1
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Kljajevic V. Older and Wiser: Interpretation of Proverbs in the Face of Age-Related Cortical Atrophy. Front Aging Neurosci 2022; 14:919470. [PMID: 35860671 PMCID: PMC9289440 DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2022.919470] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/13/2022] [Accepted: 06/08/2022] [Indexed: 11/27/2022] Open
Abstract
In the present study, we investigated whether interpretation of proverbs differs across the lifespan and if so, whether it is associated with age-related fronto-temporal atrophy. Using a sample of 333 healthy individuals aged 18–89 years, we found a significant effect of age on proverb interpretation [H(2) = 12.001, p = 0.002]: old adults (OA) were better than young adults (YA) (p = 0.002), and so were middle-aged-adults (MA) (p = 0.005). OA and MA had significantly less grey matter (GM) than YA in frontal and temporal lobes bilaterally, and OA less than MA in the right temporal lobe. GM volumes in these regions did not moderate the effect of age on the proverbs scores. The whole-brain analysis of groups’ GM maps revealed that the proverbs scores were associated with more GM in YA relative to OA in the right middle temporal gyrus, which is consistent with evidence on the role of this area in processing of unfamiliar proverbs. Overall, our data suggest that interpretation of proverbs is well preserved in late adulthood, despite considerable age-related cortical atrophy.
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2
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Idiomatic expressions evoke stronger emotional responses in the brain than literal sentences. Neuropsychologia 2019; 131:233-248. [PMID: 31152753 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.05.020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/01/2018] [Revised: 05/22/2019] [Accepted: 05/22/2019] [Indexed: 12/31/2022]
Abstract
Recent neuroscientific research shows that metaphors engage readers at the emotional level more strongly than literal expressions. What still remains unclear is what makes metaphors more engaging, and whether this generalises to all figurative expressions, no matter how conventionalised they are. This fMRI study aimed to investigate whether idiomatic expressions - the least creative part of figurative language - indeed trigger a higher affective resonance than literal expressions, and to explore possible interactions between activation in emotion-relevant neural structures and regions associated with figurative language processing. Participants silently read for comprehension a set of emotionally positive, negative and neutral idioms embedded in short sentences, and similarly valenced literal sentences. As in studies on metaphors, we found enhanced activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus and left amygdala in response to idioms, indexing stronger recruitment of executive control functions and enhanced emotional engagement, respectively. This suggests that the comprehension of even highly conventionalised and familiar figurative expressions, namely idioms, recruits regions involved in emotional processing. Furthermore, increased activation of the IFG interacted positively with activation in the amygdala, suggesting that the stronger cognitive engagement driven by idioms may in turn be coupled with stronger involvement at the emotional level.
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Abstract
Fiction is vital to our being. Many people enjoy engaging with fiction every day. Here we focus on literary reading as 1 instance of fiction consumption from a cognitive neuroscience perspective. The brain processes which play a role in the mental construction of fiction worlds and the related engagement with fictional characters, remain largely unknown. The authors discuss the neurocognitive poetics model ( Jacobs, 2015a ) of literary reading specifying the likely neuronal correlates of several key processes in literary reading, namely inference and situation model building, immersion, mental simulation and imagery, figurative language and style, and the issue of distinguishing fact from fiction. An overview of recent work on these key processes is followed by a discussion of methodological challenges in studying the brain bases of fiction processing.
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Bonin P, Méot A, Boucheix JM, Bugaiska A. Psycholinguistic norms for 320 fixed expressions (idioms and proverbs) in French. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2018; 71:1057-1069. [PMID: 28326893 DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2017.1310269] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/19/2022]
Abstract
We provide psycholinguistic norms for a new set of 160 French idiomatic expressions and 160 proverbs: knowledge, predictability, literality, compositionality, subjective and objective frequency, familiarity, age of acquisition (AoA) and length. Different analyses (reliability, descriptive statistics and correlations) performed on the norms are reported and discussed. The norms can be downloaded as Supplemental Material .
