sentence containing negation (e.g., Justin bought a mango but not

an apple) or not (e.g., Justin bought a mango and an apple). After reading,

subjects wrote a single-sentence continuation; this offline task likely provided

sufficient time for presupposition processing to occur. The continuations revealed

that the subjects wrote about concepts more often when they had been negated

than when they had been non-negated. The higher frequency of producing the

negated concepts suggests they were more active than non-negated concepts,

providing an even stronger demonstration of the pragmatic-inference hypothesis.

Given these findings, the present experiments were designed to systematically

assess the effects of processing time on the activation of negated concepts

following unlicensed negation. The first experiment replicated and extended

MacDonald and Just’s (1989) research. Using similar materials and procedures,

the activation level of the negated concepts was measured at various delays after

comprehension was completed to assess changes across time. The second


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experiment used a modified procedure with better control over timing to assess

the activation level of negated concepts during rather than after comprehension.

The third experiment was designed to examine the effect of licensing context on

the representation of negation.

EXPERIMENT 1

Experiment 1 used materials similar to those used in MacDonald and Just’s

(1989) experiments but also systematically varied the delay between the end of

the sentence and a probe recognition task. Subjects read single experimental

sentences (Table 1) that contained two direct objects, neither of which was

negated (e.g., Every Friday Tina prepared a lecture and an activity for her

students), a similar sentence in which Noun1 (i.e., the first direct object) was

negated (e.g., Every Friday Tina prepared not a lecture but only an activity for

her students), or a similar sentence in which Noun2 (i.e., the second direct object)

was negated (e.g. Every Friday Tina prepared a lecture but not an activity for her

students). After reading each experimental sentence, subjects completed a probe

recognition task in which they verified whether or not a given word was presented

in the sentence. The probe words were either Noun1 or Noun2 and were

presented 0ms, 500ms, or 1,000ms after the subject finished reading a sentence.

The sentence type and probe word manipulations were within subjects and the

delay manipulation was between subjects. Additionally, subjects verified a

comprehension statement (e.g., Tina prepared a lecture for her students) after

each sentence to ensure they were reading carefully.

TABLE 1

Sample Passages From Experiment 1

Experimental passage

Noun1 Negated

Every Friday Tina prepared not a lecture but only an activity for her students.

Noun2 Negated

Every Friday Tina prepared a lecture but not an activity for her students.

No Negation

Every Friday Tina prepared a lecture and an activity for her students.

Probe Words

Noun1: LECTURE

Noun2: ACTIVITY

Filler passages

A well-known critic, Isabella reviewed books and movies for the local newspaper.

Probe: MOVIES

While waiting at the DMV, Chloe made an origami crane out of scrap paper.

Probe: FROG


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The levels of the delay manipulation were chosen so the longest delay (i.e.,

1,000ms) was long enough after the time at which MacDonald and Just’s (1989)

probe task occurred (i.e., immediately after reading) that presupposition processing

should be complete. Evidence that the full processing of negation takes about

1,000ms after reading to run to completion comes from Hasson and Glucksberg’s

(2006) research, in which negative metaphors (e.g., The train to Boston is no

rocket) were shown to facilitate metaphor-incompatible meanings (e.g., fast) at

short delays (i.e., 150 and 500ms after reading) but that 1,000ms after reading only

ametaphor-compatiblemeaning (e.g., slow)was facilitated. The 500-ms delaywas

chosen as the halfway point between the 0-ms and 1,000-ms delay to provide

interim information about presupposition processing. It was hypothesized that if

presupposition processing is completed within 1,000ms and if this processing

counteracts the reduced activation that occurs during assertion processing, subjects

should have longer recognition times for negated concepts only when the probe

recognition task occurs before the completion of presupposition processing,

creating a negation by delay interaction. On this basis, it was expected that in the 0-

ms delay condition, subjects would respond slower to probe words when they were

negated in the statement than when they were non-negated, replicating the findings

of MacDonald and Just. If presupposition processing has run to completion by

1,000ms, negated entities should have been reactivated,making them equally if not

more active than non-negated entities at the 1,000-ms delay.

Methods

Subjects

One hundred sixty-eight students enrolled in a general psychology course at the

University of Arkansas participated in the experiment to partially fulfill a

research requirement. All subjects were native-English speakers.

Materials and Design

Forty-two experimental sentences appeared in one of three conditions (Table 1).

Each sentence presented a character by proper name (half stereotypically male,

half stereotypically female) followed by a past-tense action verb and a compound

direct object with two nouns that were selected to be of similar length but not

close semantic associates. The sentences were manipulated such that negation

occurred for the first direct object (Noun1 Negated), the second direct object

(Noun2 Negated), or neither direct object (No Negation). In addition, there were

58 filler sentences. About half of these filler sentences had syntactic structures

similar to the three experimental conditions, whereas the rest varied the number

of negations and syntactic structure to help mask the manipulation. In addition,

each experimental and filler sentence had a comprehension statement (e.g., Tina


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prepared a lecture), half of which required a “yes” response and half of which

required a “no” response.

Subjects saw each experimental sentence in one of the delay conditions along

with all filler sentences. Twelve counterbalanced lists of experimental sentences

were created within each of three delay conditions (i.e., 0-, 500-, and 1,000-ms

delay) with the following constraints: One-third of the experimental sentences in

a list were of each sentence condition (Noun1 Negated, Noun2 Negated, and No

Negation), and half of the nouns probed in each sentence condition were Noun1

and half were Noun2. Furthermore, across lists, each sentence appeared in each

sentence condition one-third of the time, half the time with Noun1 being probed

and half the time with Noun2 being probed. The experimental trials never

contained a probe requiring a “no” response (i.e., new words). To ensure that each

recognition answer occurred equally often, most filler trials contained probes

requiring a “no” response. Finally, a second set of experimental materials was

created that reversed the order of the nouns, such that Noun1 and Noun2 switched

position. Thus, each subject was presented with 100 total trials, with half of the

probes and comprehension statements requiring “yes” responses and half

requiring “no” responses. The manipulation of the factors of theoretical interest

resulted in a design that was 3 (sentence: Noun1 Negated, Noun2 Negated, No

Negation) £ 2 (probe word: Noun1, Noun2) £ 3 (delay: 0ms, 500ms, 1,000ms),

with the latter being manipulated between subjects.

