Examining the time course and neural events of sentences which convey implicit meaning
Conditional statements of the form if p, then q can be used to convey information on how the world could have been, how it is and how it could be. These statements, therefore, lead the reader to consider hypothetical situations about the world. For example, the statement if you take part in my study, then I will pay you five pounds invites the reader to entertain a hypothetical world where the addressee took part in the study, in order to evaluate the probability the addressee would be given five pounds.
Traditionally, research on conditionals has been studied using offline tasks with abstract materials where participants are asked to draw conclusions from simple context independent conditional rules (e.g. if there is an A, then there is a 2; there is an A, what can you conclude?).
This project will build on recent work studying contextualised conditionals which utilise wider pragmatic information, such as implicit meaning (e.g. if you call me at home again, then you’ll get the sack). It is likely to involve a series of empirical investigations designed to provide key theoretical insights into how readers make sense of meaning in these conditionals, using a combination of electroencephalography (EEG), eye-tracking and behavioural experiments.
Work of this kind is critical if we are to develop a complete picture of how people process conditionals in everyday contexts, rather than in offline forced choice situations. This is especially important given that conditionals are used in many applied fields, such as health (e.g. if you don’t lose weight, then you’ll get diabetes), legal (e.g. if you don’t turn up for court on your due date, then you’ll be sent to jail) and everyday situations (e.g. if you do your homework, then you can play out later).
