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Dwivedi VD, Selvanayagam J. An electrophysiological investigation of referential communication. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2024; 254:105438. [PMID: 38943944 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2024.105438] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/18/2023] [Revised: 06/13/2024] [Accepted: 06/19/2024] [Indexed: 07/01/2024]
Abstract
A key aspect of linguistic communication involves semantic reference to objects. Presently, we investigate neural responses at objects when reference is disrupted, e.g., "The connoisseur tasted *that wine"… vs. "…*that roof…" Without any previous linguistic context or visual gesture, use of the demonstrative determiner "that" renders interpretation at the noun as incoherent. This incoherence is not based on knowledge of how the world plausibly works but instead is based on grammatical rules of reference. Whereas Event-Related Potential (ERP) responses to sentences such as "The connoisseur tasted the wine …" vs. "the roof" would result in an N400 effect, it is unclear what to expect for doubly incoherent "…*that roof…". Results revealed an N400 effect, as expected, preceded by a P200 component (instead of predicted P600 effect). These independent ERP components at the doubly violated condition support the notion that semantic interpretation can be partitioned into grammatical vs. contextual constructs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Veena D Dwivedi
- Department of Psychology/Centre for Neuroscience, Brock University, 1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way, St. Catharines, ON L2S 3A1, Canada.
| | - Janahan Selvanayagam
- Centre for Neuroscience, Brock University, 1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way, St. Catharines, ON L2S 3A, Canada
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2
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Sinha S, Del Goleto S, Kostova M, Debruille JB. Unveiling the need of interactions for social N400s and supporting the N400 inhibition hypothesis. Sci Rep 2023; 13:12613. [PMID: 37537222 PMCID: PMC10400652 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-39345-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/24/2023] [Accepted: 07/24/2023] [Indexed: 08/05/2023] Open
Abstract
When participants (Pps) are presented with stimuli in the presence of another person, they may consider that person's perspective. Indeed, five recent ERP studies show that the amplitudes of their N400s are increased. The two most recent ones reveal that these social-N400 increases occur even when instructions do not require a focus on the other's perspective. These increases also happen when Pps know that this other person has the same stimulus information as they have. However, in all these works, Pps could see the other person. Here, we tested whether the interaction occurring with this sight is important or whether these social N400 increases also occur when the other person is seated a bit behind Pps, who are aware of it. All had to decide whether the word ending short stories was coherent, incoherent, or equivocal. No social N400 increase was observed: N400s elicited by those words in Pps who were with a confederate (n = 50) were similar to those of Pps who were alone (n = 51). On the other hand, equivocal endings did not elicit larger N400s than coherent ones but triggered larger late posterior positivities (LPPs), like in previous studies. The discussion focuses on the circumstances in which perspective-taking occurs and on the functional significance of the N400 and the LPP.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sujata Sinha
- Department of Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
- Research Center of the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, Montréal, Canada
| | - Sarah Del Goleto
- UR Paragraphe, Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, Saint-Denis, France
| | - Milena Kostova
- UR Paragraphe, Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, Saint-Denis, France
| | - J Bruno Debruille
- Department of Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, Montréal, Canada.
- Research Center of the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, Montréal, Canada.
- Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, Montréal, Canada.
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Champagne-Lavau M, Bolger D, Klein M. Impact of social knowledge about the speaker on irony understanding: Evidence from neural oscillations. Soc Neurosci 2023; 18:28-45. [PMID: 37161361 DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2023.2203948] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/11/2023]
Abstract
The aim of the present study was to explore neuronal oscillatory activity during a task of irony understanding. In this task, we manipulated implicit information about the speaker such as occupation stereotypes (i.e., sarcastic versus non-sarcastic). These stereotypes are social knowledge that influence the extent to which the speaker's ironic intent is understood. Time-frequency analyses revealed an early effect of speaker occupation stereotypes, as evidenced by greater synchronization in the upper gamma band (in the 150-250 ms time window) when the speaker had a sarcastic occupation, by a greater desynchronization for ironic context compared to literal context in the alpha1 band and by a greater synchronization in the theta band when the speaker had a non-sarcastic occupation. When the speaker occupation did not constrain the ironic interpretation, the interpretation of the sentence as ironic was revealed as resource-demanding and requiring pragmatic reanalysis, as shown mainly by the synchronization in the theta band and the desynchronization in the alpha1 band (in the 500-800 ms time window). These results support predictions of the constraint satisfaction model suggesting that during irony understanding, extra-linguistic information such as information on the speaker is used as soon as it is available, in the early stage of processing.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Madelyne Klein
- LPL, CNRS, Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France
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4
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Valles-Capetillo E, Ibarra C, Martinez D, Giordano M. A novel task to evaluate irony comprehension and its essential elements in Spanish speakers. Front Psychol 2022; 13:963666. [DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.963666] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/07/2022] [Accepted: 10/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
An ironic statement transmits the opposite meaning to its literal counterpart and is one of the most complex communicative acts. Thus, it has been proposed to be a good indicator of social communication ability. Prosody and facial expression are two crucial paralinguistic cues that can facilitate the understanding of ironic statements. The primary aim of this study was to create and evaluate a task of irony identification that could be used in neuroimaging studies. We independently evaluated three cues, contextual discrepancy, prosody and facial expression, and selected the best cue that would lead participants in fMRI studies to identify a stimulus as ironic in a reliable way. This process included the design, selection, and comparison of the three cues, all of which have been previously associated with irony detection. The secondary aim was to correlate irony comprehension with specific cognitive functions. Results showed that psycholinguistic properties could differentiate irony from other communicative acts. The contextual discrepancy, prosody, and facial expression were relevant cues that helped detect ironic statements; with contextual discrepancy being the cue that produced the highest classification accuracy and classification time. This task can be used successfully to test irony comprehension in Spanish speakers using the cue of interest. The correlation of irony comprehension with cognitive functions did not yield consistent results. A more heterogeneous sample of participants and a broader battery of tests may be needed to find reliable cognitive correlates of irony comprehension.
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Shi H, Li Y. Neural activity during processing Chinese irony text: An event-related potential study. Front Neurosci 2022; 16:1019318. [PMID: 36278022 PMCID: PMC9581322 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2022.1019318] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/15/2022] [Accepted: 09/22/2022] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Objective Irony as an indirect language with unpredictability consumes more cognitive resources, and is more difficult to understand than literal language. This study aims to explore the processing differences between irony and literal sentences using event-related potential (ERP) technology. Materials and methods Three types of sentences were involved: sentences with predictable literal meaning, sentences with unpredictable literal meaning, and sentences with ironic meaning. The neural responses of the subjects were recorded when they read sentences. Results Compared to predictable literal meaning sentences, unpredictable literal meaning sentences and ironic meaning sentences elicited larger amplitude of N400 components. The difference was not significant between the latter two. In addition, there was no significant difference in P600 evoked by the three sentences. Conclusion In the initial stage of irony processing, the low predictability may result in the difficulty in semantic comprehension, in which the processing patterns of unpredictable and ironic sentences are rather close. In the later stage of processing, ironic integration is not harder compared to literal sentence integration.