Procedure

Before the experiment, subjects completed three practice blocks to familiarize

themselves with the response keys and the probe recognition and comprehension

tasks. During the experiment, each trial consisted of a sentence, a probe word,

and a comprehension statement. At the beginning of each trial, subjects were

given the instruction “PRESS THE SPACEBAR WHEN READY.” The full

experimental or filler sentence then appeared centered on the screen and

remained until the subject pressed the spacebar to indicate they had finished

reading. After each experimental sentence, subjects were presented with a probe

word that was either Noun1 or Noun2. After each filler sentence, the probe word

was any word from the sentence or a false (i.e., new) probe. The probes were

presented either 0ms, 500ms, or 1,000ms (manipulated between subjects) after

the subject pressed the spacebar, and subjects indicated whether the probe word

had occurred in the sentence with a “yes” or “no” key press. Each trial concluded

with subjects responding to a comprehension statement.

The experimental session consisted of 100 trials (42 experimental, 58 filler) in

four blocks of 25 trials. The order of the blocks and the order of the trials within

blocks were randomized with the restriction that the first statement of each block

was a filler. Subjects were instructed to read the sentences as they normally would


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for comprehension and to respond to the probe words as quickly and accurately as

possible. The experiment lasted 30 to 45 minutes.

Results

Data Exclusion and General Analytic Considerations

For each subject, all correct probe reaction times greater than 2,000ms and less

than 400ms were classified as outliers, as were correct probe reaction times that

were more than 1.5 times the interquartile range above the 75th percentile or less

than the 25th percentile for that subject (Tukey, 1977). The data from 20 subjects

were excluded from further analysis due to having fewer than 75% usable (i.e.,

accurate and non-outlying) probe responses on experimental items (n ¼ 12) or

having probe accuracy of less than 75% on both filler and experimental items

(n ¼ 8). There remained 51 subjects in the 0-ms delay condition, 49 in the 500-

ms delay condition, and 48 in the 1,000-ms delay condition. For these subjects,

8.7% of probe reaction times were excluded from further analysis as outliers. For

all experiments reported in this article, subject and item condition means were

analyzed separately; a subscript of 1 indicates that subjects were treated as a

random variable, whereas a subscript of 2 indicates that items were treated as a

random variable. For all significance tests, an alpha level of .05 was used. For all

repeated-measures effects with more than one numerator df, Huynh-Feldt

adjusted p values are reported to correct for sphericity violations. Effect-size

measures that are reported are based on subjects’ analyses.

Comprehension Statements

Overall comprehension for experimental items across all conditions and subjects

was 89.9%. There was little variation in comprehension as a function of the

experimental manipulations. Across delays comprehension was virtually

constant: 89.4% at 0ms, 90.1% at 500ms, and 90.2% at 1,000ms. A 3

(sentence: Noun1 Negated, Noun2 Negated, No Negation) £ 2 (probe: Noun1,

Noun2) £ 3 (delay: 0, 500, 1,000ms) mixed-factor ANOVA with repeated-

measures on the first two factors in the subject analysis and on all three factors in

the item analysis showed no significant main effects or interactions (all F , 2.5,

all p . .09).

Recognition Probes

0-ms delay. Reaction time means as a function of sentence condition and

noun probed appear in Figure 1 (see also Table 2). The results closely resemble

those reported by MacDonald and Just (1989, Experiment 1), with response times

to negated nouns being slower than when the same nouns were not negated. A 3


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(sentence: Noun1 negated, Noun2 negated, no negation) £ 2 (probe: Noun1,

Noun2) repeated-measures ANOVA showed a significant sentence-by-probe

interaction, F1(2, 100) ¼ 26.24, p , .001, F2(2, 166) ¼ 24.56, p , .001,

h2p ¼ .34. The main effect of sentence was not significant, F1(2, 100) ¼ 1.09,

p ¼ .34, F2 , 1, but the effect of probe was in the by-items analysis and nearly so

in the by-subject analysis, F1(1, 50) ¼ 3.36, p ¼ .07, F2(1, 83) ¼ 5.26, p ¼ .02,

h2p ¼ .06.

Response times to Noun1 when it was negated (M ¼ 936ms, SE ¼ 23.5) were

significantly slower than when it was not negated (M ¼ 866ms, SE ¼ 21.0),

t1(50) ¼ 4.06, p , .001, t2(83) ¼ 3.61, p ¼ .001, d ¼ 0.57. The same pattern,

albeit with a slightly smaller effect, emerged for Noun2, with significantly slower

response times when it was negated (M ¼ 907ms, SE ¼ 19.6) than when it was

not negated (M ¼ 870ms, SE ¼ 21.6), t1(50) ¼ 2.50, p ¼ .02, t2(83) ¼ 2.45,

p ¼ .02, d ¼ 0.35.

Experimental probe-response accuracies as a function of sentence condition

and noun probed appear in Table 2. Although accuracies were in general quite

high (i.e., over 95% in all conditions), the results mirror the reaction-time data in

that accuracy was lowest where reaction time was longest and highest where

reaction time was shortest. Thus, there is no evidence of a speed–accuracy trade-

off. A 3 (sentence: Noun1 Negated, Noun2 Negated, No Negation) £ 2 (probe:

Noun1, Noun2) repeated-measures ANOVA revealed no significant main effects

FIGURE 1 Mean correct-probe reaction times for Noun1 and Noun2 by sentence type in

Experiment 1. Error bars represent ^1 SE, computed based on recommendations by Loftus and

Masson (1994).


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(all p . .10), but the interaction of sentence and probe was significant, F1(2,

100) ¼ 14.39, p , .001, F2(2, 166) ¼ 11.31, p , .001, h2p ¼ .22.

500-ms and 1,000-ms delay. In the 500- and 1,000-ms delay conditions

(Table 2), the critical sentence-by-probe interactions were nonsignificant, all

F , 1.8, indicating that the effect of negation on probe response time is not long-

lasting. The only effect to emerge in these two longer-delay conditions was a

significant main effect of sentence in the 500-ms condition, F1(2, 96) ¼ 4.00,

p ¼ .07, F2(2, 166) ¼ 2.74, p ¼ .02, h2p ¼ .08, due primarily to generally longer

response times following Noun2-negated sentences. In no case was the negation

effect significant (all p . .18).

Experimental probe-response accuracies for the 500-ms and 1,000-ms delay

conditions as a function of sentence condition and noun probed appear in Table 2.

