Research interests:

Although the role of prediction in language and communication processing is widely acknowledged, there exist few brain indexes that directly map the neurophysiological correlates of prediction as these emerge in real time. Most studies use event-related activity elicited after the predicted (or not predicted) linguistic forms, e.g., the N400 to semantically expected or unexpected words, and more recently, speech acts. in my project, I used the readiness potential to directly map the emergence of prediction correlates in the course of communications between two people. Participants engaged in different interactive language games while predictive brain responses were measured with EEG or fMRI and, eventually, MEG. TMS was applied to find out whether local stimulation can specifically interfere with communicative predictions. My project also examined the role of sentence context, where semantic predictions in affirmative and negated sentences were contrasted. We expected to find new brain indexes of semantic and pragmatic predictions, which were used to directly assess current theories of alignment between communication partners in different types of conversations.