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Davies C, Porretta V, Koleva K, Klepousniotou E. Speaker-Specific Cues Influence Semantic Disambiguation. JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH 2022; 51:933-955. [PMID: 35556197 PMCID: PMC9579068 DOI: 10.1007/s10936-022-09852-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 02/10/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
Addressees use information from specific speakers' previous discourse to make predictions about incoming linguistic material and to restrict the choice of potential interpretations. In this way, speaker specificity has been shown to be an influential factor in language processing across several domains e.g., spoken word recognition, sentence processing, and pragmatics. However, its influence on semantic disambiguation has received little attention to date. Using an exposure-test design and visual world eye tracking, we examined the effect of speaker-specific literal vs. nonliteral style on the disambiguation of metaphorical polysemes such as 'fork', 'head', and 'mouse'. Eye movement data revealed that when interpreting polysemous words with a literal and a nonliteral meaning, addressees showed a late-stage preference for the literal meaning in response to a nonliteral speaker. We interpret this as reflecting an indeterminacy in the intended meaning in this condition, as well as the influence of meaning dominance cues at later stages of processing. Response data revealed that addressees then ultimately resolved to the literal target in 90% of trials. These results suggest that addressees consider a range of senses in the earlier stages of processing, and that speaker style is a contextual determinant in semantic processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Catherine Davies
- School of Languages, Cultures, and Societies, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, Leeds, UK.
| | - Vincent Porretta
- Department of Linguistics and Languages, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
| | - Kremena Koleva
- School of Languages, Cultures, and Societies, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, Leeds, UK
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Wu Z, Wang Y. The roles of social status information in irony comprehension: An eye-tracking study. Front Psychol 2022; 13:959397. [PMID: 36148127 PMCID: PMC9486158 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.959397] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/01/2022] [Accepted: 08/10/2022] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
The literature on irony processing mainly focused on contextual effect, leaving other factors (such as social factors) untouched. The current study investigated how social status information affected the online comprehension of irony. As irony might be more damaging when a speaker uses it to a superordinate than the other way around, it is assumed that greater processing efforts would be observed in the former case. Using an eye-movement sentence reading paradigm, we recruited 36 native Mandarin speakers and examined the role of social status information and literality (i.e., literal and irony) in their irony interpretation. Our results showed ironic statements were more effortful to process than literal ones, reporting an early and consistent effect on the target regions. The social status effect followed the literality effect, with more difficulty in processing ironic statements that targeted the superordinate than the subordinate; such an effect of social status was missing with literal statements. Besides, an individual’s social skill appeared to affect the perception of status information in ironic statements, as the socially skillful readers needed more time than the socially unskillful to process irony targeting a subordinate in the second half of the experiment in the critical region. Our study suggests that irony processing might be further discussed in terms of the relative predictability of linguistic, social, and individual variabilities.
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Szuba A, Redl T, de Hoop H. Are Second Person Masculine Generics Easier to Process for Men than for Women? Evidence from Polish. JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH 2022; 51:819-845. [PMID: 35303215 PMCID: PMC9338112 DOI: 10.1007/s10936-022-09859-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 02/17/2022] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
In Polish, it is obligatory to mark feminine or masculine grammatical gender on second-person singular past tense verbs (e.g., Dostałaś list 'You received-F a letter'). When the addressee's gender is unknown or unspecified, masculine but never feminine gender marking may be used. The present self-paced reading experiment aims to determine whether this practice creates a processing disadvantage for female addressees in such contexts. We further investigated how men process being addressed with feminine-marked verbs, which constitutes a pragmatic violation. To this end, we presented Polish native speakers with short narratives. Each narrative contained either a second-person singular past tense verb with masculine or feminine gender marking, or a gerund verb with no gender marking as a baseline. We hypothesised that both men and women would read the verbs with gender marking mismatching their own gender more slowly than the gender-unmarked gerund verbs. The results revealed that the gender-mismatching verbs were read equally fast as the gerund verbs, and that the verbs with gender marking matching participant gender were read faster. While the relatively high reading time of the gender-unmarked baseline was unexpected, the pattern of results nevertheless shows that verbs with masculine marking were more difficult to process for women compared to men, and vice versa. In conclusion, even though masculine gender marking in the second person is commonly used with a gender-unspecific intention, it created similar processing difficulties for women as the ones that men experienced when addressed through feminine gender marking. This study is the first one, as far as we are aware, to provide evidence for the male bias of second-person masculine generics during language processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Agnieszka Szuba
- Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Postbus 9103, 6500 HD, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Theresa Redl
- Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Postbus 9103, 6500 HD, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Helen de Hoop
- Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Postbus 9103, 6500 HD, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
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Sun L, Chen H, Zhang C, Cong F, Li X, Hämäläinen T. Decoding brain activities of literary metaphor comprehension: An event-related potential and EEG spectral analysis. Front Psychol 2022; 13:913521. [PMID: 35941953 PMCID: PMC9356233 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.913521] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/05/2022] [Accepted: 06/30/2022] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Novel metaphors in literary texts (hereinafter referred to as literary metaphors) seem to be more creative and open-ended in meaning than metaphors in non-literary texts (non-literary metaphors). However, some disagreement still exists on how literary metaphors differ from non-literary metaphors. Therefore, this study explored the neural mechanisms of literary metaphors extracted from modern Chinese poetry by using the methods of Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) and Event-Related Spectral Perturbations (ERSPs), as compared with non-literary conventional metaphors and literal expressions outside literary texts. Forty-eight subjects were recruited to make the semantic relatedness judgment after reading the prime-target pairs in three linguistic conditions. According to the ERPs results, the earliest differences were presented during the time window of P200 component (170–260 ms) in the frontal and central areas, with the amplitude of P200 for literary metaphors more positive than the other two conditions, reflecting the early allocation of attention and the early conscious experience of the experimental stimuli. Meanwhile, significant differences were presented during the time window of N400 effect (430–530 ms), with the waveform of literary metaphors more negative than others in the frontal and central topography of scalp distributions, suggesting more efforts in retrieving conceptual knowledge for literary metaphors. The ERSPs analysis revealed that the frequency bands of delta and theta were both involved in the cognitive process of literary metaphor comprehension, with delta band distributed in the frontal and central scalp and theta band in parietal and occipital electrodes. Increases in the two power bands during different time windows provided extra evidences that the processing of literary metaphors required more attention and effort than non-literary metaphors and literal expressions in the semantic related tasks, suggesting that the cognitive process of literary metaphors was distinguished by different EEG spectral patterns.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lina Sun
- School of Foreign Languages, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China
- Faculty of Information Technology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
| | - Hongjun Chen
- School of Foreign Languages, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China
- *Correspondence: Hongjun Chen,
| | - Chi Zhang
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China
| | - Fengyu Cong
- School of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China
| | - Xueyan Li
- School of Foreign Languages, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China
| | - Timo Hämäläinen
- Faculty of Information Technology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
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10
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The interplay between respectfulness and lexical-semantic in reading Chinese: evidence from ERPs. Cogn Neurodyn 2022; 16:101-115. [PMID: 35126773 PMCID: PMC8807755 DOI: 10.1007/s11571-021-09700-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/08/2020] [Revised: 06/27/2021] [Accepted: 07/07/2021] [Indexed: 02/03/2023] Open
Abstract
Language comprehension requires the processing of both linguistic and extra-linguistic information, such as syntax, semantics, and pragmatic information. Previous studies have systematically examined the interplay between syntactic and semantic processing. However, there is a lack of data on how pragmatic processing proceeds and its interaction with semantic processing. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), the present study manipulated the semantic coherence of a verb phrase (VP) and the respect consistency of the object noun phrase in the VP, resulting in four types of critical sentences. Participants read 160 critical Chinese sentences and 220 filler sentences. After electroencephalogram recordings, they completed the Autism Quotient Communication (AQ-Comm) subscale and a sentence acceptability rating task. The ERP results showed that respect violation elicited a larger N400 response and a late negative activity in the pragmatically less-skilled subgroup (as indexed by higher scores on the AQ-Comm subscale). In contrast, respect violation elicited a P600 response in the pragmatically skilled subgroup (as indexed by lower scores on the AQ-Comm subscale). The double violation condition elicited an ERP pattern that was similar to that of the semantic violation condition in both subgroups, suggesting that respect violation effects were present only when the VP was semantically coherent. These results suggest that semantic violation can preclude readers from engaging in pragmatic inferencing, regardless of the participants' pragmatic skills. Strategies for resolving respect violation and corresponding brain activities vary according to participants' pragmatic abilities. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11571-021-09700-2.