In the 500-ms delay condition, no effects were significant (all p . .15). In the

1,000-ms condition, there was a significant sentence-by-noun interaction,

F1(2, 94) ¼ 3.89, p ¼ .02, F2(2, 166) ¼ 4.00, p ¼ .02, h2p ¼ .08, reflecting that

accuracy for Noun1 in the No Negation condition and for Noun2 in the Noun2

Negated condition were lower than the other four conditions. Because there is no

TABLE 2

Mean Correct-Probe Reaction Times (RT; in ms) and Accuracy (Acc; in %) as a Function of

Condition in Experiment 1 (Standard Error)

Probe Word

Noun1 Noun2

RT Acc RT Acc

Delay ¼ 0ms

Sentence

No Negation 866 (22) 97.8 (0.7) 870 (23) 95.8 (0.9)

Noun1 Negated 936 (24) 96.6 (0.9) 826 (22) 99.7 (0.3)

Noun2 Negated 850 (24) 99.7 (0.3) 907 (23) 95.0 (1.2)

Delay ¼ 500ms

Sentence

No Negation 771 (18) 98.0 (1.2) 783 (19) 96.8 (1.0)

Noun1 Negated 793 (21) 95.9 (1.2) 776 (18) 98.3 (0.8)

Noun2 Negated 815 (20) 95.6 (1.3) 799 (22) 95.6 (1.0)

Delay ¼ 1,000ms

Sentence

No Negation 863 (28) 94.6 (1.3) 880 (28) 97.9 (0.8)

Noun1 Negated 888 (28) 97.6 (0.8) 867 (30) 97.6 (0.9)

Noun2 Negated 849 (28) 97.3 (0.8) 880 (28) 94.6 (1.2)


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evidence of a speed–accuracy trade-off and because this effect does not map onto

any theoretical predictions, we did not attempt to interpret it.

Combined reaction-time analyses. To verify the negation effect that was

present at the 0-ms delay was reduced at the longer delays, we first conducted a 3

(sentence: Noun1 Negated, Noun2 Negated, No Negation) £ 2 (probe: Noun1,

Noun2) £ 3 (delay: 0, 500, 1,000ms)mixed-factorANOVAwith repeatedmeasures

on the first two factors in the subject analysis and on all three factors in the item

analysis. The sentence-by-probe interaction was significant, F1(2, 290) ¼ 12.92,

p , .001, F2(2, 162) ¼ 9.45, p , .001, h2p ¼ .08, reflecting that the pattern across

all three delays generally showed a negation effect like that seen at the 0-ms delay,

although itwas clearly reduced inmagnitude at the longer delays. This observation is

verified by the three-factor interaction’s significance, F1(4, 290) ¼ 5.35, p , .001,

F2(4, 324) ¼ 5.16, p ¼ .001, h2p ¼ .07, providing strong statistical support for the

claim that the negation effect was reduced at the longer delays.

To provide further statistical support for this claim, for each subject and each

item a Noun1 and a Noun2 negation effect was computed by subtracting non-

negated reaction times from negated reaction times, such that positive values

indicated slower responding when a noun was negated (Figure 2), and a contrast

was computed to compare the 0-ms negation effect to the combined 500- and

1,000-ms effect. The negation effect for Noun1 was significantly larger by

subjects at 0ms than it was at the later delays, t1(145) ¼ 2.28, p ¼ .02, although

not by items, t2(83) ¼ 1.59, p ¼ .12. Despite the same pattern and clearly

declining negation effect as delay increased, the same contrast was not significant

for Noun2, t(145) ¼ 1.30, p ¼ .20, t2(81)3 ¼ 0.94, p ¼ .35. This difference

between noun positions may have been due to the atypical sentence constructions

FIGURE 2 Negation effect for Noun1 and Noun2 by delay in Experiment 1. Error bars represent

þ1 SE for the Negation–No Negation difference score.


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used in the experiment. Although the sentences were based on MacDonald and

Just’s (1989) materials, the structure of the Noun1 Negated condition (i.e., no X

but only Y) is awkward in English. This may lead to additional processing of the

negated concepts in the Noun1 position and may explain why the Noun1 negation

effect is larger than that of Noun2.

In the three-factor ANOVA, there was also a significant main effect of delay,

F1(2, 145) ¼ 5.60, p ¼ .005, F2(2, 162) ¼ 89.25, p , .001. Pairwise compari-

sons using Tukey’s HSD revealed that reaction times in the 500-ms delay

(M ¼ 789ms, SE ¼ 20.6) were significantly shorter than either the 0-ms delay

(M ¼ 876, SE ¼ 20.2) or the 1,000-ms delay (M ¼ 871, SE ¼ 20.8), which

were not significantly different from each other.

Discussion

Overall, the results of Experiment 1 confirm the prediction that the negation

effect changes across time. As hypothesized, a negation effect was evident at a

delay of 0ms, with subjects responding slower to concepts when they had been

negated than when they had not been negated, replicating the findings of

MacDonald and Just (1989) and Kaup (2001). This result suggests that at the end

of the negation sentence, the processing of the sentence’s assertions shifts

activation away from the negated concepts to create a representation consistent

with the actual state of affairs asserted in the sentence.

However, the negation effect was not significant at a delay of 500 or 1,000ms.

This finding suggests the negation effect found immediately after the sentence is

counteracted by presupposition processing, consistent with the hypothesis that

the reduction in activation is short-lived. Although the reaction time difference

for negated and non-negated concepts was not significant at 500 or 1,000ms, this

small negation effect was even smaller at 1,000ms than at 500ms, suggesting

that further reactivation of the negated concepts occurred between the 500- and

1,000-ms delays. Thus, it appears that presupposition processing begins within

500ms of the end of a sentence and continues between 500 and 1,000ms after the

sentence. Because the activation level of the concepts was not measured beyond

1,000ms, it is unclear whether presupposition processing is complete by

1,000ms or if it continues. It is possible, given the pattern of reactivation, that if

presupposition processing continues beyond 1,000ms, then the negated concepts

could become even more active than non-negated concepts (cf. Autry & Levine,

2012).

3Two items had no correct, non-outlying observations in the Noun2 Negated, 1,000-ms delay

condition, resulting in the loss of 2 df.


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In addition, an unexpected effect emerged in the mean reaction times across

delays. Subjects responded significantly faster to the probe words at the 500-ms

delay compared with the 0-ms delay. One explanation for faster responses after a

delay is that subjects are still engaging in sentence wrap-up processing at 0ms

(cf. Klin, 1995). From this perspective, subjects’ responses at the 1,000-ms delay

condition should be equally fast or faster than at the 500-ms delay because they

had even more time to finish processing the sentence. However, reaction times at

the 1,000-ms delay were significantly longer than at the 500-ms delay, reverting

back to about the same times seen at the 0-ms delay. These results are more

consistent with the possibility that the reaction time differences seen across

delays were caused by the allocation of subjects’ attention. It may be that 500ms

allows subjects sufficient time to shift their attention from processing the

sentence to responding to the probe task, but that 1,000ms is too long and

subjects’ attention begins to shift away when a full second elapsed between the

end of the sentence and the presentation of the probe word. The increased

reaction times might therefore reflect the need for subjects to return their

attention to the probe task; however, this post-hoc explanation cannot be verified

with the current data. Whatever the cause of the fluctuation in reaction time

across delays, it complicates interpretation of the change in activation level of

negated concepts across time. Whereas the negation effect clearly diminished

with time, we are unable to argue strongly that activation of the negated concepts

increased as more time for presupposition processing accrued. Experiment 2 was

designed with changes in methodology to more tightly control the timing of the

probe task and subjects’ attention, with the goal being to allow a clearer view of

the change in activation of negated concepts as time passes.