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Affiliation(s)
- Patrick Bonin
- 1 LEAD-CNRS (UMR 5022), Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Dijon, France
| | - Alain Méot
- 2 LAPSCO, CNRS (UMR 6024), Université Clermont Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France
| | | | - Aurélia Bugaiska
- 1 LEAD-CNRS (UMR 5022), Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Dijon, France
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5
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When emotions are expressed figuratively: Psycholinguistic and Affective Norms of 619 Idioms for German (PANIG). Behav Res Methods 2016; 48:91-111. [PMID: 25821142 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-015-0581-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 44] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Despite flourishing research on the relationship between emotion and literal language, and despite the pervasiveness of figurative expressions in communication, the role of figurative language in conveying affect has been underinvestigated. This study provides affective and psycholinguistic norms for 619 German idiomatic expressions and explores the relationships between affective and psycholinguistic idiom properties. German native speakers rated each idiom for emotional valence, arousal, familiarity, semantic transparency, figurativeness, and concreteness. They also described the figurative meaning of each idiom and rated how confident they were about the attributed meaning. The results showed that idioms rated high in valence were also rated high in arousal. Negative idioms were rated as more arousing than positive ones, in line with results from single words. Furthermore, arousal correlated positively with figurativeness (supporting the idea that figurative expressions are more emotionally engaging than literal expressions) and with concreteness and semantic transparency. This suggests that idioms may convey a more direct reference to sensory representations, mediated by the meanings of their constituting words. Arousal correlated positively with familiarity. In addition, positive idioms were rated as more familiar than negative idioms. Finally, idioms without a literal counterpart were rated as more emotionally valenced and arousing than idioms with a literal counterpart. Although the meanings of ambiguous idioms were less correctly defined than those of unambiguous idioms, ambiguous idioms were rated as more concrete than unambiguous ones. We also discuss the relationships between the various psycholinguistic variables characterizing idioms, with reference to the literature on idiom structure and processing.
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Jacobs A, Hofmann MJ, Kinder A. On Elementary Affective Decisions: To Like Or Not to Like, That Is the Question. Front Psychol 2016; 7:1836. [PMID: 27933013 PMCID: PMC5122311 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01836] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/22/2016] [Accepted: 11/07/2016] [Indexed: 12/31/2022] Open
Abstract
Perhaps the most ubiquitous and basic affective decision of daily life is deciding whether we like or dislike something/somebody, or, in terms of psychological emotion theories, whether the object/subject has positive or negative valence. Indeed, people constantly make such liking decisions within a glimpse and, importantly, often without expecting any obvious benefit or knowing the exact reasons for their judgment. In this paper, we review research on such elementary affective decisions (EADs) that entail no direct overt reward with a special focus on Neurocognitive Poetics and discuss methods and models for investigating the neuronal and cognitive-affective bases of EADs to verbal materials with differing degrees of complexity. In line with evolutionary and appraisal theories of (aesthetic) emotions and data from recent neurocognitive studies, the results of a decision tree modeling approach simulating EADs to single words suggest that a main driving force behind EADs is the extent to which such high-dimensional stimuli are associated with the “basic” emotions joy/happiness and disgust.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arthur Jacobs
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany; Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany; Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
| | - Markus J Hofmann
- Department of General and Biological Psychology, Bergische Universität Wuppertal Wuppertal, Germany
| | - Annette Kinder
- Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin Berlin, Germany
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7
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Wimmer L, Christmann U, Ihmels E. Non-conventional figurative language as aesthetics of everyday communication. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2016. [DOI: 10.1075/msw.6.2.04wim] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/24/2022]
Abstract