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11
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Rothermich K, Ahn S, Dannhauer M, Pell MD. Social appropriateness perception of dynamic interactions. Soc Neurosci 2022; 17:37-57. [PMID: 35060435 DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2022.2032326] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/19/2022]
Abstract
The current study explored the judgement of communicative appropriateness while processing a dialogue between two individuals. All stimuli were presented as audio-visual as well as audio-only vignettes and 24 young adults reported their social impression (appropriateness) of literal, blunt, sarcastic, and teasing statements. On average, teasing statements were rated as more appropriate when processing audiovisual statements compared to the audio-only version of a stimuli, while sarcastic statements were judged as less appropriate with additional visual information. These results indicate a rejection of the Tinge Hypothesis for audio-visual vignettes while confirming it for the reduced, audio-only counterparts. We also analyzed time-frequency EEG data of four frequency bands that have been related to language processing: alpha, beta, theta and low gamma. We found desynchronization in the alpha band literal versus nonliteral items, confirming the assumption that the alpha band reflects stimulus complexity. The analysis also revealed a power increase in the theta, beta and low gamma band, especially when comparing blunt and nonliteral statements in the audio-only condition. The time-frequency results corroborate the prominent role of the alpha and theta bands in language processing and offer new insights into the neural correlates of communicative appropriateness and social aspects of speech perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kathrin Rothermich
- Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders, East Carolina University, Greenville, USA.,School of Communication Sciences & Disorders, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
| | - Sungwoo Ahn
- Department of Mathematics, East Carolina University, Greenville, USA
| | | | - Marc D Pell
- School of Communication Sciences & Disorders, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
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Filik R, Ingram J, Moxey L, Leuthold H. Irony as a Test of the Presupposition-Denial Account: An ERP Study. JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH 2021; 50:1321-1335. [PMID: 34415478 PMCID: PMC8660709 DOI: 10.1007/s10936-021-09795-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 07/19/2021] [Indexed: 05/30/2023]
Abstract
According to the Presupposition-Denial Account, complement set reference arises when focus is on the shortfall between the amount conveyed by a natural language quantifier and a larger, expected amount. Negative quantifiers imply a shortfall, through the denial of a presupposition, whereas positive quantifiers do not. An exception may be provided by irony. One function of irony is to highlight, through indirect negation, the shortfall between what is expected/desired, and what is observed. Thus, a positive quantifier used ironically should also lead to a shortfall and license complement set reference. Using ERPs, we examined whether reference to the complement set is more felicitous following a positive quantifier used ironically than one used non-ironically. ERPs during reading showed a smaller N400 for complement set reference following an ironic compared to a non-ironic context. The shortfall generated thorough irony is sufficient to allow focus on the complement set, supporting the Presupposition-Denial Account.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ruth Filik
- School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
| | - Joanne Ingram
- School of Education and Social Science, University of the West of Scotland, Paisley, UK.
| | - Linda Moxey
- School of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
| | - Hartmut Leuthold
- Psychological Institute, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
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Xu J, Abdel Rahman R, Sommer W. Who speaks next? Adaptations to speaker identity in processing spoken sentences. Psychophysiology 2021; 59:e13948. [PMID: 34587288 DOI: 10.1111/psyp.13948] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/07/2021] [Revised: 07/22/2021] [Accepted: 09/13/2021] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
When listening to a speaker, we need to adapt to her individual speaking characteristics, such as error proneness, accent, etc. The present study investigated two aspects of adaptation to speaker identity during processing spoken sentences in multi-speaker situations: the effect of speaker sequence across sentences and the effect of learning speaker-specific error probability. Spoken sentences were presented, cued, and accompanied by one of three portraits that were labeled as the speakers' faces. In Block 1 speaker-specific probabilities of syntax errors were 10%, 50%, or 90%; in Block 2 they were uniformly 50%. In both blocks, speech errors elicited P600 effects in the scalp recorded ERP. We found a speaker sequence effect only in Block 1: the P600 to target words was larger after speaker switches than after speaker repetitions, independent of sentence correctness. In Block 1, listeners showed higher accuracy in judging sentence correctness spoken by speakers with lower error proportions. No speaker-specific differences in target word P600 and accuracy were found in Block 2. When speakers differ in error proneness, listeners seem to flexibly adapt their speech processing for the upcoming sentence through attention reorientation and resource reallocation if the speaker is about to change, and through proactive maintenance of neural resources if the speaker remains the same.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jue Xu
- Institut für Psychologie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Rasha Abdel Rahman
- Institut für Psychologie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Werner Sommer
- Institut für Psychologie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
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14
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Caballero JA, Mauchand M, Jiang X, Pell MD. Cortical processing of speaker politeness: Tracking the dynamic effects of voice tone and politeness markers. Soc Neurosci 2021; 16:423-438. [PMID: 34102955 DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2021.1938667] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
Information in the tone of voice alters social impressions and underlying brain activity as listeners evaluate the interpersonal relevance of utterances. Here, we presented requests that expressed politeness distinctions through the voice (polite/rude) and explicit linguistic markers (half of the requests began with Please). Thirty participants performed a social perception task (rating friendliness) while their electroencephalogram was recorded. Behaviorally, vocal politeness strategies had a much stronger influence on the perceived friendliness than the linguistic marker. Event-related potentials revealed rapid effects of (im)polite voices on cortical activity prior to ~300 ms; P200 amplitudes increased for polite versus rude voices, suggesting that the speaker's polite stance was registered as more salient in our task. At later stages, politeness distinctions encoded by the speaker's voice and their use of Please interacted, modulating activity in the N400 (300-500 ms) and late positivity (600-800 ms) time windows. Patterns of results suggest that initial attention deployment to politeness cues is rapidly influenced by the motivational significance of a speaker's voice. At later stages, processes for integrating vocal and lexical information resulted in increased cognitive effort to reevaluate utterances with ambiguous/contradictory cues. The potential influence of social anxiety on the P200 effect is also discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jonathan A Caballero
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders 2001 McGill College, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
| | - Maël Mauchand
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders 2001 McGill College, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
| | - Xiaoming Jiang
- Shanghai International Studies University, Institute of Linguistics (IoL), Shanghai, China
| | - Marc D Pell
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders 2001 McGill College, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
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15
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Kroczek LOH, Gunter TC. The time course of speaker-specific language processing. Cortex 2021; 141:311-321. [PMID: 34118750 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2021.04.017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/17/2020] [Revised: 04/27/2021] [Accepted: 04/27/2021] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
Listeners are sensitive to a speaker's individual language use and generate expectations for particular speakers. It is unclear, however, how such expectations affect online language processing. In the present EEG study, we presented thirty-two participants with auditory sentence stimuli of two speakers. Speakers differed in their use of two particular syntactic structures, easy subject-initial SOV structures and more difficult object-initial OSV structures. One speaker, the SOV-Speaker, had a high proportion of SOV sentences (75%) and a low proportion of OSV sentences (25%), and vice-versa for the OSV-Speaker. Participants were exposed to the speakers' individual language use in a training session followed by a test session on the consecutive day. ERP-results show that early stages of sentence processing are driven by syntactic processing only and are unaffected by speaker-specific expectations. In a late stage, however, an interaction between speaker and syntax information was observed. For the SOV-Speaker condition, the classical P600-effect reflected the effort of processing difficult and unexpected sentence structures. For the OSV-Speaker condition, both structures elicited different responses on frontal electrodes, possibly indexing effort to switch from a local speaker model to a global model of language use. Overall, the study identifies distinct neural mechanisms related to speaker-specific expectations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Leon O H Kroczek
- Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Regensburg, Germany.