EXPERIMENT 2

Experiment 2 was designed to examine the representation of negated concepts

during comprehension to extend and clarify the findings of Experiment 1, in

which the probe task occurred only after comprehension. In this experiment, the

materials from Experiment 1 were modified by adding an additional sentence to

each passage so that subjects would continue reading after the end of the first

sentence and the presentation of the probe word. Additionally, the sentences were

presented word by word at a fixed pace, enabling the probe word, which was

restricted to Noun1 in this experiment, to occur at predetermined intervals within

the second sentence. These intervals were selected to be similar to the delays in

Experiment 1. These modifications controlled for individual differences in

reading speed by imposing a constant time between Noun1 and the probe word

and allowed the manipulation of the probe delay within subjects. Moreover,

because the probe task occurred during rather than after comprehension, subjects’


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attention should be more or less equivalent across the different delays. This

should allow a cleaner comparison of reaction times at the different delays.

It was expected that probing concepts during comprehension would produce

results similar to Experiment 1, with the exception that there should be no main

effect of the probe positions. As in Experiment 1, negated concepts were

expected to be less active than non-negated concepts in the probe position

analogous to the 0-ms delay (i.e., at the end of the first sentence), but this negation

effect was not expected at the probe positions corresponding to the 500- and

1,000-ms delays (i.e., after the second and third word of the second sentence,

respectively). Furthermore, it was hypothesized that over time non-negated

concepts would decrease in activation and negated concepts would increase in

activation as assertion processing gives way to presupposition processing.

Methods

Subjects

Seventy-two students enrolled in a general psychology course at the University

of Arkansas participated in the experiment to partially fulfill a research

requirement. All subjects were native-English speakers and had not participated

in Experiment 1.


The 42 sentences from Experiment 1’s Noun1 Negated and Noun2 Negated

conditions were used. These were then revised to include a second sentence that

did not refer to either of the first-sentence direct objects in its first several words

to avoid reactivating the concepts before the presentation of the probe word

(Table 3). Typically, this was done by using a fronted adverbial phrase (e.g.,

Usually during lunchtime). Because the negation effect was more pronounced for

Noun1 than for Noun2 in Experiment 1, the probe words for experimental items

were restricted to Noun1 only. This meant that the same probe word (i.e., Noun1)

was always negated in the Noun1 Negated condition and always non-negated in

TABLE 3

Sample Experimental Passage From Experiment 2

Noun1 Negated

Every Friday Tina prepared not a lecture but only an activity for her students.

P1 Usually during P2 lunchtime P3, she would plan things out.

Noun2 Negated

Every Friday Tina prepared a lecture but not an activity for her students.

P1 Usually during P2 lunchtime P3, she would plan things out.


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the Noun2 Negated condition. The probe words appeared in one of three

positions, chosen to be similar to the timing of the delays in Experiment 1: after

the last word of the first sentence (Position 1; P1), replicating closely the 0-ms

condition in Experiment 1; after the second word of the second sentence (Position

2; P2); or after the third word of the second sentence (Position 3; P3). Probe

position was manipulated within subjects. Six lists of experimental passages were

created with the following constraints: Half of the experimental passages in a list

were Noun1 Negated and the other half were Noun2 Negated, and one-third of

the passages had a probe word in each of the three probe positions. As in

Experiment 1, all experimental probe words required a “yes” response and were

followed by a yes/no comprehension statement.

Filler items (n ¼ 58) also had a second sentence appended that were varied in

structure to mask the manipulations. The probe words in the fillers occurred in

positions other than those used for the experimental sentences to reduce the

subjects’ ability to anticipate probes.

Procedure

The procedure was identical to Experiment 1 except the sentences were presented

using a serial visual presentation procedure. After the subject pressed the spacebar

to begin a trial, each word appeared one at a time in the center of the screen for a

fixed amount of time that depended on its length (i.e., 300ms plus 16.667ms for

each character), with an interword interval of 150ms (cf. Gernsbacher, 1989). The

probe word appeared in place of the next word after the interword interval

preceding its position. The probewordswere presented in all capital letters slightly

higher on the screen than the to-be-read text and remained on the screen until the

subject responded either yes or no that the word had appeared in the passage

currently being read, at which point the remaining words in a passage were

presented. At the end of each trial, subjects responded to a comprehension

statement. As in Experiment 1, subjects were instructed to read the texts as they

normally would for comprehension and to respond to the probe words as quickly

and accurately as possible. The experiment lasted 30 to 45 minutes.

Results


In Experiment 2, outliers and data exclusion were handled in the same manner as

in Experiment 1. The data from 10 subjects were excluded from further analysis

due to having fewer than 75% usable (i.e., accurate and non-outlying) probe

responses on experimental items (n ¼ 2), having probe accuracy of less than 75%

(n ¼ 4), or having comprehension accuracy of less than 75% on comprehension

questions (n ¼ 4). There remained data from 60 subjects after these exclusions.


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For these subjects, 9.0% of probe reaction times were excluded from further

analysis as outliers.


Overall comprehension for experimental items across all conditions and subjects

was 88.5%. Unlike in Experiment 1, there was substantial variability across

conditions, ranging from a low of 85.0% in the P2 delay condition for negated

nouns to a high of 93% in the P3 delay condition for non-negated nouns. A 2

(noun type: negated, non-negated) £ 3 (probe position: P1, P2, P3) repeated-

measures ANOVA revealed that the effect of noun was significant, F1(1,

59) ¼ 10.86, p ¼ .002, F2(1, 41) ¼ 8.69, p ¼ .005, h2p ¼ .16, with better

comprehension when the first noun was non-negated (M ¼ 91.0%, SE ¼ 0.9%)

than when it was negated (M ¼ 85.9%, SE ¼ 1.2%). There was no significant

effect of delay nor a significant interaction between the two factors (all F , 2.2,

p . .12). A likely explanation for the effect of which noun was negated is that

sentences with a negated noun in the first position of a conjoined direct object are

slightly awkward (e.g., Every Friday Tina prepared not a lecture but only an

activity for her students) compared with when the same information is conveyed

with the negated noun in the second position (e.g., Every Friday Tina prepared

an activity but not a lecture for her students), possibly leading to slightly lower

comprehension. Moreover, there is no apparent relation between the

comprehension data and the reaction-time data (see below).

