Negative Sentences Exhibit a Sustained Effect in Delayed Verification Tasks

Galit Agmon; Yonatan Loewenstein; Yosef Grodzinsky

doi:10.1037/xlm0001059

Negative Sentences Exhibit a Sustained Effect in Delayed Verification Tasks

Galit Agmon, Yonatan Loewenstein, Yosef Grodzinsky

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Negated sentences are known to be more cognitively taxing than positive ones (i.e., polarity effect). We present evidence that two factors contribute to the polarity effect in verification tasks: processing the sentence and verifying its truth value. To quantify the relative contribution of each, we used a delayed verification task. The results show that even when participants are given a considerable amount of time for processing the sentence prior to verification, the polarity effect is not entirely eliminated. We suggest that this sustained effect stems from a retained negation-containing representation in working memory.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	122-141
Number of pages	20
Journal	Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition
Volume	48
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001059
State	Published - Jan 2022
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Psychological Association

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF 2093/16 and ISF 757/16) and funding provided by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.

Funders	Funder number
Gatsby Charitable Foundation
Israel Science Foundation	ISF 2093/16, ISF 757/16

Keywords

Negation
Quantifiers
Sentence processing
Sentence representation
Verification

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10.1037/xlm0001059

Cite this

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abstract = "Negated sentences are known to be more cognitively taxing than positive ones (i.e., polarity effect). We present evidence that two factors contribute to the polarity effect in verification tasks: processing the sentence and verifying its truth value. To quantify the relative contribution of each, we used a delayed verification task. The results show that even when participants are given a considerable amount of time for processing the sentence prior to verification, the polarity effect is not entirely eliminated. We suggest that this sustained effect stems from a retained negation-containing representation in working memory.",

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KW - Quantifiers

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KW - Sentence representation

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Negative Sentences Exhibit a Sustained Effect in Delayed Verification Tasks

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

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