| | - Thomas C Gunter
- Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Germany
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16
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Tokimoto S, Miyaoka Y, Tokimoto N. An EEG Analysis of Honorification in Japanese: Human Hierarchical Relationships Coded in Language. Front Psychol 2021; 12:549839. [PMID: 33762986 PMCID: PMC7982684 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.549839] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/07/2020] [Accepted: 02/09/2021] [Indexed: 12/04/2022] Open
Abstract
This study examines the neural substrate of the understanding of human relationships in verbal communication with Japanese honorific sentences as experimental materials. We manipulated two types of Japanese verbs specifically used to represent respect for others, i.e., exalted and humble verbs, which represent respect for the person in the subject and the person in the object, respectively. We visually presented appropriate and anomalous sentences containing the two types of verbs and analyzed the electroencephalogram elicited by the verbs. We observed significant parietal negativity at a latency of approximately 400 ms for anomalous verbs compared with appropriate verbs. This parietal negativity could be a manifestation of the pragmatic process used to integrate the linguistic forms with the human relationships represented in the sentences. The topographies of these event-related potentials (ERPs) corresponded well with those of ERPs for two second-person pronouns in Chinese (plain ni and respectful nin). This correspondence suggests that the pragmatic integration process in honorific expressions is cross-linguistically common in part. Furthermore, we assessed the source localization by means of independent component (IC) analysis and dipole fitting and observed a significant difference in ERP between the honorific and control sentences in the IC cluster centered in the precentral gyrus and in the cluster centered in the medial part of the occipital lobe, which corresponded well with the functional magnetic resonance imaging findings for Japanese honorification. We also found several significant differences in the time-frequency analyses for the medial occipital cluster. These significant differences in the medial occipital cluster suggested that the circuit of the theory of mind was involved in the processing of Japanese honorification. Our results suggest that pragmatic and syntactic processing are performed in parallel because the person to be respected must fulfill the grammatical function appropriate for the honorific verb.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shingo Tokimoto
- Department of English Language Studies, Mejiro University, Tokyo, Japan
| | - Yayoi Miyaoka
- Faculty of Liberal Arts, Hiroshima University of Economics, Hiroshima, Japan
| | - Naoko Tokimoto
- Department of Policy Management, Shobi University, Saitama, Japan
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17
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Immediate online use of prosody reveals the ironic intentions of a speaker: neurophysiological evidence. COGNITIVE AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE 2021; 21:74-92. [DOI: 10.3758/s13415-020-00849-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 11/08/2020] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
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18
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Vergis N, Jiang X, Pell MD. Neural responses to interpersonal requests: Effects of imposition and vocally-expressed stance. Brain Res 2020; 1740:146855. [DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2020.146855] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/08/2019] [Revised: 04/02/2020] [Accepted: 04/23/2020] [Indexed: 02/07/2023]
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19
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Rigoulot S, Jiang X, Vergis N, Pell MD. Neurophysiological correlates of sexually evocative speech. Biol Psychol 2020; 154:107909. [DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2020.107909] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/06/2019] [Revised: 05/14/2020] [Accepted: 05/20/2020] [Indexed: 12/11/2022]
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20
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Caffarra S, Wolpert M, Scarinci D, Mancini S. Who are you talking to? The role of addressee identity in utterance comprehension. Psychophysiology 2020; 57:e13527. [PMID: 31953848 DOI: 10.1111/psyp.13527] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/17/2019] [Revised: 10/10/2019] [Accepted: 12/18/2019] [Indexed: 12/01/2022]
Abstract
Experimental evidence suggests that speaker and addressee quickly adapt to each other from the earliest moments of sentence processing, and that interlocutor-related information is rapidly integrated with other sources of nonpragmatic information (e.g., semantic, morphosyntactic, etc.). These findings have been taken as support for one-step models of sentence comprehension. The results from the present event-related potential study challenge this theoretical framework providing a case where discourse level information is integrated only at a late stage of processing, when morphosyntactic analysis has been already initiated. We considered the case of Basque allocutive agreement, where information about addressee gender is encoded in verbal inflection. Two different types of Basque grammatical violations were presented together with the corresponding control conditions: one could be detected based on a morphosyntactic mismatch (person agreement violation), while the other could be detected only if the addressee's gender was considered (allocutive violation). Morphosyntactic violations elicited greater N400 effects followed by P600 effects, while allocutive violations elicited only P600 effects. These results provide new constraints to one-step accounts as they represent a case where speakers do not immediately adjust to the addressee's perspective. We propose that the relevance of discourse-level information might be a crucial variable to reconcile the dichotomy between one- and two-step models.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sendy Caffarra
- BCBL, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, San Sebastian, Spain.,Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
| | - Max Wolpert
- McGill University Integrated Program in Neuroscience, Montreal, QC, Canada.,Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, Montreal, QC, Canada
| | - Dana Scarinci
- BCBL, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, San Sebastian, Spain
| | - Simona Mancini
- BCBL, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, San Sebastian, Spain
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21
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Caffarra S, Motamed Haeri A, Michell E, Martin CD. When is irony influenced by communicative constraints?
ERP
evidence supporting interactive models. Eur J Neurosci 2019; 50:3566-3577. [DOI: 10.1111/ejn.14503] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/10/2019] [Revised: 06/25/2019] [Accepted: 07/01/2019] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Sendy Caffarra
- BCBL, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language Donostia Spain
| | | | - Elissa Michell
- BCBL, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language Donostia Spain
| | - Clara D. Martin
- BCBL, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language Donostia Spain
- Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science Bilbao Spain
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22
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What is the difference between irony and sarcasm? An fMRI study. Cortex 2019; 115:112-122. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2019.01.025] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/27/2017] [Revised: 10/18/2018] [Accepted: 01/22/2019] [Indexed: 01/18/2023]
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23
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Mauchand M, Vergis N, Pell MD. Irony, Prosody, and Social Impressions of Affective Stance. DISCOURSE PROCESSES 2019. [DOI: 10.1080/0163853x.2019.1581588] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/27/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Maël Mauchand
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
| | - Nikos Vergis
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
| | - Marc D. Pell
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
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24
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Regel S, Opitz A, Müller G, Friederici AD. Processing inflectional morphology: ERP evidence for decomposition of complex words according to the affix structure. Cortex 2018; 116:143-153. [PMID: 30466728 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2018.10.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/10/2017] [Revised: 06/10/2018] [Accepted: 10/03/2018] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
Abstract
This study investigated the processing of inflectional morphology by registrating event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during sentence reading. In particular, we examined nouns combined with affixes that have distinct structural characteristics as proposed by morphological theory. Affixes were either complex consisting of functionally distinguishable subparts as occurring for German plural morphology, or simple consisting of one part only. To test possible differences in processing these affixes we compared grammatical nouns [e.g., Kartons (cartons)] to ungrammatical ones (e.g., *Kartonen) in two different syntactic contexts represented by a complex, or simple affix. The ERPs showed that ungrammatical nouns consisting of complex affixes elicited a left anterior negativity (LAN) reflecting enhanced morphosyntactic processing, which was absent for equivalent nouns consisting of simple affixes. This finding suggests that inflected words are decomposed dependent on the affix structure, whereby the affixes themselves seem to consist of morphological subparts in accordance with current morphological theories (Müller, 2007; Noyer, 1992). Moreover, ungrammatical nouns elicited early (reduced P200) and late (P600) ERP components relative to their grammatical equivalents, which implies an engagement of syntactic processes presumably based on intially enhanced pre-lexical processing of these irregularized nouns. The findings are discussed with respect to theoretical and neuropsychological accounts to inflectional morphology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stefanie Regel
- Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department of Neuropsychology, Leipzig, Germany.
