Spalek, Katharina; Bader, Regine; Glaser, Sandra; Höltje, Gerrit; Mecklinger, Axel
Contrastive focus accent retroactively modulates memory for focus alternatives: evidence from event-related potentials
Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, Routledge, pp. 1-18, 2025.
Contrastive focus accent in spoken language indicates that alternatives to the focused element are relevant for interpretation. The sentence “Could I have some TEA, please?”, with contrastive accent on tea, is probably the response to an offer of several alternative beverages. Research shows that contrastive focus accent helps listeners remember such alternatives. We investigated the time-course of and mechanisms behind the effects of contrastive focus accent on memory with a variant of the subsequent memory effect paradigm with eventrelated potentials (ERPs). The ERP time-locked to a critical word was more positive-going if participants remembered two earlier mentioned alternatives than just one, but only if the critical word had been contrastively accented. This effect further was only observed when the critical word itself was remembered. These findings suggest that contrastive focus marking triggers a reinstatement of the preceding sentence context (retrieval practice) by which these elements are prioritised in memory