Phonological Markers of Information Structure: An fMRI study
Supplementary materials
Tessa M. van Leeuwen,a,1, Monique J.A. Lamersb,d, Karl Magnus Peterssonc,a, Carlos
Gussenhovend,e, Toni Rietveldd, Benedikt Posera,f, Peter Hagoorta,c
a
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen,
the Netherlands
b
c
Department of Language and Communication, VU University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
d
Department of Linguistics, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
e
Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
f
Erwin L Hahn Institute for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, University Duisburg-Essen, Essen,
Germany
1
Present address:
Department of Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt am Main,
Germany
Results
Behavioral results
Behavioral data show that all subjects were able to perform the task and were attentive during the
experiment. The task was to press a button when a catch sentence was presented; catch sentences
contained a word (adjective or noun) that did not match with the picture on the screen. The mean
detection rate across participants was 95.3 (± 4.9) %. Reaction times (RTs) were measured from
the onset of the catch trial sentences. RTs were 1398 ± 595 ms for trials in which there was a
mismatch on the color adjectives, and 1589 ± 541 ms for trials in which there was a mismatch on
shape nouns. The difference in RTs can be explained by the fact that the adjectives preceded the
nouns by about 300 ms in every sentence (adjectives 400-700 ms into sentences, nouns 700-1000
ms into sentences).
Interaction ROI results
We ran an analysis of variance on the normalized parameter estimates of the 16 subjects to
investigate whether the focus-accent agreement effects in the posterior-dorsal and anterior-ventral
cluster were statistically different. A repeated measures ANOVA with as within-subject factors
Cluster (posterior-dorsal versus anterior-ventral) and FA-agreement (agreement versus
disagreement) only revealed a significant main effect of FA-agreement (F(1,15) = 29.31, P <
.001). This effect was fully expected considering the contrast that was used to identify the
clusters. However, importantly no Cluster x FA-agreement interaction effects (F(1,15) < 1) were
found, and no main effect of Cluster (F(1,15) = 1.24, n.s.), indicating the focus-accent agreement
effects were similar in both clusters. Further analysis revealed an effect of FA agreement was
present in both clusters (F(1,15) = 24.29, P < .001 for the posterior-dorsal cluster; F(1,15) =
13.53, P < .01 for the anterior-ventral cluster).
Precuneus activity levels
We additionally investigated whether the precuneus activity supported the DMN interpretation
(see Discussion section of the main paper). As can be seen in Figure S1, there is a stronger
deactivation in the FAD condition than in the FAA condition.
2
Figure S1. Activation levels in precuneus
Average parameter estimates across all participants for the baseline, focus-accent agreement
(FAA), and focus-accent disagreement (FAD) conditions within the precuneus cluster at [16, -54,
42], see Table 3. Absolute values are plotted. Error bars depict the SEM.
3