| | | | | | - Angela D Friederici
- Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department of Neuropsychology, Leipzig, Germany
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25
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Fairchild S, Papafragou A. Sins of omission are more likely to be forgiven in non-native speakers. Cognition 2018; 181:80-92. [PMID: 30149264 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.08.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/01/2016] [Revised: 08/12/2018] [Accepted: 08/17/2018] [Indexed: 11/24/2022]
Abstract
Utterances produced by foreign-accented speakers are often judged as less credible, more vague, and more difficult to understand compared to those produced by native speakers. Some theoretical accounts argue that listeners have different expectations about the speech of non-native speakers. Other accounts argue that non-native speech is processed differently to the extent that a foreign accent taxes intelligibility and introduces additional processing load. Here we test the role of expectations for the processing of native vs. non-native speech in written texts where accents cannot be directly perceived (and thus affect processing load). In Experiment 1, native comprehenders gave higher ratings to the meaning of under-informative sentences ("Some people have noses with two nostrils") when they believed that the sentences were produced by non-native compared to native speakers. This difference was larger the more likely individual participants were to interpret under-informative sentences pragmatically (as opposed to logically). In Experiment 2, the tendency to forgive sins of information omission was shown to depend on the presumed L2 proficiency of non-native speakers. Experiment 3 replicated and extended the major finding. Since intelligibility of the sentences was identical across types of speakers, these findings provide support for the role of expectations for non-native speech comprehension, as well as for broader models of language processing that argue for a role of speaker identity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sarah Fairchild
- Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, USA(1).
| | - Anna Papafragou
- Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, USA(1)
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26
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Weissman B, Tanner D. A strong wink between verbal and emoji-based irony: How the brain processes ironic emojis during language comprehension. PLoS One 2018; 13:e0201727. [PMID: 30110375 PMCID: PMC6093662 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0201727] [Citation(s) in RCA: 46] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/31/2017] [Accepted: 07/20/2018] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Emojis are ideograms that are becoming ubiquitous in digital communication. However, no research has yet investigated how humans process semantic and pragmatic content of emojis in real time. We investigated neural responses to irony-producing emojis, the question being whether emoji-generated irony is processed similarly to word-generated irony. Previous ERP studies have routinely found P600 effects to verbal irony. Our research sought to identify whether the same neural responses could also be elicited by emoji-induced irony. In three experiments, participants read sentences that ended in either a congruent, incongruent, or ironic (wink) emoji. Results across all three experiments demonstrated clear P600 effects, the amplitudes of which were correlated with participants' tendency to treat the emoji as a marker of irony, as indicated by behavioral comprehension question responses. These ironic wink emojis also elicited a strong P200 effect, also found in studies of verbal irony processing. Moreover, unexpected emojis (both mismatch and ironic emoji) also elicited late frontal positivities, which have been implicated processing unpredicted words in context. These results are the first to identify how linguistically-relevant ideograms are processed in real-time at the neural level, and specifically draw parallels between the processing of word- and emoji-induced irony.
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Affiliation(s)
- Benjamin Weissman
- Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America
| | - Darren Tanner
- Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America
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27
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Caffarra S, Michell E, Martin CD. The impact of foreign accent on irony interpretation. PLoS One 2018; 13:e0200939. [PMID: 30089171 PMCID: PMC6082519 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0200939] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/08/2018] [Accepted: 07/05/2018] [Indexed: 11/28/2022] Open
Abstract
In modern multi-cultural societies, conversations between foreign speakers and native listeners have become very common. These exchanges often include the use of figurative language. The present study examines, for the first time, whether native listeners’ non-literal interpretation of discourse is influenced by indexical cues such as speaker accent. Native listeners were presented with ironic and literal Spanish stories uttered in a native or foreign accent (Spanish and British English accents, respectively). Two types of irony were considered: ironic criticism (frequently used) and ironic praise (less frequently used). Participants were asked to rate stories on their level of irony. Results showed an impact of foreign accent on natives’ non-literal interpretation. The effect was evident in the less frequent ironic constructions (ironic praise), with foreign accented utterances considered less ironic than native accented utterances. These findings revealed that native listeners’ figurative interpretation of ironic praise can change depending on indexical cues, with a reduction of pragmatic inferences in the case of foreign accent.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sendy Caffarra
- BCBL, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Paseo Mikeletegi 69, Donostia, Spain
- * E-mail:
| | - Elissa Michell
- BCBL, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Paseo Mikeletegi 69, Donostia, Spain
| | - Clara D. Martin
- BCBL, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Paseo Mikeletegi 69, Donostia, Spain
- Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, Maria Diaz de Haro 3, Bilbao, Spain
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28
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Tanner D, Goldshtein M, Weissman B. Individual Differences in the Real-Time Neural Dynamics of Language Comprehension. PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING AND MOTIVATION 2018. [DOI: 10.1016/bs.plm.2018.08.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
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29
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Regel S, Gunter TC. Don't Get Me Wrong: ERP Evidence from Cueing Communicative Intentions. Front Psychol 2017; 8:1465. [PMID: 28955258 PMCID: PMC5600996 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01465] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/12/2016] [Accepted: 08/15/2017] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
How to make sure that one’s utterances are understood as intended when not facing each other? In order to convey communicative intentions, in digital communication emoticons and pragmatic cues are frequently used. Such cueing becomes even more crucial for implied interpretations (e.g., irony) that cannot be understood literally, but require extra information. Sentences, such as ‘That’s fantastic,’ may achieve either a literal or ironic meaning depending on the contextual constraints. In two experiments using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we examined the effects of cueing communicative intentions (i.e., by means of quotation marks) on ironic and literal language comprehension. An impact of cueing on language processing was seen as early as 200 ms post-stimulus onset by the emergence of a P300 preceding a sustained positivity for cued irony relative to literal language, while for uncued irony a P200-P600 pattern was obtained. In presence of additional information for ironic intentions, pragmatic reanalysis allowing inferences on the message level may have occured immediately. Moreover, by examining the way of cueing (i.e., ambiguous vs. unambiguous cueing) this type of information for communicative intentions appeared to be only effective when the cues were unambiguous by matching pragmatic conventions. The findings suggest that cueing communicative intentions may immediately affect language comprehension, albeit depending on pragmatic conventions of the cues’ usage.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stefanie Regel
- Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain SciencesLeipzig, Germany.,Department of Neurocognitive Psychology, Humboldt University of BerlinBerlin, Germany
| | - Thomas C Gunter
- Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain SciencesLeipzig, Germany
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30
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Baptista NI, Manfredi M, Boggio PS. Medial prefrontal cortex stimulation modulates irony processing as indexed by the N400. Soc Neurosci 2017; 13:495-510. [DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2017.1356744] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/19/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Nathalia Ishikawa Baptista
- Social and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Center for Biological Science and Health, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, Sao Paulo, Brazil
| | - Mirella Manfredi
- Social and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Center for Biological Science and Health, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, Sao Paulo, Brazil
| | - Paulo Sérgio Boggio
- Social and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Center for Biological Science and Health, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, Sao Paulo, Brazil
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31
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Hofmeister S, Soprych A. Teaching resident physicians the power of implicit bias and how it impacts patient care utilizing patients who have experienced incarceration as a model. Int J Psychiatry Med 2017; 52:345-354. [PMID: 29179660 DOI: 10.1177/0091217417738935] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Over 2 million adults in the United States are incarcerated and over 650,000 return to the community each year. This disparate population is known to have an elevated burden of chronic disease and lower socioeconomic status. Medical residency training about care of incarcerated or previously incarcerated patients is significantly lacking in the United States. Curriculum can be developed and implemented in residency programs to help physicians learn how to work with this population, be sensitive to their unique needs, and achieve positive health outcomes. This article describes a method for "educating the educators" based on a workshop presented at a peer-reviewed national conference during the fall of 2016. Attendees participated in exercises addressing assumptions, expectations, bias, and worldview and increased their ability for self-reflection when interacting with patients who are or have experienced incarceration. In this session, strategies were identified that engaged the patient with the goal to aid in patient retention and compliance. Future steps include development of a formal curriculum for training in this area, incorporation into existing community medicine rotations or electives, and establishment of structured transition clinics where residents can be exposed to this population on a more regular basis and improve their overall health outcomes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sabrina Hofmeister