This study focuses on the emotional aesthetic appreciation of figurative language, a dimension which has often been neglected in experimental psycholinguistics. Our goal was to demonstrate that non-conventional figurative utterances are evaluated as more aesthetically pleasing although they are cognitively more demanding than conventional rhetorical figures. This hypothesis was tested for three main types of figurative language (metaphors, irony and idioms) in three separate surveys. Participants assessed utterances by means of a questionnaire which comprised several semantic differential items. The postulated covariation of non-conventionality and cognitive effort as well as of non-conventionality and aesthetics could be clearly established for metaphors and for irony. For idioms we could only partially provide this evidence. However, in a combined sample for all figurative language forms (compiled from the three studies) the main hypothesis was again confirmed. Thus, the results demonstrate that non-conventional variants of figurative language must be considered as the core of figurative aesthetics. Furthermore, our exploratory data gave evidence of an aesthetic paradox: the cognitive costs of understanding conventional figurative language reduce aesthetic pleasure, while in the case of non-conventional rhetoric figures the enhanced cognitive effort is accompanied by an increase in aesthetic pleasure.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lena Wimmer
- Department of Psychology, University of Heidelberg, Germany
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8
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Sylvester T, Braun M, Schmidtke D, Jacobs AM. The Berlin Affective Word List for Children (kidBAWL): Exploring Processing of Affective Lexical Semantics in the Visual and Auditory Modalities. Front Psychol 2016; 7:969. [PMID: 27445930 PMCID: PMC4928334 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00969] [Citation(s) in RCA: 29] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/09/2016] [Accepted: 06/10/2016] [Indexed: 01/09/2023] Open
Abstract
While research on affective word processing in adults witnesses increasing interest, the present paper looks at another group of participants that have been neglected so far: pupils (age range: 6-12 years). Introducing a variant of the Berlin Affective Wordlist (BAWL) especially adapted for children of that age group, the "kidBAWL," we examined to what extent pupils process affective lexical semantics similarly to adults. In three experiments using rating and valence decision tasks in both the visual and auditory modality, it was established that children show the two ubiquitous phenomena observed in adults with emotional word material: the asymmetric U-shaped function relating valence to arousal ratings, and the inversely U-shaped function relating response times to valence decision latencies. The results for both modalities show large structural similarities between pupil and adult data (taken from previous studies) indicating that in the present age range, the affective lexicon and the dynamic interplay between language and emotion is already well-developed. Differential effects show that younger children tend to choose less extreme ratings than older children and that rating latencies decrease with age. Overall, our study should help to develop more realistic models of word recognition and reading that include affective processes and offer a methodology for exploring the roots of pleasant literary experiences and ludic reading.
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Affiliation(s)
- Teresa Sylvester
- Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin Berlin, Germany
| | - Mario Braun
- Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Universität Salzburg Salzburg, Austria
| | - David Schmidtke
- Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin Berlin, Germany
| | - Arthur M Jacobs
- Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany; Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
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9
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Omigie D. Music and literature: are there shared empathy and predictive mechanisms underlying their affective impact? Front Psychol 2015; 6:1250. [PMID: 26379583 PMCID: PMC4547007 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01250] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/09/2015] [Accepted: 08/05/2015] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
It has been suggested that music and language had a shared evolutionary precursor before becoming mainly responsible for the communication of emotive and referential meaning respectively. However, emphasis on potential differences between music and language may discourage a consideration of the commonalities that music and literature share. Indeed, one possibility is that common mechanisms underlie their affective impact, and the current paper carefully reviews relevant neuroscientific findings to examine such a prospect. First and foremost, it will be demonstrated that considerable evidence of a common role of empathy and predictive processes now exists for the two domains. However, it will also be noted that an important open question remains: namely, whether the mechanisms underlying the subjective experience of uncertainty differ between the two domains with respect to recruitment of phylogenetically ancient emotion areas. It will be concluded that a comparative approach may not only help to reveal general mechanisms underlying our responses to music and literature, but may also help us better understand any idiosyncrasies in their capacity for affective impact.
