Thematic influences on word-to-text integration across a sentence boundary

We report ERP evidence for local (preceding sentence) and global (thematic centrality) influences on word-to-text integration. Helder et al. (2019) found that the preceding sentence, rather than the central theme, is the primary source of integration, indexed by the N400 on the sentence-initial noun. The present experiments add evidence for thematic centrality effects. In Experiment 1, an N400 reduction occurred on the sentence-initial noun when an antecedent was remotely positioned in the preceding sentence and referred to the central theme, relative to Baseline. Experiment 2 further encouraged thematic processing by having participants select passage titles, producing an N400 reduction for sentence-initial nouns related to the central theme. Sentence-final nouns showed local influence on the N400 and P600, with no effect of centrality. We conclude that thematic centrality can influence integration across a sentence boundary when the antecedent is less accessible and the reader’s task encourages attention to global structure.