- 1 Department of Family and Community Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA
| | - Andrya Soprych
- 2 Jane Addams School of Social Work, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.,3 Cabrini Green Legal Aid, Chicago, IL, USA
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32
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Hofmeister S, Soprych A. Teaching resident physicians to work with the previously incarcerated patient. Int J Psychiatry Med 2017; 52:277-285. [PMID: 29065809 DOI: 10.1177/0091217417737862] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
Abstract
Over 2 million adults in the United States are incarcerated and over 650,000 return to the community each year. This disparate population is known to have an elevated burden of chronic disease and lower socioeconomic status. Medical residency training about care for incarcerated or previously incarcerated patients is significantly lacking in the United States. Curriculum can be developed and implemented in residency programs to help physicians learn how to work with this population, be sensitive to their unique needs, and achieve positive health outcomes. This article describes a method for "educating the educators" based on a workshop presented at a peer-reviewed national conference during the fall of 2016. Attendees participated in exercises addressing assumptions, expectations, bias, and worldview and increased their ability for self-reflection when interacting with patients who are or have experienced incarceration. In this session, strategies were identified that engaged the patient with the goal to aid in patient retention and compliance. Future steps include development of a formal curriculum for training in this area, incorporation into existing community medicine rotations or electives, and establishment of structured transition clinics where residents can be exposed to this population on a more regular basis and improve their overall health outcomes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sabrina Hofmeister
- 1 Department of Family and Community Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA
| | - Andrya Soprych
- 2 Jane Addams College of Social Work, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, USA.,3 Client Support Services, Cabrini Green Legal Aid, Chicago, USA
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33
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Otten M, Seth AK, Pinto Y. A social Bayesian brain: How social knowledge can shape visual perception. Brain Cogn 2017; 112:69-77. [DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2016.05.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 37] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/19/2015] [Revised: 04/06/2016] [Accepted: 05/10/2016] [Indexed: 01/25/2023]
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34
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Impaired context processing during irony comprehension in schizotypy: An ERPs study. Int J Psychophysiol 2016; 105:17-25. [DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2016.04.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/15/2015] [Revised: 04/15/2016] [Accepted: 04/22/2016] [Indexed: 02/06/2023]
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35
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Tell me sweet little lies: An event-related potentials study on the processing of social lies. COGNITIVE AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE 2016; 16:616-25. [PMID: 27007770 DOI: 10.3758/s13415-016-0418-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
In reading tasks, words that convey a false statement elicit an enhanced N400 brainwave response, relative to words that convey a true statement. N400 amplitude reductions are generally linked to the online expectancy of upcoming words in discourse. White lies, contrary to false statements, may not be unexpected in social scenarios. We used the event-related potential (ERP) technique to determine whether there is an impact of social context on sentence processing. We measured ERP responses to target words that either conveyed a social "white" lie or a socially impolite blunt truth, relative to semantic violations. Word expectancy was controlled for by equating the cloze probabilities of white lying and blunt true targets, as measured in previous paper-and-pencil tests. We obtained a classic semantic violation effect (a larger N400 for semantic incongruities relative to sense making statements). White lies, in contrast to false statements, did not enhance the amplitude of the N400 component. Interestingly, blunt true statements yielded both a late frontal positivity and an N400 response in those scenarios particularly biased to white lying. Thus, white lies do not interfere with online semantic processing, and they do not engage further reanalysis processes, which are typically indexed by subsequent late positivity ERP effects. Instead, an N400 and a late frontal positivity obtained in response to blunt true statements indicate that they were treated as unexpected events. In conclusion, unwritten rules of social communicative behavior influence the electrical brain response to locally coherent but socially inappropriate statements.
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36
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Otten M, Mann L, van Berkum JJA, Jonas KJ. No laughing matter: How the presence of laughing witnesses changes the perception of insults. Soc Neurosci 2016; 12:182-193. [PMID: 26985787 DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2016.1162194] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
Abstract
Insults always sting, but the context in which they are delivered can make the effects even worse. Here we test how the brain processes insults, and whether and how the neurocognitive processing of insults is changed by the presence of a laughing crowd. Event-related potentials showed that insults, compared to compliments, evoked an increase in N400 amplitude (indicating increased lexical-semantic processing) and LPP amplitude (indicating emotional processing) when presented in isolation. When insults were perceived in the presence of a laughing crowd, the difference in N400 amplitude disappeared, while the difference in LPP activation increased. These results show that even without laughter, verbal insults receive additional neural processing over compliments, both at the lexical-semantic and emotional level. The presence of a laughing crowd has a direct effect on the neurocognitive processing of insults, leading to stronger and more elongated emotional processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marte Otten
- a Department of Social Psychology , University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam , The Netherlands.,b Department of Informatics , University of Sussex , Brighton , United Kingdom
| | - Liesbeth Mann
- a Department of Social Psychology , University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam , The Netherlands
| | | | - Kai J Jonas
- a Department of Social Psychology , University of Amsterdam , Amsterdam , The Netherlands
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37
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Bögels S, Kendrick KH, Levinson SC. Never Say No... How the Brain Interprets the Pregnant Pause in Conversation. PLoS One 2015; 10:e0145474. [PMID: 26699335 PMCID: PMC4689543 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0145474] [Citation(s) in RCA: 27] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/24/2015] [Accepted: 12/06/2015] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
In conversation, negative responses to invitations, requests, offers, and the like are more likely to occur with a delay–conversation analysts talk of them as dispreferred. Here we examine the contrastive cognitive load ‘yes’ and ‘no’ responses make, either when relatively fast (300 ms after question offset) or delayed (1000 ms). Participants heard short dialogues contrasting in speed and valence of response while having their EEG recorded. We found that a fast ‘no’ evokes an N400-effect relative to a fast ‘yes’; however, this contrast disappeared in the delayed responses. 'No' responses, however, elicited a late frontal positivity both if they were fast and if they were delayed. We interpret these results as follows: a fast ‘no’ evoked an N400 because an immediate response is expected to be positive–this effect disappears as the response time lengthens because now in ordinary conversation the probability of a ‘no’ has increased. However, regardless of the latency of response, a ‘no’ response is associated with a late positivity, since a negative response is always dispreferred. Together these results show that negative responses to social actions exact a higher cognitive load, but especially when least expected, in immediate response.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sara Bögels
- Language and Cognition Department, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
- * E-mail:
| | - Kobin H. Kendrick
- Language and Cognition Department, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
| | - Stephen C. Levinson
- Language and Cognition Department, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
- Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
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38
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Jiang X, Zhou X. Who is respectful? Effects of social context and individual empathic ability on ambiguity resolution during utterance comprehension. Front Psychol 2015; 6:1588. [PMID: 26557102 PMCID: PMC4615935 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01588] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/15/2015] [Accepted: 10/01/2015] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Verbal communication is often ambiguous. By employing the event-related potential (ERP) technique, this study investigated how a comprehender resolves referential ambiguity by using information concerning the social status of communicators. Participants read a conversational scenario which included a minimal conversational context describing a speaker and two other persons of the same or different social status and a directly quoted utterance. A singular, second-person pronoun in the respectful form (nin/nin-de in Chinese) in the utterance could be ambiguous with respect to which of the two persons was the addressee (the “Ambiguous condition”). Alternatively, the pronoun was not ambiguous either because one of the two persons was of higher social status and hence should be the addressee according to social convention (the “Status condition”) or because a word referring to the status of a person was additionally inserted before the pronoun to help indicate the referent of the pronoun (the “Referent condition”). Results showed that the perceived ambiguity decreased over the Ambiguous, Status, and Referent conditions. Electrophysiologically, the pronoun elicited an increased N400 in the Referent than in the Status and the Ambiguous conditions, reflecting an increased integration demand due to the necessity of linking the pronoun to both its antecedent and the status word. Relative to the Referent condition, a late, sustained positivity was elicited for the Status condition starting from 600 ms, while a more delayed, anterior negativity was elicited for the Ambiguous condition. Moreover, the N400 effect was modulated by individuals' sensitivity to the social status information, while the late positivity effect was modulated by individuals' empathic ability. These findings highlight the neurocognitive flexibility of contextual bias in referential processing during utterance comprehension.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiaoming Jiang
