How do comprehenders process negative statements such as The fish is not jumping out of the water? Opinions vary. Some argue for two steps, namely that processing starts off with the representation of the positive/illusory [fish jumping out of the water] and then shifts to the (f)actual. To test this idea, we measured fixations on the factual (fish not jumping) versus the illusory (fish jumping) during auditory processing of negation and affirmation. We tested speakers of English (single-cued negation) and Croatian (double-cued negation) and focused on anticipatory fixations in the absence of pictures to indicate the strength of mental simulations. Our findings contribute to negation processing research in two ways. First, dominant anticipatory fixations on the factual suggest a direct rather than a two-step process. Second, time-sensitive insights from two languages call for a finer-grained account of negation processing with negation-specific support of inferences of the factual over the illusory.

Charles University Prague Prague Czechia

UiT The Arctic University of Norway Tromsø Norway

University of Auckland Auckland New Zealand

University of Potsdam Potsdam Germany

University of Zagreb Zagreb Croatia

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Looks at what isn't there: eye movements on a blank screen when processing negation in a first and a second language