Recognition Probes

Reaction time. Reaction time means as a function of type of noun probed

(negated vs. non-negated) and probe position (P1, P2, P3) appear in Figure 3.

Overall, responses to negated nouns were longer than to non-negated nouns, and

this effect was largest at P1 and radically reduced at P2 and P3. A 2 (noun type)

£ 3 (probe position) repeated-measures ANOVA on reaction time means showed

that this negation effect was significant in the subjects analysis, F1(1, 59) ¼ 8.53,

p ¼ .005, and nearly so in the items analysis, F2(1, 41) ¼ 3.65, p ¼ .06,

h2p ¼ .13, although the interaction was not significant, F1(2, 118) ¼ 1.98,

p ¼ .14, F2(2, 82) ¼ 2.61, p ¼ .08, h2p ¼ .03. Planned paired-samples t-tests

showed that the negation effect was significant at P1, t1(59) ¼ 3.45, p ¼ .001,

t2(41) ¼ 3.17, p ¼ .003, d ¼ .44, but not at P2 or P3 (all p . .33). The effect of

probe position was not significant, both F , 1.4. A post-hoc analysis of reaction

times to negated nouns only at P1 versus P2 and P3 combined showed the

decrease in reaction times at the later positions was not quite significant,

t1(59) ¼ 1.36, p ¼ .18, t2(41) ¼ 1.69, p ¼ .10, d ¼ .18. A more-focused post-hoc

2 (noun type) £ 2 (P1 vs. P2 and P3 combined) interaction contrast was

significant at an unadjusted alpha level of .05, F1(1, 59) ¼ 3.96, p ¼ .05, F2(1,


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41) ¼ 10.05, p ¼ .003, h2p ¼ .06, consistent with the claim that activation levels

for negated and non-negated nouns were going in opposite directions.

Accuracy. Overall probe accuracy as a function of type of noun probed

(negated vs. non-negated) and probe position (P1, P2, P3) appear in Table 4.

Despite that accuracy was in general very high, a 2 (noun type) £ 3 (probe

position) repeated-measures ANOVA revealed that accuracy was higher for non-

negated than for negated nouns, F1(1, 59) ¼ 8.23, p ¼ .008, F2(1, 41) ¼ 7.59,

p ¼ .009, h2p ¼ .12, and that there were significant differences among the probe

positions, F1(2, 118) ¼ 4.79, p ¼ .01, F2(1, 82) ¼ 4.95, p ¼ .01, h2p ¼ .08, with

probes in P1 having the highest accuracy. These two factors did not interact

significantly, both F , 1.4.

Discussion

Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1: The negation effect was

present at P1, which corresponds to the 0-ms delay in Experiment 1. At this point,

FIGURE 3 Mean correct-probe reaction times for negated and non-negated concepts by probe

position in Experiment 2. Error bars represent ^1 SE (cf. Loftus & Masson, 1994).

TABLE 4

Mean Percent Correct (Standard Error) on Recognition Probes as a Function

of Condition in Experiment 2

Probe Position

Noun Type P1 P2 P3 Noun-Type Means

Negated 97.1 (0.7) 93.3 (1.2) 92.6 (1.3) 94.4 (0.6)

Non-negated 97.4 (0.8) 96.0 (1.0) 96.0 (1.1) 96.4 (0.6)

Probe-position means 97.3 (0.6) 94.6 (0.8) 94.3 (0.9)


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immediately after the first sentence, the negated concept was responded to more

slowly than the non-negated concept, suggesting that the negated concept was

less active. Consistent with Experiment 1, this negation effect was not present at

P2 or P3, which correspond to the 500- and 1,000-ms delays in Experiment 1,

respectively. Although the negated concepts tended to be responded to slightly

slower than non-negated concepts, the difference between the two was

nonsignificant at both positions, suggesting the activation levels of the negated

and non-negated concepts were roughly equal. In addition, Experiment 2

extended the results of Experiment 1: When the activation level of concepts was

measured during comprehension, there was not a significant difference in the

mean reaction time across positions, as was found across delays in Experiment 1.

This finding is consistent with the attention-allocation explanation advanced for

Experiment 1, which predicts no differences in Experiment 2 because

comprehension processes were always ongoing when the probe task was

presented, leading to roughly the same amount of attention allotted to the probe

task at different probe positions. However, the decline in probe accuracy across

probe position is slightly problematic for this argument, because it suggests some

changes still occur across time.

Given that the reaction times across probe positions are more comparable in

Experiment 2, we argue that the activation level of negated and non-negated

concepts appear to be moving in opposite directions as time went on, with

negated concepts becoming more active and non-negated concepts becoming less

active. Although the change in reaction time from P1 to P3 was not quite

significant for either the negated or non-negated concepts, the trend is consistent

with the hypothesis that, at some point, processing beings to shift from the

sentence’s assertions to the presuppositions. The post-hoc interaction test is

consistent with this claim. The shift from assertion to presupposition processing

shifts attention away from the non-negated concept and toward the negated

concept, resulting in the observed changes in activation.

EXPERIMENT 3

The results of Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the negation effect (MacDonald

& Just, 1989) is short-lived. Immediately after reading a sentence containing a

negation, recognition times to words that were negated were longer than for the

same words in the same sentence position when they had not been negated.

Shortly after this, on the order of a few hundred milliseconds, the negation effect

was reduced in size. Further, to some extent the results of Experiment 2 suggest

that the activation level of the negated concept was increasing as time passed.

This latter finding is consistent with the hypothesis that when a reader processes a

sentence with a negation in isolation, the sentence’s assertions, which are readily


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available by virtue of being what is explicitly stated, are processed first. After this

assertion processing has completed, or after it has begun, attention turns to a

sentence’s presuppositions. This shift in attention is our favored explanation for

the findings of Experiments 1 and 2 (cf. Levine & Hagaman, 2008). The

implication of this hypothesis is that if a sentence with a negation is presented in a

context that provides a presupposition to be denied or otherwise provides some

presupposition that can be readily integrated with the later negation (i.e., the

negation is licensed), processing of the presuppositions should be relatively easy

and should therefore have little effect on the activation level of the negated

concept. However, when a presupposition is not readily available, more

processing is required to generate a presupposition, and this increase in the

amount of processing should lead to an increase in the activation level of the

negated concept. We designed Experiment 3 to test this hypothesis by presenting

subjects with sentences that contain negation preceded by either licensing context

or by no context at all.

