evaluated as a non-speeded, end-state response. In contrast, the N400 occupies a temporally delimited place within an incremental system (see discussion in Federmeier & Laszlo 2009). Thus, in some cases (e.g., negation in the absence of pragmatic licensing), information that ultimately impacts plausibility judgments is not active in time to facilitate N400 activity. In other cases, information associated with implausible stimuli has, at least temporarily, been activated – e.g., because incoming words share features with contextually-induced predictions or are related to or associated with other words or concepts in the sentence or discourse -- creating what Kuperberg (2007) calls a “temporary semantic illusion”. Notably, in this context, it is important to distinguish between a lack of an N400 effect and a lack of an N400 component, because failure to find an N400 difference across conditions (because both are facilitated relative to a wholly unexpected “baseline” condition or because neither is) cannot be used to conclude that the operations indexed by the N400 have been “suspended” or “blocked” (Bornkessel-Schlesewsky & Schlesewsky 2008; Kolk & Chwilla 2007). In these cases there are N400 responses, just not differential levels of activity in the semantic system across two inputs that ultimately yield different plausibility
