The Role of Language in Structure-Dependent Cognition

Examining the role and neural electrophysiological mechanisms of adjective cues in size judgment

Numerous influential theories have attempted to elucidate the relationship between language and thought. The debate persists on whether language and thought are distinct entities or if language is deeply embedded in individual cognitive processes. This study employs adjective cues combined with a mental imagery size judgment task as an experimental paradigm, utilizing neurophysiological techniques to preliminarily explore the role of adjectives in size judgment tasks and their underlying neurophysiological mechanisms. Findings reveal that performance is best when adjectives are congruent with the size of the object, with EEG microstate results indicating strong activity in Class A, related to language networks under this condition. Additionally, when adjectives conflict with object size, the discovery of the Ni component suggests that individuals monitor and inhibit the conflict between adjectives and object size, leading to decreased task performance in this condition. Moreover, when object size is ambiguous, individuals' size judgments do not benefit significantly from clear adjective cues. Event-related potentials and EEG microstate results suggest that under this condition, top-down cognitive resources are recruited more extensively. In conclusion, language plays a more crucial role in simpler judgment tasks; as tasks become more complex, judgment processes engage a greater number of distributed brain regions to collaborate, while the language system remains active. This study provides initial cognitive neuroscience evidence for understanding the relationship between language and simple forms of thought, offering preliminary insights for future investigations into the connection between language and thought.

Persuasive linguistic tricks in social media marketing communication-The memetic approach

The paper reports the results of a study into the use of linguistic cues defined as Persuasive Linguistic Tricks (PLT) in social media (SM) marketing communication. It was assumed that the content shared on Social Networking Sites (SNS) could be perceived as specific sets of meanings (memeplexes), where a single component, also PLT, may function as their part. Following an original typology of PLT, created based on an emotional factor, the research focused on whether and how the number of positive, neutral and negative PLT used in Facebook posts impacted the behaviour of content recipients. These activities, including liking, commenting and sharing, are strictly connected with post spreading and range. The data analysis focused on 167 Facebook posts shared by five leading Polish travel agencies and 1911 responding comments. The quantitative content analysis method and Spearman’s correlation tests were used. A relationship was observed between the number of emotionally positive and neutral PLT and the increase in the range of content with these PLT. The use of PLT by post recipients was also observed in their comments. This phenomenon is possibly related to the memetic nature of PLT. From the perspective of marketing messages, the obtained results contribute to and guide the textual content-building with a high spreading potential owing to the memetic capability of PLT. Further elaborations were made on the assumption for the evolutionary approach in social media content transfer and its processing.

Relational Integration in the Human Brain: A Review and Synthesis

Relational integration is required when multiple explicit representations of relations between entities must be jointly considered to make inferences. We provide an overview of the neural substrate of relational integration in humans and the processes that support it, focusing on work on analogical and deductive reasoning. In addition to neural evidence, we consider behavioral and computational work that has informed neural investigations of the representations of individual relations and of relational integration. In very general terms, evidence from neuroimaging, neuropsychological, and neuromodulatory studies points to a small set of regions (generally left lateralized) that appear to constitute key substrates for component processes of relational integration. These include posterior parietal cortex, implicated in the representation of first-order relations (e.g., A:B); rostrolateral pFC, apparently central in integrating first-order relations so as to generate and/or evaluate higher-order relations (e.g., A:B::C:D); dorsolateral pFC, involved in maintaining relations in working memory; and ventrolateral pFC, implicated in interference control (e.g., inhibiting salient information that competes with relevant relations). Recent work has begun to link computational models of relational representation and reasoning with patterns of neural activity within these brain areas.