- Center for Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Psychology, Peking University Beijing, China ; School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University Montréal, QC, Canada
| | - Xiaolin Zhou
- Center for Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Psychology, Peking University Beijing, China ; Key Laboratory of Machine Perception and Key Laboratory of Computational Linguistics (Ministry of Education), Peking University Beijing, China ; Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University Beijing, China ; IDG McGovern Institute for Brain Research at PKU, Peking University Beijing, China
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39
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Regel S, Opitz A, Müller G, Friederici AD. The Past Tense Debate Revisited: Electrophysiological Evidence for Subregularities of Irregular Verb Inflection. J Cogn Neurosci 2015; 27:1870-85. [DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_00818] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/04/2022]
Abstract
Abstract
Neuropsychological research investigating mental grammar and lexicon has largely been based on the processing of regular and irregular inflection. Past tense inflection of regular verbs is assumed to be generated by a syntactic rule (e.g., show-ed), whereas irregular verbs consist of rather unsystematic alternations (e.g., caught) represented as lexical entries. Recent morphological accounts, however, hold that irregular inflection is not entirely rule-free but relies on morphological principles. These subregularities are computed by the syntactic system. We tested this latter hypothesis by examining alternations of irregular German verbs as well as pseudowords using ERPs. Participants read series of irregular verb inflection including present tense, past participle, and past tense forms embedded in minimal syntactic contexts. The critical past tense form was correct (e.g., er sang [he sang]) or incorrect by being either partially consistent (e.g., *er sung [*he sung]) or inconsistent (e.g., *er sing [*he sing]) with the proposed morphological principles. Correspondingly, in a second experimental block, pseudowords (e.g., tang/*tung/*ting) were presented. ERPs for real words revealed a biphasic ERP pattern consisting of a negativity and P600 for both incorrect forms in comparison to the correct equivalents. Most interestingly, the P600 amplitude for the incorrect forms was gradually modulated by the type of anomaly with medium amplitude for consistent past tense forms and largest amplitude for inconsistent past tense forms. ERPs for pseudoword past tense forms showed a similar gradual modulation of N400. The findings support the assumption that irregular verbs are processed by rule-based mechanisms because of subregularities of their past tense inflection.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stefanie Regel
- 1Max-Planck-Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
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40
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Rose SB, Spalek K, Rahman RA. Listening to Puns Elicits the Co-Activation of Alternative Homophone Meanings during Language Production. PLoS One 2015; 10:e0130853. [PMID: 26114942 PMCID: PMC4482729 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0130853] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/05/2014] [Accepted: 05/26/2015] [Indexed: 12/03/2022] Open
Abstract
Recent evidence suggests that lexical-semantic activation spread during language production can be dynamically shaped by contextual factors. In this study we investigated whether semantic processing modes can also affect lexical-semantic activation during word production. Specifically, we tested whether the processing of linguistic ambiguities, presented in the form of puns, has an influence on the co-activation of unrelated meanings of homophones in a subsequent language production task. In a picture-word interference paradigm with word distractors that were semantically related or unrelated to the non-depicted meanings of homophones we found facilitation induced by related words only when participants listened to puns before object naming, but not when they heard jokes with unambiguous linguistic stimuli. This finding suggests that a semantic processing mode of ambiguity perception can induce the co-activation of alternative homophone meanings during speech planning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sebastian Benjamin Rose
- Institut für Psychologie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- * E-mail: (SBR); (RAR)
| | - Katharina Spalek
- Institut für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Rasha Abdel Rahman
- Institut für Psychologie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- * E-mail: (SBR); (RAR)
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41
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On how the brain decodes vocal cues about speaker confidence. Cortex 2015; 66:9-34. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2015.02.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 42] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/15/2014] [Revised: 01/09/2015] [Accepted: 02/06/2015] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
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42
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Gradients versus dichotomies: how strength of semantic context influences event-related potentials and lexical decision times. COGNITIVE AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE 2015; 14:1086-103. [PMID: 24310943 DOI: 10.3758/s13415-013-0223-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
In experiments devoted to word recognition and/or language comprehension, reaction time in the lexical decision task is perhaps the most commonly used behavioral dependent measure, and the amplitude of the N400 component of the event-related potential (ERP) is the most common neural measure. Both are sensitive to multiple factors, including frequency of usage, orthographic similarity to other words, concreteness of word meaning, and preceding semantic context. All of these factors vary continuously. Published results have shown that both lexical decision times and N400 amplitudes show graded responses to graded changes of word frequency and orthographic similarity, but a puzzling discrepancy in their responsivity to the strength of a semantic context has received little attention. In three experiments, we presented pairs of words varying in the strengths of their semantic relationships, as well as unrelated pairs. In all three experiments, N400 amplitudes showed a gradient from unrelated to weakly associated to strongly associated target words, whereas lexical decision times showed a binary division rather than a gradient across strengths of relationship. This pattern of results suggests that semantic context effects in lexical decision and ERP measures arise from fundamentally different processes.
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43
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Obermeier C, Kelly SD, Gunter TC. A speaker's gesture style can affect language comprehension: ERP evidence from gesture-speech integration. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2015; 10:1236-43. [PMID: 25688095 DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsv011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/16/2014] [Accepted: 02/09/2015] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
In face-to-face communication, speech is typically enriched by gestures. Clearly, not all people gesture in the same way, and the present study explores whether such individual differences in gesture style are taken into account during the perception of gestures that accompany speech. Participants were presented with one speaker that gestured in a straightforward way and another that also produced self-touch movements. Adding trials with such grooming movements makes the gesture information a much weaker cue compared with the gestures of the non-grooming speaker. The Electroencephalogram was recorded as participants watched videos of the individual speakers. Event-related potentials elicited by the speech signal revealed that adding grooming movements attenuated the impact of gesture for this particular speaker. Thus, these data suggest that there is sensitivity to the personal communication style of a speaker and that affects the extent to which gesture and speech are integrated during language comprehension.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christian Obermeier
- Max-Planck-Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department of Neuropsychology, Leipzig, Germany and
| | - Spencer D Kelly
- Colgate University, Department of Psychology, NY 13346, Hamilton, USA
| | - Thomas C Gunter
- Max-Planck-Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department of Neuropsychology, Leipzig, Germany and
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44
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Bardolph M, Coulson S. How vertical hand movements impact brain activity elicited by literally and metaphorically related words: an ERP study of embodied metaphor. Front Hum Neurosci 2014; 8:1031. [PMID: 25566041 PMCID: PMC4274969 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.01031] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/12/2014] [Accepted: 12/08/2014] [Indexed: 11/15/2022] Open
Abstract
Embodied metaphor theory suggests abstract concepts are metaphorically linked to more experientially basic ones and recruit sensorimotor cortex for their comprehension. To test whether words associated with spatial attributes reactivate traces in sensorimotor cortex, we recorded EEG from the scalp of healthy adults as they read words while performing a concurrent task involving either upward- or downward- directed arm movements. ERPs were time-locked to words associated with vertical space—either literally (ascend, descend) or metaphorically (inspire, defeat)—as participants made vertical movements that were either congruent or incongruent with the words. Congruency effects emerged 200–300 ms after word onset for literal words, but not until after 500 ms post-onset for metaphorically related words. Results argue against a strong version of embodied metaphor theory, but support a role for sensorimotor simulation in concrete language.
