As will become clear below (see Sections 1.2 and 1.3), this observation is important for the design of the present study, which aimed to examine whether the P600 resembles the P3 in terms of being response-aligned. In their commentary on Coulson et al.’s (1998a) arguments in favour of the P600-as-P3 hypothesis, Osterhout and Hagoort (1999) noted: “[T]he actual testing of specific psycholinguistic models can profit from the existence of qualitatively distinct, language-relevant ERP effects, the P600/SPS

not excluded […] even though the actual cognitive and biological processes underlying these ERP effects remain obscure” (Osterhout & Hagoort, 1999, pp. Pirfenidone datasheet 12–13). However, in attempting to move towards neurobiological models of language (cf. Small, 2008), this is no longer a trivial assumption. To 17-AAG cost the contrary: the biological processes underlying language-related ERP effects become highly relevant. We thus argue

that, for furthering our knowledge with respect to the neurobiology of language, the examination of the P600-as-P3 hypothesis is interesting not so much for questions of nomenclature (i.e. whether it is appropriate to label the P600 a P3) nor for questions of language-specifity versus domain-generality. Rather, if the P600 shows similar response properties to the P3, this would allow us to draw upon the considerable progress that has been made over the past decades in understanding the neurobiological basis of the P3 in order to illuminate the neural mechanisms of language processing. As we will discuss in more detail in Section 1.3, we view the LC/NE theory of the P3 as a particularly interesting approach in this regard. Thus, when referring to the “P600-as-P3” hypothesis (or, when appropriate, Dimethyl sulfoxide to the more specific “P600-as-LC/NE-P3” hypothesis) throughout this paper, we use this as a shorthand for the hypothesis that the P600 shares response properties/neurobiological underpinnings with the P3. Before describing the LC/NE account in a bit more detail, we

will first present a very brief overview of prominent findings regarding the possible identity of the P600 and the P3. As has been noted previously (e.g. Coulson et al., 1998a), including in the very first discussions of the P600 (Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992), the P600 and P3 resemble each other in general morphology and time course: both are late, positive components, prototypically with a centro-parietal maximum. They are also similar in terms of their antecedent conditions. A P600 often follows surprising, incongruent, intrusive words; often, such words are also task critical (e.g. in acceptability judgement tasks, as used for example by Osterhout & Holcomb, 1992). Consequently, from a domain-general perspective, it would not be unexpected to observe a P3 following such stimuli. As discussed in Section 1.