Socioeconomic status refers to the social position or class according to their material and non-material social resources. We conducted a study with 60 college students to explore whether SES affects past self-evaluation and used event-related potentials in a self-reference task that required participants to judge whether the trait adjectives describing themselves 5 years ago were appropriate for them. Behavioral data showed that individuals’ positive past self-evaluations were significantly higher than individuals’ negative past self-evaluations, regardless of high or low SES. Individuals (...) with high SES had significantly higher positive past self-evaluations than those with low SES. ERP data showed that in the low SES group, negative adjectives elicited a marginally greater N400 amplitude than positive adjectives; in the high SES group, negative adjectives elicited a greater late positive potential amplitude than positive adjectives. N400 is an index of the accessibility of semantic processing, and a larger N400 amplitude reflects less fluent semantic processing. LPP is an index of continuous attention during late processing; the larger LPP amplitude is elicited, the more attention resources are invested. Our results indicated that compared with college students with low SES, the past self-evaluations of college students with high SES were more positive; college students with high SES paid more attention to negative adjectives. However, college students with low SES were marginally less fluent in processing negative adjectives. (shrink)

According to embodied theories of language (ETLs), word meaning relies on sensorimotor brain areas, generally dedicated to acting and perceiving in the real world. More specifically, words denoting actions are postulated to make use of neural motor areas, while words denoting visual properties draw on the resources of visual brain areas. Therefore, there is a direct correspondence between word meaning and the experience a listener has had with a word's referent on the brain level. Behavioral and neuroimaging studies have provided (...) evidence in favor of ETLs; however, recent studies have also shown that sensorimotor information is recruited in a flexible manner during language comprehension (e.g., Raposo et al. ; Van Dam et al., ), leaving open the question as to what level of language processing sensorimotor activations contribute. In this study, we investigated the time course of modality‐specific contributions (i.e., the contribution of action information) as to word processing by manipulating both (a) the linguistic and (b) the action context in which target words were presented. Our results demonstrate that processes reflecting sensorimotor information play a role early in word processing (i.e., within 200 ms of word presentation), but that they are sensitive to the linguistic context in which a word is presented. In other words, when sensorimotor information is activated, it is activated quickly; however, specific words do not reliably activate a consistent sensorimotor pattern. (shrink)

Human attention is limited in its capacity and duration. In language, this is manifested in many ways, but more conspicuously in the strategies by which information is distributed in utterances, that is, their information structures. We contend that the pragmatic categories of Topic and Presupposition precisely meet the necessity to modulate attentional resources on sentence contents, and they do this by “directing” certain contents to automatic and others to controlled processing mechanisms. We discuss experimental findings suggesting that presupposed or topicalized (...) information correlates with automatic processing, and we suggest that this association grounded for the emergence of topic and presupposition units in human communication. We also put forth the processing automaticity induced by these units as the rationale behind their persuasiveness in some specific contexts of language use. (shrink)

In referential communication, Grice's Maxim of Quantity is thought to imply that utterances conveying unnecessary information should incur comprehension difficulties. There is, however, considerable evidence that speakers frequently encode redundant information in their referring expressions, raising the question as to whether such overspecifications hinder listeners’ processing. Evidence from previous work is inconclusive, and mostly comes from offline studies. In this article, we present two event‐related potential (ERP) experiments, investigating the real‐time comprehension of referring expressions that contain redundant adjectives in complex (...) visual contexts. Our findings provide support for both Gricean and bounded‐rational accounts. We argue that these seemingly incompatible results can be reconciled if common ground is taken into account. We propose a bounded‐rational account of overspecification, according to which even redundant words can be beneficial to comprehension to the extent that they facilitate the reduction of listeners’ uncertainty regarding the target referent. (shrink)

To study the different mechanisms of understanding figurative language in a speaker’s native language and their second language, this study investigated how scientific metaphors in Chinese and English are electrophysiologically processed via event-related potential experimentation. Compared with the metaphors from daily life or in literary works, scientific metaphors tend to involve both a more complicated context structure and a distinct knowledge-inferencing process. During the N400 time window, English scientific metaphors elicited more negative N400s than Chinese ones at the parietal region. (...) In the late positive component time window, English scientific metaphors elicited less positive LPCs than Chinese ones at the parietal region, and larger late negativities encompassing smaller areas of the brain. The findings might indicate that for late unbalanced bilingual speakers, L2 scientific metaphor comprehension requires more effort in information retrieval or access to the non-literal route. Altogether, the possible findings are that non-native and non-dominant language processing involves decreased automaticity of cognitive mechanisms, and decreased sensitivity to the levels of conventionality of metaphoric meanings. (shrink)

