Hi,

As we were saying (by email), there is no technical, widely agreed-upon meaning to "incongruity"...What Henry (I think) wanted to point out was that there is a distinction to be made between logically consistent conclusions and believable ones. While the two usually work hand-in-hand, they don't have to. So in a syllogism such as (from J. Evans, TiCS,2003) :

No nutritional things are inexpensive

Some vitamin tablets are inexpensive

Therefore, some vitamin tablets are not nutritional

The conclusion follows from the premises, but the conclusion -- since it itself sounds false -- prompts people to say false.  This is the incongruity (between the previous remarks, the premises, and the sentence itself). 

The same holds for non-valid conclusions that sound true (tho here people would be more likely to say true to a false conclusion):

No addictive things are inexpensive

Some cigarettes are inexpensive

Therefore, some addictive things are not cigarettes

How this relates to the sentences you (said in your email that you) want to test, I am not sure.  In any case, I am not immediately clear on how a specific sentence can make this concern relevant.

That said, the EEG literature is aware that N400's are sensitive to false remarks:  The main example from the original Kutas paper makes this clear.

The pizza was too hot to eat/drink/cry.

So perhaps false and incongruous conclusions would prompt steeper N400's than merely incongruous ones (or merely false ones), but I wouldn't bet on it...

Ira

Thanks.  I see what you mean by the importance of believability of the conclusion.  This leads me to need to design sentences that are recognizable to most participants as being false, but not incongruous.  This leads me to think of Hagoort's 2004 study that you sent me, with the Dutch trains, which all Dutch people know are yellow.  Presenting the sentences:

The Dutch trains are yellow / white / sour.

both the 'white' and 'sour' presentations led to N400s.  It seems that both world knowledge violations and semantic violations bring about the same reaction, meaning your bet would be right.  It's therefore very unclear as to how one could test neural responses to truth value while being sure that your false sentences were not considered by the participants to be incongruous and false as opposed to merely false. 

Henry wrote this morning, suggesting that incongruity would be maximized with a definitional mistake, and less for a factual one.  I would love to test this theory if I could find a way to measure incongruity.

Just to add, there are recent studies looking into other biomarkers (in addition to N400).

See Schneider et al (2014) Beyond the N400: Complementary access to early neural correlates of novel metaphor comprehension using combined electrophysiological and haemodynamic measurements.

Thanks Hasan.  I'll be sure to have a look at this.

Hasan - I just had a first look and see that this was an EEG/NIRS combo on pragmatic aspects of language.  Thanks for suggesting such a relevant paper.

Another relevant literature which you might find interesting is the "congruency effect" in cognitive memory literature (starting from Arthur Schulman's 1974 paper and Craik & Tulving's 1975 paper, ending with recent years neuroscience papers).

One possibly highly relevant study is a study by van Kesteren et al., published in Neuropsychologia 2013. They have used a congruency/incongruency subjective scale, and found some possibly relevant results (but make sure you look at their supplementary materials which shed a slightly different light on their results).

In our studies (e.g., Bein et al, 2015, PLoS One) we typically do not find a significant difference in RT/recognition memory accuracy between strongly incongruenct and mildly incongruent word pairs, nor between incongruent and unrelated noun-adjective word pairs (e.g., fried shower). But we have not studied it in a truly systematic fashion so far.

Thanks a lot Niv.  I will start digging into these papers!

I'm curious about your paradigm, so if you have any questions I'll be happy to try and help!

Much appreciated.  In a nutshell, I want to look at the difference (if any) in neurophysiological responses between true and false sentences. However, I have been warned not to conflate 'false' with 'incongruous' but I'm not completely clear on the difference between these.  It seems that it might be a matter of degree such as the difference between:

The president of the United States is Obama. (true)

The president of the United States is Bush. (false 1)

The president of the United States is Jesus.  (false 2)

I'm wondering if only 'false 2' is incongruous or if both 'false 1 & 2' are.  It seems that it is simply a question of degree.  Perhaps the van Kesteren study will help me make this distinction.

False sentence is totally wrong i.e. He was arrested for giving false information on his application for a passport. Incongruous mean unsuitable, inappropriate, inconsistent, inharmonious, incompatible, conflicting, discordant. For example: It seems incongruous to have an out-of-shape and overweight editor of a fitness magazine.

Hi Kiran,

Thanks for that response.  In your opinion, would a sentence like "The president of the United States is Jesus." be incongruous?

Jodi

Hi Jodi,

I am sorry for not replying earlier. I've missed your previous reply. I can say that from my experience, it is really hard to distinguish between your two false assertions on a behavioral measure (RT, memory).

I *think* the N400 literature suggests some kind of a differentiation between the two, but if memory serves, it's not the most reliable effect.  Presumably, the degree of violation does play a role in the N400, but I am not sure these effects persist after careful control on familiarity.