We manipulated licensing of negations like those seen in Experiments 1 and 2

(e.g., Every Friday Tina prepared a lecture but not an activity for her students) by

preceding them with a context sentence that provided a reason why the negated

entity was not (cf. Moxey & Sanford, 1986) created, obtained, and so on (e.g.,

When she had time, Tina liked to give her students something fun to do) or no

context at all. Following a sentence that did not provide a reason why the negated

entity was mentioned, the negated entity was rementioned (e.g., Preparing an

activity for her students . . . ) and reading time was measured on the part of the

sentence that included the second mention (for a full sample passage see Table 5).

When the negation is unlicensed, the results of Experiments 1 and 2, as well as

the pragmatic-inference hypothesis (Levine & Hagaman, 2008), predict that

subjects should be focused on the negated entity and inferring a presupposition to

deny; when the rementioned negated entity is encountered, it should be easily

accessible and thus easy to process, relative to a no-negation condition, leading to

little or no difference in reading time. By contrast, when the negation is licensed,

the subjects do not need to infer a presupposition to deny, and so there should be

no special processing effort focused on the negation; thus, when the rementioned

negated entity is encountered, it should be less accessible and thus difficult to

process, relative to a no-negation condition, leading to longer reading times. We

chose to measure reading time on the negated entity rather than to use a probe

task at a very long delay (i.e., more than a full sentence after the negation). Probe

tasks appear to be sensitive to differences in the activation of a concept only for a

brief period of time. For example, although Potts, Keenan, and Golding (1988)

found no evidence that readers made predictions about what would happen next

in a story, Murray, Klin, andMyers (1993) and Keefe andMcDaniel (1993) found

evidence that readers made predictions when the probe task was moved closer to

when the prediction would be made.


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Methods

Subjects

Sixty-eight students enrolled in a general psychology course at the University of

Arkansas participated in the experiment to partially fulfill a research requirement.

All subjects were native-English speakers.


Thirty-two experimental passages were adapted from the materials from

Experiments 1 and 2 such that they appeared in one of four conditions (Table 5).

Each passage began with a context sentence that provided a reason why something

might not occur (e.g., insufficient time, money, space, energy, ability, etc.), thus

licensing the potential negation later in the passage. This sentence was presented to

subjects in the licensing condition but was not presented in the nonlicensing

condition. Next came a sentence that presented the target concept with or without

negation (e.g., a lecture but not an activity vs. a lecture and an activity). This was

followed by a sentence that was unrelated to the target concept. The last sentence of

eachpassage rementioned the target concept. In the negation condition, this sentence

provided a reasonwhy the target concept was not created, obtained, and so on, and in

the no negation condition, the sentence provided a reason why. Furthermore, each

sentence was divided into two halves to increase the specificity of the reading time

measure, resulting in eight sentence segments for each passage. Crucially, the target

phrase (i.e., with the rementioned negation) did not provide the reason why not; as a

result, reading time was measured only on reprocessing the negated concept plus a

prepositional phrase that was not related to the licensing proposition.

TABLE 5

Sample Experimental Passage From Experiment 3

Licensed negation

When she had time, Tina liked to give / her students something fun to do. Every Friday Tina

prepared / a lecture but not an activity for her students. She enjoyed / being a teacher.

Preparing an activity for her students / would have to wait till she had more time.

Licensed no negation

When she had time, Tina liked to give / her students something fun to do. Every Friday Tina

prepared / a lecture and an activity for her students. She enjoyed / being a teacher. Preparing an

activity for her students / made them much happier.

Unlicensed negation

Every Friday Tina prepared / a lecture but not an activity for her students. She enjoyed / being a

teacher. Preparing an activity for her students / would have to wait till she had more time.

Unlicensed no negation

Every Friday Tina prepared / a lecture and an activity for her students. She enjoyed / being a

teacher. Preparing an activity for her students / made them much happier.

Note. / indicates the points at which the sentences were split.


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In addition, there were 58 filler passages that varied from the experimental

passages on a number of dimensions to help mask the experimental

manipulations. Each experimental and filler passage had a comprehension

statement (e.g., Tina is a teacher), half of which required a “yes” and half of

which required a “no” response. Subjects saw each experimental passage in one

of the four conditions, along with all fillers. Four counterbalanced lists of

experimental sentences were created such that a quarter of the passages occurred

in each condition. The manipulation of the factors of theoretical interest in the

experiment resulted in a 2 (context: licensed, nonlicensed) £ 2 (negation:

negated, non-negated) completely within-subjects design.

Procedure

The procedure was similar to Experiment 1 except that each sentence was

divided into two segments and the probe recognition task was removed. The

experimental session consisted of 90 total trials (32 experimental and 58 filler) in

two blocks of 45 trials each. The order of the blocks, as well as the order of the trials

within blocks, was randomized, and subjects were instructed to read the sentences

as they normallywould for comprehension. The experiment lasted 30 to45minutes.

Results


For each subject, all target phrase reading times greater than 4,000ms and less

than 600ms were classified as outliers. The data from five subjects were excluded

from further analysis due to having more than 10% of reading times on

experimental trials classified as outliers. For the remaining 63 subjects, 2.3% of

reading times were excluded from further analysis as outliers.


One ambiguous item was excluded from analysis. Overall comprehension for the

remaining experimental items across all conditions and subjects was 84%. There

was little variability across conditions, ranging from a low of 82.4% in the

unlicensed condition when the target concept was non-negated to a high of 87.1%

in the licensing condition when the target concept was negated. A 2 (context:

licensed, nonlicensed) £ 2 (negation: negated, non-negated) repeated-measures

ANOVA revealed no significant effects (all F , 2.5).

