Against this backdrop, to investigate the role of sentence context on word recognition during reading, Kutas and Hillyard (1980) modified the oddball paradigm, known to elicit large P3b’s, for language materials. Undergraduates read 7-word-sentences presented one word per second; 75% were congruent control sentences (e.g., I shaved off my mustache and beard.), while a random 25% ended “oddly” with an improbable word (Expt. 1: He planted string beans in his car.) or a wholly anomalous one (Expt. 2: I take my coffee with cream and dog.). Surprisingly, although the manipulation modulated the ERP, it did not yield a P3b, but rather a large negativity with a broad (parietally maximal) scalp distribution, peaking around 400 ms (largest for semantic anomalies, but also present for improbable but sensible endings); it was called the N400.
