Sometimes We Do Not Hear What People Say, Instead We Hear What We Expect Them to Say

AGES: -Sometimes people make mistakes when they are speaking.For example, someone might say, "Can you hand me the hammer?" when they meant to ask for a screwdriver.Because this mistake is related to the meaning, it is called a semantic error.Sometimes listeners (or readers) notice these errors and sometimes they do not.Language scientists are interested in how people's brains respond when sentences have semantic errors.To study this, scientists have done experiments using a technique called EEG.These experiments have shown that people's brains respond di erently to di erent kinds of semantic errors.In particular, there is a certain brain response based on how well the incorrect word fits in with the other words in the sentence.These experiments have shown that our brains often use knowledge about what kinds of words are expected in a sentence to construct meaning from that sentence.kids.frontiersin.org