Target Phrase Reading Times

Reading timemeans as a function of context (licensed vs. nonlicensed) and negation

(negated vs. non-negated) appear in Figure 4. Overall, reading times were faster


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when the target concept had been non-negated than when it had been negated;

however, this pattern appeared to differ across context conditions. A 2 (context:

licensed, nonlicensed) £ 2 (negation: negated, non-negated) repeated-measures

ANOVA showed that the main effect of context was not significant, F1(1,

62) , .001,p ¼ .995,F2(1, 31) ¼ .001,p ¼ .97.Therewas a significantmain effect

of negation, F1(1, 62) ¼ 9.00, p ¼ .004, F2(1, 31) ¼ 11.15, p ¼ .002, h2p ¼ .127,

with faster reading times in the non-negated condition. The interaction between

licensing and negationwas not reliable,F1(1, 62) ¼ 1.84, p ¼ .18,F2(1, 31) ¼ 0.89,

p ¼ .35. However, given the theoretical predictions, we carried out planned paired-

samples t-tests within each licensing condition. The first revealed, as predicted, a

significant negation effect in the licensing condition, t1(62) ¼ 3.30, p ¼ .002,

t2(31) ¼ 3.19, p ¼ .003, d ¼ 0.42, with faster reading times in the non-negated

condition. The second comparison revealed that the negation effect was more than

50% smaller and nonsignificant in the nonlicensing condition, t1(62) ¼ 1.38,

p ¼ .17, t2(31) ¼ 1.18, p ¼ .25, d ¼ 0.17. These two findings provide support for

the hypothesis that licensing influences the activation level of negated concepts.

Discussion

Experiment 3 compared the activation of negated concepts—via ease of

reading—in licensing and nonlicensing contexts, providing evidence for a

negation effect when the negation was licensed but a much weaker effect when it

was unlicensed. The latter result provides converging evidence for the conclusion

in Experiments 1 and 2 that the negation effect is not present for more than a brief

time when the negation is unlicensed (i.e., in a null context), using a reading time

measure instead of a probe word task. The negation effect seen when the negation

was licensed suggests that when the negated concept is readily integrated with the

FIGURE 4 Mean reading times for negated and non-negated concepts by context in Experiment 3.

Error bars represent ^1 SE (cf. Loftus & Masson, 1994).


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prior discourse, the concept is less active and harder to process when it is

encountered later.

The lack of a significant negation effect seen when the negation was unlicensed

suggests that readers keep the negated concept fairly active, making it easier to

process when it is encountered later. Negating a concept without contextual

justification brings attention to the negated concept rather than leading to its

suppression (cf. Giora, Balaban, Fein, & Alkabets, 2005). Additionally, it is worth

noting that the licensing contexts in this experiment were relatively weak. Our

licensing contexts provided information that could be used to explain why the

negation occurred (e.g., Tina did not have enough time). Rather than providing a

presupposition to be denied, this licensing simply made it easier for subjects to

integrate the negation byproviding a reasonwhynot (cf.Moxey, 2006). It is possible

that a different licensing context would lead to an even lower level of activation for

negated concepts, which might result in an even greater difference in the activation

level of negated and non-negated concepts within the licensing condition.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

These three experiments provide converging evidence that when negation is

unlicensed, attention is initially shifted away from the negated concepts but is

then refocused on the negated concepts during subsequent presupposition

processing. All three experiments show the negation effect is minimal (if it exists

at all) after about 500ms of the end of a sentence containing unlicensed negation.

Once the comprehender becomes aware of the missing presupposition and begins

to construct it, the negated concept returns to an active state. Unlicensed negation

leads to a negation effect that is apparently short-lived, whereas licensed negation

leads to a prolonged negation effect.

The scope of the pragmatic inference hypothesis as proposed by Levine and

Hagaman (2008) was limited to unlicensed negation, with the central claim being

that the use of unlicensed negation required inferring a presupposition to cancel

or deny. However, implicit in this claim is that licensed negation does not require

a presupposition to be inferred. Because the reactivation of the negated concepts

is assumed to be caused by presupposition processing, it should only occur when

the negation is unlicensed, and licensed negation should therefore lead to a

prolonged negation effect. As previously discussed, this effect of licensing was

demonstrated by Autry and Levine (2012) using an offline measure. The reading

time results of Experiment 3 provide online evidence that a prolonged negation

effect is seen with licensed negation.

It may seem counterintuitive that negation would increase the activation level

of a concept; however, maintaining a high level of activation might be not a

failure but rather a feature of unlicensed negation. Speakers may (and do)


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intentionally produce unlicensed negation to indirectly focus on an idea (Giora,

2007; Giora et al., 2005). This may be particularly useful in situations where the

idea being introduced is undesirable. For example, a politician might make a

statement such as “I do not support an increase in taxes.” If this negation is

unlicensed, that is, if this statement is not an expected response to a question or

something similar, then it raises the question of why the politician made the

statement at all. It might suggest that some other person does support an increase

in taxes. In the political arena, that other person is likely the politician’s

opponent. In this way, the politician is able to remind listeners of a negative

feature of another candidate without appearing to be attacking them.

Because of the importance of timing in the present experiments, it is worth

considering different patterns of results involving unlicensed negation and the

subsequent representation of negated concepts. One noteworthy finding is from

Hasson and Glucksberg (2006), who presented subjects with negative metaphors

in isolation (e.g., This kindergarten isn’t a zoo), each of which was followed at

different delays (i.e., 150, 500, or 1,000ms after reading) by a lexical-decision

probe word consistent with the positive (e.g., noisy) or negative (e.g., calm)

version of the metaphor. There were two critical findings. At the two earliest

delays, the positive (i.e., incorrect) interpretation of the metaphor was facilitated,

whereas the negative (i.e., correct) interpretation of the metaphor was not.

However, at the long delay, the correct, negative interpretation of the metaphor

was facilitated and the incorrect, positive interpretation was no longer facilitated.

Hasson and Glucksberg argued that negative metaphors were first understood as

affirmative metaphors (i.e., counterfactually) and only after this occurred was the

negative information integrated into the understanding of the metaphor.

Kaup and her colleagues reported a similar set of findings with respect to the

comprehension of negative sentences like The bird is not in the air. Shortly (i.e.,

250ms) after reading negatives sentence like these, subjects were faster to verify

that a picture of a bird with outstretched wings was a bird than they were to verify

a picture of a bird perched in a tree (Kaup, Yaxley, Madden, Zwaan, & Ludtke,

2007). The same was true when the verification task occurred 750ms after the

negative sentence, but the pattern reversed 1,500ms after reading (Kaup, Ludtke,

& Zwaan, 2006). Kaup, Zwaan, and Ludtke (2007) argued for a two-step

simulation hypothesis in which the counterfactual (i.e., positive, incorrect) state

of affairs is represented first and is replaced by the factual (i.e., negative, correct)

state of affairs. Thus, the results of Hasson and Glucksberg and Kaup and her

colleagues suggest the presupposed state of affairs is first represented and is

followed by a denial or cancellation of this presupposed state of affairs. This is

consistent with the pragmatic inference hypothesis insofar that both what is

asserted and, in particular, what is presupposed and denied must be processed, but

it is not consistent with the argument we have made that assertion processing

precedes presupposition processing.