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Affiliation(s)
- Diana Omigie
- Music Department, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics , Frankfurt am Main, Germany
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10
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Burke M. The neuroaesthetics of prose fiction: pitfalls, parameters and prospects. Front Hum Neurosci 2015; 9:442. [PMID: 26283953 PMCID: PMC4522565 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00442] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/05/2015] [Accepted: 07/21/2015] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
There is a paucity of neuroaesthetic studies on prose fiction. This is in contrast to the very many impressive studies that have been conducted in recent times on the neuroaesthetics of sister arts such as painting, music and dance. Why might this be the case, what are its causes and, of greatest importance, how can it best be resolved? In this article, the pitfalls, parameters and prospects of a neuroaesthetics of prose fiction will be explored. The article itself is part critical review, part methodological proposal and part opinion paper. Its aim is simple: to stimulate, excite and energize thinking in the discipline as to how prose fiction might be fully integrated in the canon of neuroaesthetics and to point to opportunities where neuroimaging studies on literary discourse processing might be conducted in collaborative work bringing humanists and scientists together.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michael Burke
- Rhetoric, University College Roosevelt, Utrecht UniversityMiddelburg, Netherlands
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11
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Jacobs AM, Võ MLH, Briesemeister BB, Conrad M, Hofmann MJ, Kuchinke L, Lüdtke J, Braun M. 10 years of BAWLing into affective and aesthetic processes in reading: what are the echoes? Front Psychol 2015; 6:714. [PMID: 26089808 PMCID: PMC4452804 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00714] [Citation(s) in RCA: 55] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/20/2014] [Accepted: 05/13/2015] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Reading is not only "cold" information processing, but involves affective and aesthetic processes that go far beyond what current models of word recognition, sentence processing, or text comprehension can explain. To investigate such "hot" reading processes, standardized instruments that quantify both psycholinguistic and emotional variables at the sublexical, lexical, inter-, and supralexical levels (e.g., phonological iconicity, word valence, arousal-span, or passage suspense) are necessary. One such instrument, the Berlin Affective Word List (BAWL) has been used in over 50 published studies demonstrating effects of lexical emotional variables on all relevant processing levels (experiential, behavioral, neuronal). In this paper, we first present new data from several BAWL studies. Together, these studies examine various views on affective effects in reading arising from dimensional (e.g., valence) and discrete emotion features (e.g., happiness), or embodied cognition features like smelling. Second, we extend our investigation of the complex issue of affective word processing to words characterized by a mixture of affects. These words entail positive and negative valence, and/or features making them beautiful or ugly. Finally, we discuss tentative neurocognitive models of affective word processing in the light of the present results, raising new issues for future studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arthur M. Jacobs
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion”, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of EmotionBerlin, Germany
| | - Melissa L.-H. Võ
- Scene Grammar Lab, Department of Cognitive Psychology, Goethe University FrankfurtFrankfurt, Germany
| | - Benny B. Briesemeister
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
| | - Markus Conrad
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion”, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Department of Cognitive, Social and Organizational Psychology, Universidad de La LagunaSan Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain
| | - Markus J. Hofmann
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Department of Psychology, General and Biological Psychology, University of WuppertalWuppertal, Germany
| | - Lars Kuchinke
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion”, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Experimental Psychology and Methods, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr Universität BochumBochum, Germany
| | - Jana Lüdtke
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion”, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
| | - Mario Braun
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Universität SalzburgSalzburg, Austria
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12
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Hofmann MJ, Kuchinke L. “Anything is good that stimulates thought” in the hippocampus. Phys Life Rev 2015; 13:58-60. [DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2015.04.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/14/2015] [Accepted: 04/15/2015] [Indexed: 10/23/2022]
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13
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Koelsch S, Jacobs AM, Menninghaus W, Liebal K, Klann-Delius G, von Scheve C, Gebauer G. The quartet theory of human emotions: An integrative and neurofunctional model. Phys Life Rev 2015; 13:1-27. [DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2015.03.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 129] [Impact Index Per Article: 14.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/23/2015] [Revised: 03/15/2015] [Accepted: 03/16/2015] [Indexed: 02/07/2023]
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14
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Jacobs AM. Neurocognitive poetics: methods and models for investigating the neuronal and cognitive-affective bases of literature reception. Front Hum Neurosci 2015; 9:186. [PMID: 25932010 PMCID: PMC4399337 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00186] [Citation(s) in RCA: 134] [Impact Index Per Article: 14.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/15/2015] [Accepted: 03/20/2015] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
