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Baldo JV, Kacinik NA, Moncrief A, Beghin F, Dronkers NF. You may now kiss the bride: Interpretation of social situations by individuals with right or left hemisphere injury. Neuropsychologia 2015; 80:133-141. [PMID: 26546561 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.11.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/29/2015] [Revised: 09/14/2015] [Accepted: 11/03/2015] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
Abstract
While left hemisphere damage (LHD) has been clearly shown to cause a range of language impairments, patients with right hemisphere damage (RHD) also exhibit communication deficits, such as difficulties processing prosody, discourse, and social contexts. In the current study, individuals with RHD and LHD were directly compared on their ability to interpret what a character in a cartoon might be saying or thinking, in order to better understand the relative role of the right and left hemisphere in social communication. The cartoon stimuli were manipulated so as to elicit more or less formulaic responses (e.g., a scene of a couple being married by a priest vs. a scene of two people talking, respectively). Participants' responses were scored by blind raters on how appropriately they captured the gist of the social situation, as well as how formulaic and typical their responses were. Results showed that RHD individuals' responses were rated as significantly less appropriate than controls and were also significantly less typical than controls and individuals with LHD. Individuals with RHD produced a numerically lower proportion of formulaic expressions than controls, but this difference was only a trend. Counter to prediction, the pattern of performance across participant groups was not affected by how constrained/formulaic the social situation was. The current findings expand our understanding of the roles that the right and left hemispheres play in social processing and communication and have implications for the potential treatment of social communication deficits in individuals with RHD.
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Affiliation(s)
- Juliana V Baldo
- Department of Veterans Affairs, Northern California Health Care System, 150 Muir Rd. (126R), Martinez, CA 94553, United States.
| | - Natalie A Kacinik
- Brooklyn College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York
| | - Amber Moncrief
- Department of Veterans Affairs, Northern California Health Care System, 150 Muir Rd. (126R), Martinez, CA 94553, United States
| | - Francesca Beghin
- Department of Veterans Affairs, Northern California Health Care System, 150 Muir Rd. (126R), Martinez, CA 94553, United States
| | - Nina F Dronkers
- Department of Veterans Affairs, Northern California Health Care System, 150 Muir Rd. (126R), Martinez, CA 94553, United States; University of California, Davis, United States
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Kacinik NA. Sticking your neck out and burying the hatchet: what idioms reveal about embodied simulation. Front Hum Neurosci 2014; 8:689. [PMID: 25309381 PMCID: PMC4173310 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00689] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/14/2014] [Accepted: 08/17/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Idioms are used in conventional language twice as frequently as metaphors, but most research, particularly recent work on embodiment has focused on the latter. However, idioms have the potential to significantly deepen our understanding of embodiment because their meanings cannot be derived from their component words. To determine whether sensorimotor states could activate idiomatic meaning, participants were instructed to engage in postures/actions reflecting various idioms (e.g., sticking your neck out) relative to non-idiomatic control postures/actions while reading and responding to statements designed to assess idiomatic meaning. The results showed that statements were generally more strongly endorsed after idiom embodiment than control conditions, indicating that the meaning of idiomatic expressions may not be as disconnected from perceptual and motor experiences than previously thought. These findings are discussed in terms of the mirror neuron system and the necessity of pluralistic contributions from both sensorimotor and amodal linguistic systems to fully account for the representation and processing of idioms and other figurative expressions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Natalie A. Kacinik
- Cognitive Neuroscience of Language Lab, Department of Psychology, Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New YorkBrooklyn, NY, USA
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Abstract
To demonstrate that sensory and emotional states play an important role in moral processing, previous research has induced physical disgust in various sensory modalities (visual, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory modalities, among others) and measured its effects on moral judgment. To further assess the strength of the connection between embodied states and morality, we investigated whether the directionality of the effect could be reversed by exposing participants to different types of moral events prior to rating the same neutral tasting beverage. As expected, reading about moral transgressions, moral virtues, or control events resulted in inducing gustatory disgust, delight, or neutral taste experiences, respectively. Results are discussed in terms of the relation between embodied cognition and processing abstract conceptual representations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kendall J Eskine
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States of America.
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Abstract
Can sweet-tasting substances trigger kind, favorable judgments about other people? What about substances that are disgusting and bitter? Various studies have linked physical disgust to moral disgust, but despite the rich and sometimes striking findings these studies have yielded, no research has explored morality in conjunction with taste, which can vary greatly and may differentially affect cognition. The research reported here tested the effects of taste perception on moral judgments. After consuming a sweet beverage, a bitter beverage, or water, participants rated a variety of moral transgressions. Results showed that taste perception significantly affected moral judgments, such that physical disgust (induced via a bitter taste) elicited feelings of moral disgust. Further, this effect was more pronounced in participants with politically conservative views than in participants with politically liberal views. Taken together, these differential findings suggest that embodied gustatory experiences may affect moral processing more than previously thought.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kendall J Eskine
- Department of Psychology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY 11210, USA.