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Oneway to accommodate the finding that sometimes presupposition processing

precedes assertion processing and sometime the reverse occurs is to posit that both

are processed in parallel, and the one that finishes first will depend on the relative

ease of processing. In the case of a simple negative sentence like The bird is not in

the air, one probable presupposition is the question Is there a bird in the air? (cf.

Tian et al., 2010), but the assertion is vague (e.g., the bird could be on the ground, in

a cage, underwater, etc.) and therefore more difficult to construct. In the case of a

negative metaphor like The kindergarten isn’t a zoo, there may be a prior

expectation that the kindergarten is not quiet. Hasson and Glucksberg (2006)

reported that the positive versions of their metaphors were slightly more familiar

and sensible than the negative versions, further suggesting the presupposition was

easy to infer. In the case of relatively complex negatives like ours and those of

MacDonald and Just (1989) (e.g., Elizabeth bakes bread but no cookies), the

simple questionDid Elizabeth bake cookies? does not serve to fully contextualize

the negation. Thus, we suggest that complex negation may lead to more-complex

presuppositions, leading in turn to assertion processing running to completion first.

Moreover, in the case of negative metaphors and simple negatives like not in the

air, clear opposite meanings are readily available, and there is some evidence that

so-called bipolar negatives are processed differently from non-bipolar negatives

(Mayo, Schul,&Burnstein, 2004).However, our suggestions about the role of ease

of presupposition processing and polarity of concepts in the representation and

processing of negation are speculative and in need of additional research.

The pragmatic inference hypothesis is also consistent with the claim that

deviation (e.g., confounding new and given information) from the typical

ordering or presentation of given and new information in a sentence (e.g., Chafe,

1976; Halliday, 1967; Prince, 1981; Ward & Birner, 2001) will require the

recipient of the information to perform additional processing to understand how

the anomalous information fits into the ongoing discourse representation. That is,

atypicality in information structure leads to the need to understand why there is

an atypicality. Haviland and Clark’s (1974) given-new strategy was developed to

explain what comprehenders did when new information was presented in a

location (e.g., early in a sentence) or manner (e.g., when introduced with a

definite article or by certain adverbs like still) that was typically used to present

given information. They found evidence that a bridging inference must be made

to preserve the given-new structure of a sentence to connect it properly to the

prior discourse. We are arguing that the given-new strategy is a specific instance

of the type of processing posited by the pragmatic inference hypothesis.

Comprehenders not only do additional processing when new information is

presented where given information was expected, but anomalous presentation of

information that depends on a presupposition that is not present (e.g., unlicensed

negation)—that is, when given information is provided where new information is

expected—similarly leads to additional processing.


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A limitation of the Experiments 1 and 2was the use of a probe recognition task to

measure the activation of negated concepts. This methodology was selected to be

consistent with MacDonald and Just (1989), but it is potentially problematic for the

study of negation because responding “yes” to a word that was present in a sentence

is in conflict with the representation of a negated concept as “no X”. Especially

because probe-word tasks that require a binary decision encourage backward

integration or compatibility- or context-checking (Potts et al. 1988), this should

make itmore difficult to respond “yes” to negated concepts, slowing overall reaction

times (Neill, Valdes, Terry, & Gorfein, 1992). The reaction times recorded from

probe recognition tasks may therefore reflect more than just the activation of the

concept.However, the absolute activation level of the concepts is not the focus of the

present experiments because it can be affected by many different factors (e.g.,

baseline activation, familiarity, repetition, semantic relatedness, etc.). Instead, this

research is primarily concernedwith changes in activation over time (i.e., the change

in the negation effect from0 to 1,000ms) and by focusing on the relative differences

in activation, the reaction time inflation that occurs due to the response conflict is less

problematic for the interpretation of the present results. It is still possible that the

interference caused by the response conflict decreases over time (McKoon &

Ratcliff, 1989), resulting in faster responses to negated concepts and therefore a

smaller negation effect as time goes on; however, there is evidence that this type of

interference is fairly long-lived (Grison, Tipper, & Hewitt, 2005), which argues

against this alternative explanation. Nevertheless, future research that provides

converging evidence from a probe task that does not require a binary decision (e.g.,

naming) would help alleviate these concerns.

One other concern related to the probe task in Experiments 1 and 2 is that these

tasksmay encourage alternative strategies, such as simply tracking thewords in the

sentences without comprehending the sentence (Gordon, Hendrick, & Ledoux

Foster, 2000). It is possible that subjects may not have been using normal

comprehension processes, which would limit the generalizability of the findings.

However, most sentences the subjects read in both experiments were fillers that

were explicitly designed to confound any memory-based (rather than

comprehension-based) strategy the subjects might adopt (cf. Wiley, Mason, &

Myers, 2001). Moreover, comprehension questions were used to ensure that

subjects were focused on comprehension, and the overall high comprehension

suggests that subjects did not opt out of comprehension. Future research using

alternativemethods ofmeasuring the activation of negated concepts (e.g., naming,

ERPs) is necessary to determine whether the present results were a valid measure

of negated concepts’ activation or if they were an artifact of the probe recognition

task. However, the concerns associated with the use of the recognition probe task

should be tempered by the converging evidence found in Experiment 3’s reading

times, which are unaffected by response conflict or memory-based strategies.


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Conclusion

In three experiments, unlicensed negated concepts were less active than non-

negated concepts only when measured immediately after the sentence where the

negation occurred. Although the negated concepts were initially less active,

additional processing time allowed the reactivation of the negated concepts such

that the activation of negated and non-negated concepts was not significantly

different. This occurred when the negation was unlicensed but not when it was

licensed. These findings demonstrate that when negation is unlicensed, the

negation effect is very brief. For anything but the most immediate processing,

unlicensed negated concepts are therefore highly active and accessible.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Experiment 1 was part of a master’s thesis conducted at the University of

Arkansas by KSA under the direction of WHL.

Portions of these data were presented at the 24th Annual CUNY Sentence

Processing Conference, Stanford, CA, March 24–26, 2011, and at the 16th

Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing,

York, UK, September 6–8, 2010.

We thank Ally Burton, Lukas Chupp, Audrey Dunn, Katherine Hutchins,

Alicia Small, Erica Tadlock, Marissa Tyson, and Austin Whitesell for their

assistance with stimulus preparation and data collection and Joel Hagaman for his

comments on an early draft of this article. Maryellen MacDonald, Mante

Nieuwland, and two anonymous reviewers provided constructive criticism on

prior versions of the manuscript.

FUNDING

Support for this research was provided by National Science Foundation Grant

BCS-0617419 to WHL.

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Autry & Levine (2014, DP)

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Transcript of Autry & Levine (2014, DP)