A long tradition of research including classical rhetoric, esthetics and poetics theory, formalism and structuralism, as well as current perspectives in (neuro)cognitive poetics has investigated structural and functional aspects of literature reception. Despite a wealth of literature published in specialized journals like Poetics, however, still little is known about how the brain processes and creates literary and poetic texts. Still, such stimulus material might be suited better than other genres for demonstrating the complexities with which our brain constructs the world in and around us, because it unifies thought and language, music and imagery in a clear, manageable way, most often with play, pleasure, and emotion (Schrott and Jacobs, 2011). In this paper, I discuss methods and models for investigating the neuronal and cognitive-affective bases of literary reading together with pertinent results from studies on poetics, text processing, emotion, or neuroaesthetics, and outline current challenges and future perspectives.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arthur M. Jacobs
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Center for Cognitive Neuroscience (CCNB), Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion (D.I.N.E.), Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
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15
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Hsu CT, Jacobs AM, Citron FMM, Conrad M. The emotion potential of words and passages in reading Harry Potter--an fMRI study. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2015; 142:96-114. [PMID: 25681681 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2015.01.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 48] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/29/2014] [Revised: 01/12/2015] [Accepted: 01/14/2015] [Indexed: 06/04/2023]
Abstract
Previous studies suggested that the emotional connotation of single words automatically recruits attention. We investigated the potential of words to induce emotional engagement when reading texts. In an fMRI experiment, we presented 120 text passages from the Harry Potter book series. Results showed significant correlations between affective word (lexical) ratings and passage ratings. Furthermore, affective lexical ratings correlated with activity in regions associated with emotion, situation model building, multi-modal semantic integration, and Theory of Mind. We distinguished differential influences of affective lexical, inter-lexical, and supra-lexical variables: differential effects of lexical valence were significant in the left amygdala, while effects of arousal-span (the dynamic range of arousal across a passage) were significant in the left amygdala and insula. However, we found no differential effect of passage ratings in emotion-associated regions. Our results support the hypothesis that the emotion potential of short texts can be predicted by lexical and inter-lexical affective variables.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chun-Ting Hsu
- Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany; Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany.
| | - Arthur M Jacobs
- Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany; Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany; Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion (D.I.N.E.), Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany.
| | - Francesca M M Citron
- Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany; Humanities Council, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
| | - Markus Conrad
- Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany; Department of Cognitive, Social and Organizational Psychology, Universidad de La Laguna, San Cristóbal de La Laguna, 38205, Spain.
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16
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Hsu CT, Jacobs AM, Altmann U, Conrad M. The magical activation of left amygdala when reading Harry Potter: an fMRI study on how descriptions of supra-natural events entertain and enchant. PLoS One 2015; 10:e0118179. [PMID: 25671315 PMCID: PMC4324997 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0118179] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/28/2014] [Accepted: 01/08/2015] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Literature containing supra-natural, or magical events has enchanted generations of readers. When reading narratives describing such events, readers mentally simulate a text world different from the real one. The corresponding violation of world-knowledge during this simulation likely increases cognitive processing demands for ongoing discourse integration, catches readers’ attention, and might thus contribute to the pleasure and deep emotional experience associated with ludic immersive reading. In the present study, we presented participants in an MR scanner with passages selected from the Harry Potter book series, half of which described magical events, while the other half served as control condition. Passages in both conditions were closely matched for relevant psycholinguistic variables including, e.g., emotional valence and arousal, passage-wise mean word imageability and frequency, and syntactic complexity. Post-hoc ratings showed that readers considered supra-natural contents more surprising and more strongly associated with reading pleasure than control passages. In the fMRI data, we found stronger neural activation for the supra-natural than the control condition in bilateral inferior frontal gyri, bilateral inferior parietal lobules, left fusiform gyrus, and left amygdala. The increased activation in the amygdala (part of the salience and emotion processing network) appears to be associated with feelings of surprise and the reading pleasure, which supra-natural events, full of novelty and unexpectedness, brought about. The involvement of bilateral inferior frontal gyri likely reflects higher cognitive processing demand due to world knowledge violations, whereas increased attention to supra-natural events is reflected in inferior frontal gyri and inferior parietal lobules that are part of the fronto-parietal attention network.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chun-Ting Hsu
- Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195, Berlin, Germany
- Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195, Berlin, Germany
- * E-mail:
| | - Arthur M. Jacobs
- Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195, Berlin, Germany
- Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195, Berlin, Germany
- Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion (D.I.N.E.), Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195, Berlin, Germany
