Negation and the N400: investigating temporal aspects of negation integration using semantic and world-knowledge violations DudschigCarolin MackenzieIan Grant MaienbornClaudia KaupBarbara LeutholdHartmut 2018 <p>Negation comprehension is a time-consuming, resource demanding process. This study investigates whether additional time to process the negation operator eases negation integration. In Experiment 1 we analysed N400 amplitude in sentences of the following types: correct sentences (<i>Zebras are</i> (<i>not</i>) <i>stripy</i>), world-knowledge violation sentences (<i>Ladybirds are</i> (<i>not</i>) <i>stripy</i>) and semantically violated sentences (<i>Thoughts are</i> (<i>not</i>) <i>stripy</i>). In Experiment 2, the negation was pre-pended to the actual sentence using an introductory statement (<i>It is</i> (<i>not</i>) <i>true that ladybirds are stripy</i>) to provide additional processing time to deal with the negation operator. Crucially, in both experiments the N400 amplitude was larger for semantic and world-knowledge violations than correct sentences irrespective of the negation operator. Taken together, our study suggests that allowing additional time to process the negation operator alone – before encountering the information that completes the negated proposition – has no beneficial influence on on-line negation integration as reflected in the N400.</p>