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Kacinik NA, Chiarello C. Understanding metaphors: Is the right hemisphere uniquely involved? Brain Lang 2007; 100:188-207. [PMID: 16325253 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2005.10.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/05/2004] [Revised: 09/28/2005] [Accepted: 10/18/2005] [Indexed: 05/05/2023]
Abstract
Two divided visual field priming experiments examined cerebral asymmetries for understanding metaphors varying in sentence constraint. Experiment 1 investigated ambiguous words (e.g., SWEET and BRIGHT) with literal and metaphoric meanings in ambiguous and unambiguous sentence contexts, while Experiment 2 involved standard metaphors (e.g., The drink you gave me was a meteor) with sententially consistent and inconsistent targets (i.e., POTENT vs COMET). Similar literal and metaphor priming effects were found in both visual fields across most experimental conditions. However, RH processes also maintained activation of sententially inconsistent literal meanings following metaphoric expressions. These results do not strongly support the RH as the preferred substrate for metaphor comprehension (e.g., ), and suggest that processes in both hemispheres can support metaphor comprehension, although not via identical mechanisms. The LH may utilize sentence constraint to select and integrate only contextually relevant literal and metaphoric meanings, whereas the RH may be less sensitive to sentence context and can maintain the activation of some alternative interpretations. This may be potentially useful in situations where an initial understanding must be revised.
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Affiliation(s)
- Natalie A Kacinik
- Center for Neuroscience, University of California, 1544 Newton Crt., Davis, CA 95616-8768, USA.
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Chiarello C, Lombardino LJ, Kacinik NA, Otto R, Leonard CM. Neuroanatomical and behavioral asymmetry in an adult compensated dyslexic. Brain Lang 2006; 98:169-81. [PMID: 16737735 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2006.04.012] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/06/2006] [Revised: 03/30/2006] [Accepted: 04/20/2006] [Indexed: 05/09/2023]
Abstract
Individual differences in cortical anatomy are readily observable, but their functional significance for behaviors such as reading is not well understood. Here, we report a case of an apparent compensated dyslexic who had attained high achievement in visuospatial mathematics. Data from a detailed background interview, psychometric testing, divided visual field tasks measuring basic word recognition (word naming, nonword naming, and lexical decision), and more controlled word retrieval (verb, category, and rhyme generation), and measurements of his atypical brain structure are described. The findings suggested that enhanced "top-down" processing could provide the means to compensate for deficient "bottom-up" word decoding skills in this case. Relative to controls, this individual also evidenced unusually large asymmetries on several divided visual field lexical tasks, an extreme leftward asymmetry of the planum temporale, and a rare form of Sylvian fissure morphology (Steinmetz type 4, [Steinmetz, H., Ebeling, U., Huang, Y., & Kahn, T. (1990). Sulcus topography of the parietal opercular region: An anatomic and MR study. Brain and Language, 38, 515-533.]). We suggest that certain forms of brain organization may be associated with successful behavioral compensation for dyslexia, and that anatomical variations in the right hemisphere may be important contributors to individual differences in reading acquisition and achievement.
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Abstract
This study investigated potential right hemisphere involvement in the verb generation task. Six divided visual field experiments explored cerebral asymmetries for word retrieval in the verb generation task as well as in rhyme generation and immediate and delayed word pronunciation. The typical right visual field/left hemisphere (RVF/LH) advantage was observed for pronunciation and rhyme generation. For verb generation, the RVF/LH advantage was obtained only when stimulus items had a single prepotent response and not when there were multiple response alternatives. A semantic priming experiment suggested that activation for less common, related verbs was maintained for a longer time course within the right than within the left hemisphere. The authors suggest that the right hemisphere may play a role in continued activation of semantically related response alternatives in word generation and discuss methodological implications of their findings.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christine Chiarello
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521, USA.
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Chiarello C, Shears C, Liu S, Kacinik NA. Influence of word class proportion on cerebral asymmetries for high- and low-imagery words. Brain Cogn 2005; 57:35-8. [PMID: 15629212 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2004.08.024] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 08/12/2004] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
Abstract
It has been claimed that the typical RVF/LH advantage for word recognition is reduced or eliminated for imageable, as compared to nonimageable, nouns. To determine whether such word-class effects vary depending on the stimulus list context in which the words are presented, we varied the proportion of high- and low-image words presented in a lateralized lexical decision task (0, 25, 50, 75, or 100% high image). Although the RVF/LH advantage for high-image words was unaltered by word-class proportion, a significant linear trend was obtained for the low-image words such that the RVF/LH advantage increased as the proportion of low-image words increased. We discuss the implications of these findings for models of how lexical processing is distributed across hemispheres.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christine Chiarello
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA.
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Abstract
The RVF/LH advantage typically found for high image nouns may be reduced or eliminated when they are mixed with other types of words, such as low image nouns ([Chiarello et al., 2001]). Global stimulus context thus appears to affect the distribution of processing across the hemispheres ( [Chiarello et al., 2001]). This idea was further investigated in the present study by presenting moderately imageable words (e.g., HOBBY) intermixed with either low or high image nouns. It was predicted that these medium image words would show a RVF advantage when mixed with high image nouns. However, this RVF advantage was expected to disappear when they were mixed with low image nouns, because the medium image words would be relatively more imageable in that context. This hypothesis was not supported, as similar RVF advantages were found for each imageability condition. It is suggested that more heterogenous stimulus distributions may be necessary for context-dependent alterations of cerebral asymmetries to occur.
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