| | - Ulrike Altmann
- Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195, Berlin, Germany
- Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195, Berlin, Germany
| | - Markus Conrad
- Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195, Berlin, Germany
- Department of Cognitive, Social and Organizational Psychology, Universidad de La Laguna, 38205, San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain
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Hsu CT, Jacobs AM, Conrad M. Can Harry Potter still put a spell on us in a second language? An fMRI study on reading emotion-laden literature in late bilinguals. Cortex 2015; 63:282-95. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2014.09.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 71] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/29/2013] [Revised: 06/20/2014] [Accepted: 09/06/2014] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
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18
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Hofmann MJ, Dambacher M, Jacobs AM, Kliegl R, Radach R, Kuchinke L, Plichta MM, Fallgatter AJ, Herrmann MJ. Occipital and orbitofrontal hemodynamics during naturally paced reading: An fNIRS study. Neuroimage 2014; 94:193-202. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.03.014] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/20/2013] [Revised: 02/17/2014] [Accepted: 03/09/2014] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
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Aryani A, Jacobs AM, Conrad M. Extracting salient sublexical units from written texts: "Emophon," a corpus-based approach to phonological iconicity. Front Psychol 2013; 4:654. [PMID: 24101907 PMCID: PMC3787248 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00654] [Citation(s) in RCA: 32] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/26/2013] [Accepted: 09/03/2013] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
A GROWING BODY OF LITERATURE IN PSYCHOLOGY, LINGUISTICS, AND THE NEUROSCIENCES HAS PAID INCREASING ATTENTION TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PHONOLOGICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF WORDS AND THEIR MEANING: a phenomenon also known as phonological iconicity. In this article, we investigate how a text's intended emotional meaning, particularly in literature and poetry, may be reflected at the level of sublexical phonological salience and the use of foregrounded elements. To extract such elements from a given text, we developed a probabilistic model to predict the exceeding of a confidence interval for specific sublexical units concerning their frequency of occurrence within a given text contrasted with a reference linguistic corpus for the German language. Implementing this model in a computational application, we provide a text analysis tool which automatically delivers information about sublexical phonological salience allowing researchers, inter alia, to investigate effects of the sublexical emotional tone of texts based on current findings on phonological iconicity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arash Aryani
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion,” Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
| | - Arthur M. Jacobs
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion,” Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion (DINE)Berlin, Germany
| | - Markus Conrad
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion,” Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psycholinguistics, University of La LagunaLa Laguna, Spain
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Sakreida K, Scorolli C, Menz MM, Heim S, Borghi AM, Binkofski F. Are abstract action words embodied? An fMRI investigation at the interface between language and motor cognition. Front Hum Neurosci 2013; 7:125. [PMID: 23576972 PMCID: PMC3620530 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00125] [Citation(s) in RCA: 59] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/08/2012] [Accepted: 03/21/2013] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The cognitive and neural representation of abstract words is still an open question for theories of embodied cognition. Generally, it is proposed that abstract words are grounded in the activation of sensorimotor or at least experiential properties, exactly as concrete words. Further behavioral theories propose multiple representations evoked by abstract and concrete words. We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study to investigate the neural correlates of concrete and abstract multi-word expressions in an action context. Participants were required to read simple sentences which combined each concrete noun with an adequate concrete verb and an adequate abstract verb, as well as an adequate abstract noun with either kind of verbs previously used. Thus, our experimental design included a continuum from pure concreteness to mere abstractness. As expected, comprehension of both concrete and abstract language content activated the core areas of the sensorimotor neural network namely the left lateral (precentral gyrus) and medial (supplementary motor area) premotor cortex. While the purely concrete multi-word expressions elicited activations within the left inferior frontal gyrus (pars triangularis) and two foci within the left inferior parietal cortex, the purely abstract multi-word expressions were represented in the anterior part of left middle temporal gyrus that is part of the language processing system. Although the sensorimotor neural network is engaged in both concrete and abstract language contents, the present findings show that concrete multi-word processing relies more on the sensorimotor system, and abstract multi-word processing relies more on the linguistic system.
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Affiliation(s)
- Katrin Sakreida
- Division of Clinical and Cognitive Neurosciences, Department of Neurology, Medical School, RWTH Aachen University Aachen, Germany
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Bohrn IC, Altmann U, Jacobs AM. Looking at the brains behind figurative language—A quantitative meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies on metaphor, idiom, and irony processing. Neuropsychologia 2012; 50:2669-83. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.07.021] [Citation(s) in RCA: 139] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/26/2012] [Revised: 05/28/2012] [Accepted: 07/10/2012] [Indexed: 10/28/2022]
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