Activation of negated and non-negated entities

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the activation of negated concepts in the mental representation of sentences. Subjects read short passages ending with a sentence that did or did not negate the second of two direct objects: Justin bought a mango but not an apple/and an apple. The prior context was manipulated such that it either licensed the negation or not. After reading, subjects wrote a continuation. These were coded for whether they referred to Noun1 or Noun2. In the first two experiments, when the context did not license the negation, Noun2 was written about more often when it was negated than when it was non-negated. But in the third experiment, when the negation was licensed, Noun2 was written about equally often in both conditions. These findings suggest that non-licensed negation draws attention to the negated concept resulting in the negated concepts becoming more active than non-negated concepts.

► We examined subjects’ single-sentence continuations of short passages. ► Passages contained negation or not and were preceded by a licensing context or not. ► In non-licensing contexts, nouns were written about more often when negated. ► In licensing context, nouns were written about equally often regardless of negation. ► When negation is unlicensed, negated concepts are more active than non-negated concepts.