How humor is experienced: An embodied metaphor account

Humor experience facilitates ongoing cognitive tasks: Evidence from pun comprehension

Empirical findings on embodied cognition have shown that bodily states (e.g., bodily postures and affective states) can influence how people appreciate humor. A case in point is that participants were reported to read pleasant sentences faster than the unpleasant controls when their muscles responsible for smiling were activated. However, little research has examined whether the feeling of amusement derived from humor processing like pun comprehension can exert a backward influence on ongoing cognitive tasks. In the present study, the participants' eye movements were tracked while they rated the comprehensibility of humorous sentences (homophone puns) and two types of unfunny control sentences (congruent and incongruent). Fixation measures showed an advantage in the critical homophone region for the congruent controls relative to the homophone puns; however, this pattern was reversed in terms of total sentence reading time. In addition, the humor rating scores acquired after the eye-tracking experiment were found negatively correlated to the overall sentence reading time, suggesting that the greater amusement the participant experienced the faster they would finish the rating task. Taken together, the current results indicate that the positive affect derived from humor can in turn provide immediate feedback to the cognitive system, which enhances text comprehension. As a result, the current finding provides more empirical evidence for the exploration of the interaction between the body and cognition.

A Study of the Use of Iconic and Metaphoric Gestures with Motion-Based, Static Space-Based, Static Object-Based, and Static Event-Based Statements

In this article, we extend our previously suggested categorization of metaphors to literal statements, and categorize metaphorical and literal statements into four pairs of corresponding metaphorical and literal statements: (1) motion-based metaphorical/literal statements; (2) static space-based metaphorical/literal statements; (3) static object-based metaphorical/literal statements; (4) static event-based metaphorical/literal statements. Then, we report a study that investigated the use of metaphoric and iconic gestures with these corresponding categories during the retelling of a set of stories by a group of thirty participants. The participants listened to five audio short stories. Each story contained one statement of each metaphoric category and one statement of each literal category. After listening to each story, they retold it in their own language in front of a camera. The results showed that event-based metaphors and event-based literal statements were accompanied by the smallest number of metaphoric and iconic gestures. Furthermore, there was a significant similarity between each metaphorical category and its corresponding literal category in the number of gestures that were used with these categories. This similarity supports the idea that the mechanisms underlying the embodiment of metaphorical and literal statements are essentially similar.

A Study of Using Metaphoric and Beat Gestures with Motion-Based and Non-Motion-Based Metaphors during Retelling Stories

In this paper, we classify metaphors into four categories: motion-based metaphors, static space-based metaphors, static object-based metaphors, and static event-based metaphors. Then, a study that investigated the use of gestures with these types of metaphors is reported. The aim was to examine how these types of metaphors are used with metaphoric and beat gestures during the process of re-telling stories. The participants of the study listened to three audio stories. Each story contained two motion-based metaphors, two static space-based metaphors, two static object-based metaphors, and two static event-based metaphors. After listening to each story, they had to retell the stories in front of a camera. The videos were analyzed to determine the number of metaphoric gestures and beat gestures that had been used by participants during the retelling of the stories. The results showed that the highest number of metaphoric gestures had been used with static space-based metaphors. This was followed by motion-based metaphors, static object-based metaphors, and static event-based metaphors, respectively. On the other hand, the highest number of beat gestures was used with static event-based metaphors. These findings indicate that the use of metaphoric gestures and beat gestures accompanying metaphors is highly dependent on the spatial and motoric properties of the base of the metaphors, which supports the idea of embodied metaphor comprehension.