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Affiliation(s)
- Megan Bardolph
- Cognitive Science Department, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Seana Coulson
- Cognitive Science Department, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
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45
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Regel S, Meyer L, Gunter TC. Distinguishing neurocognitive processes reflected by P600 effects: evidence from ERPs and neural oscillations. PLoS One 2014; 9:e96840. [PMID: 24844290 PMCID: PMC4028180 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0096840] [Citation(s) in RCA: 53] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/15/2013] [Accepted: 04/13/2014] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Research on language comprehension using event-related potentials (ERPs) reported distinct ERP components reliably related to the processing of semantic (N400) and syntactic information (P600). Recent ERP studies have challenged this well-defined distinction by showing P600 effects for semantic and pragmatic anomalies. So far, it is still unresolved whether the P600 reflects specific or rather common processes. The present study addresses this question by investigating ERPs in response to a syntactic and pragmatic (irony) manipulation, as well as a combined syntactic and pragmatic manipulation. For the syntactic condition, a morphosyntactic violation was applied, whereas for the pragmatic condition, such as “That is rich”, either an ironic or literal interpretation was achieved, depending on the prior context. The ERPs at the critical word showed a LAN-P600 pattern for syntactically incorrect sentences relative to correct ones. For ironic compared to literal sentences, ERPs showed a P200 effect followed by a P600 component. In comparison of the syntax-related P600 to the irony-related P600, distributional differences were found. Moreover, for the P600 time window (i.e., 500–900 ms), different changes in theta power between the syntax and pragmatics effects were found, suggesting that different patterns of neural activity contributed to each respective effect. Thus, both late positivities seem to be differently sensitive to these two types of linguistic information, and might reflect distinct neurocognitive processes, such as reanalysis of the sentence structure versus pragmatic reanalysis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stefanie Regel
- Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Saxony, Germany
- * E-mail:
| | - Lars Meyer
- Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Saxony, Germany
| | - Thomas C. Gunter
- Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Saxony, Germany
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46
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Rigoulot S, Fish K, Pell MD. Neural correlates of inferring speaker sincerity from white lies: An event-related potential source localization study. Brain Res 2014; 1565:48-62. [DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2014.04.022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/28/2014] [Revised: 04/11/2014] [Accepted: 04/12/2014] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
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47
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Schneider S, Rapp AM, Haeußinger FB, Ernst LH, Hamm F, Fallgatter AJ, Ehlis AC. Beyond the N400: complementary access to early neural correlates of novel metaphor comprehension using combined electrophysiological and haemodynamic measurements. Cortex 2014; 53:45-59. [PMID: 24566043 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2014.01.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 26] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/14/2013] [Revised: 10/05/2013] [Accepted: 01/14/2014] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
The simultaneous application of different neuroimaging methods combining high temporal and spatial resolution can uniquely contribute to current issues and open questions in the field of pragmatic language perception. In the present study, comprehension of novel metaphors was investigated using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) combined with the simultaneous acquisition of electroencephalography (EEG)/event-related potentials (ERPs). For the first time, we investigated the effects of figurative language on early electrophysiological markers (P200, N400) and their functional relationship to cortical haemodynamic responses within the language network (Broca's area, Wernicke's area). To this end, 20 healthy subjects judged 120 sentences with respect to their meaningfulness, whereby phrases were either literal, metaphoric, or meaningless. Our results indicated a metaphor-specific P200 reduction and a linear increase of N400 amplitudes from literal over metaphoric to meaningless sentences. Moreover, there were metaphor related effects on haemodynamic responses accessed with NIRS, especially within the left lateral frontal cortex (Broca's area). Significant correlations between electrophysiological and haemodynamic responses indicated that P200 reductions during metaphor comprehension were associated with an increased recruitment of neural activity within left Wernicke's area, indicating a link between variations in neural activity and haemodynamic changes within Wernicke's area. This link may reflect processes related to interindividual differences regarding the ability to classify novel metaphors. The present study underlines the usefulness of simultaneous NIRS measurements in language paradigms - especially for investigating the functional significance of neurophysiological markers that have so far been rarely examined - as these measurements are easily and efficiently realizable and allow for a complementary examination of neural activity and associated metabolic changes in cortical areas.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sabrina Schneider
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tuebingen, Germany.
| | - Alexander M Rapp
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tuebingen, Germany
| | | | - Lena H Ernst
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tuebingen, Germany
| | - Friedrich Hamm
- Department of Linguistics, University of Tuebingen, Germany
| | | | - Ann-Christine Ehlis
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tuebingen, Germany
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48
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Jiang X, Li Y, Zhou X. Is it over-respectful or disrespectful? Differential patterns of brain activity in perceiving pragmatic violation of social status information during utterance comprehension. Neuropsychologia 2013; 51:2210-23. [PMID: 23916511 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.07.021] [Citation(s) in RCA: 64] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/29/2012] [Revised: 07/19/2013] [Accepted: 07/24/2013] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
Abstract
A critical issue in the study of language communication is how extra-linguistic information, such as the social status of the communicators, is taken into account by the online comprehension system. In Mandarin Chinese, the second-person pronoun (you/your) can be in a respectful form (nin/nin-de) when the addressee is of higher status than the speaker or in a less respectful form (ni/ni-de) when the addressee is of equal or lower status. We conducted an event-related potential (ERP) study to investigate how social status information affects pronoun resolution during utterance comprehension. Participants read simple conversational scenarios for comprehension, with each scenario including a context describing a speaker and an addressee and a directly-quoted utterance beginning with the second-person pronoun. The relative status between the speaker and the addressee was varied, creating conditions in which the second-person pronoun was either consistent or inconsistent with the relationship between conversants, or in which the two conversants were of equal status. ERP results showed that, compared with the status-consistent and status-equal conditions, the status-inconsistent condition elicited an anterior N400-like effect on nin-de (over-respectful) and a broadly distributed N400 on ni-de (disrespectful). In a later time window, both the status-reversed and the status-equal conditions elicited a sustained positivity effect on nin-de and a sustained negativity effect on ni-de. These findings suggest that the comprehender builds up expectance towards the upcoming pronoun based on the perceived social status of conversants. While the inconsistent pronoun causes semantic integration difficulty in an earlier stage of processing, the strategy to resolve the inconsistency and the corresponding brain activity vary according to the pragmatic implications of the pronoun.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiaoming Jiang
- Center for Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
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49
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Jiang X, Li Y, Zhou X. Even a rich man can afford that expensive house: ERP responses to construction-based pragmatic constraints during sentence comprehension. Neuropsychologia 2013; 51:1857-66. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.06.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/06/2013] [Revised: 05/29/2013] [Accepted: 06/10/2013] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
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50
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Spotorno N, Cheylus A, Van Der Henst JB, Noveck IA. What's behind a P600? Integration operations during irony processing. PLoS One 2013; 8:e66839. [PMID: 23826155 PMCID: PMC3691266 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0066839] [Citation(s) in RCA: 56] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/21/2012] [Accepted: 05/13/2013] [Indexed: 12/22/2022] Open
Abstract
The combined knowledge of word meanings and grammatical rules does not allow a listener to grasp the intended meaning of a speaker’s utterance. Pragmatic inferences on the part of the listener are also required. The present work focuses on the processing of ironic utterances (imagine a slow day being described as “really productive”) because these clearly require the listener to go beyond the linguistic code. Such utterances are advantageous experimentally because they can serve as their own controls in the form of literal sentences (now imagine an active day being described as “really productive”) as we employ techniques from electrophysiology (EEG). Importantly, the results confirm previous ERP findings showing that irony processing elicits an enhancement of the P600 component (Regel et al., 2011). More original are the findings drawn from Time Frequency Analysis (TFA) and especially the increase of power in the gamma band in the 280–400 time-window, which points to an integration among different streams of information relatively early in the comprehension of an irony. This represents a departure from traditional accounts of language processing which generally view pragmatic inferences as late-arriving. We propose that these results indicate that unification operations between the linguistic code and contextual information play a critical role throughout the course of irony processing and earlier than previously thought.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nicola Spotorno
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Laboratoire Langage, Cerveau et Cognition (L2C2), Université de Lyon, Bron, France.
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