Studies of native syntactic processing often target phrase structure violations that do not occur in natural production. In contrast, this study examines how variation in basic word order is processed, looking specifically at structures traditionally labelled as violations but that do occur naturally. We examined Swedish verb-second and verb-third word order processing in adult native Swedish speakers, manipulating sentence-initial adverbials in acceptability judgements, in simultaneously recorded event-related potentials to visually presented sentences and in a written sentence completion task. An initial (...) corpus study showed that the adverbials differ in frequency in fronted position, and although all occur mainly with V2 word order, kanske occurs more frequently with V3 in natural production than both idag and hemma. The experimental results reflected these patterns such that V2 sentences were overall more frequently produced and were deemed more acceptable than V3 sentences. The ERP results consisted of a biphasic N400/P600 response to V3 word order that indicated effects of word retrieval and sentence reanalysis. We also found consistent effects of adverbials. As predicted, V3 was produced more frequently and judged as more acceptable in Kanske sentences than in sentences with the other two adverbials. The ERP analyses showed stronger effects for idag and hemma with V3, especially regarding the P600. The results suggest that the naturally occurring word order ‘violation’, V3 with kanske, is processed differently than V3 with other adverbials where the V2 norm is stronger. Moreover, these patterns are related to individuals’ own production patterns. Overall, the results suggest a more varied native word order processing than previously reported. (shrink)

The regional brain networks and the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms subserving the cognition of visual narrative in humans have largely been studied with non-invasive brain recording. In this study, we specifically investigated how regional and cross-regional cortical activities support visual narrative interpretation using intracranial stereotactic electroencephalograms recordings from thirteen human subjects (6 females, and 7 males). Widely distributed recording sites across the brain were sampled while subjects were explicitly instructed to observe images from fables presented in “sequential” order, and a set (...) of images drawn from multiple fables presented in “scrambled” order. Broadband activity mainly within the frontal and temporal lobes were found to encode if a presented image is part of a visual narrative (sequential) or random image set (scrambled). Moreover, the temporal lobe exhibits strong activation in response to visual narratives while the frontal lobe is more engaged when contextually novel stimuli are presented. We also investigated the dynamics of interregional interactions between visual narratives and contextually novel series of images. Interestingly, the interregional connectivity is also altered between sequential and scrambled sequences. Together, these results suggest that both changes in regional neuronal activity and cross-regional interactions subserve visual narrative and contextual novelty processing. (shrink)

Putting the principles of multisensory teaching into practice, this study investigated the effect of audio-visual vocabulary repetition on L2 sentence comprehension. Forty participants were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. A sensory-based model of instruction was used to teach a list of unfamiliar vocabularies to the two groups. Following the instruction, the experimental group repeated the instructed words twice, while the control group received no vocabulary repetition. Afterward, their electrophysiological neural activities were recorded through electroencephalography while doing a sentence (...) acceptability judgment task with 216 sentences under acceptable and unacceptable conditions. A one-way analysis of variance, a multivariate analysis of variance, and a Bayesian repeated-measures ANOVA were used to compare the behavioral and neurocognitive responses [N400 as the main language-related event-related brain potential effect] of the two groups. The results showed no significant N400 amplitude difference in favor of any of the groups. The findings corroborated the ineffectiveness of two repetitions preceded by multisensory instruction on L2 sentence comprehension. (shrink)

Indirect speech is a remarkable trait of human communication. The present paper tackles the sociobiological underpinnings of communicative indirectness discussing both socio-interactional and cognitive rationales behind its manifestation in discourse. From a social perspective, the use of indirect forms in interactions can be regarded as an adaptive response to the epistemic implications of transacted new information in small primary groups, representing – in Givón’s terms – our “bio-cultural” descent. The design features of indirect strategies today may therefore be explained in (...) terms of a form-function mapping in which indirect communicative expressions allowed a “safer” transaction of contents and a more cooperative attitude of speakers in both face-to-face and public contexts of communication. The unchallengeability effects notably induced by underencoded meanings have now received extensive experimental backing, unveiling intriguing underlying cognitive mechanisms such as the well-known cognitive illusions or fallacies. (shrink)

Indirect speech is a remarkable trait of human communication. The present paper tackles the sociobiological underpinnings of communicative indirectness discussing both socio-interactional and cognitive rationales behind its manifestation in discourse. From a social perspective, the use of indirect forms in interactions can be regarded as an adaptive response to the epistemic implications of transacted new information in small primary groups, representing – in Givón’s terms – our “bio-cultural” descent. The design features of indirect strategies today may therefore be explained in (...) terms of a form-function mapping in which indirect communicative expressions allowed a “safer” transaction of contents and a more cooperative attitude of speakers in both face-to-face and public contexts of communication. The unchallengeability effects notably induced by underencoded meanings have now received extensive experimental backing, unveiling intriguing underlying cognitive mechanisms such as the well-known cognitive illusions or fallacies. (shrink)

Pink and blue colors have been found to associate with gender stereotypes in previous Western studies. The purpose of the present study was to explore the neuropsychological processing basis of this effect in contemporary Chinese society. We presented stereotypically masculine or feminine occupation words in either pink or blue colors to Chinese college students in a modified Stroop paradigm, in which participants were asked to classify each occupation word by gender as quickly and accurately as possible. Event-related potential signals were (...) concurrently recorded in order to identify the temporal dynamics of gender stereotypical interference effect. The behavioral results showed that pink–masculine stimuli elicited a longer response time and lower accuracy than blue–masculine stimuli in the participants, while no such differences were observed between pink–feminine and blue–feminine conditions. The ERP results further revealed distinctive neural processing stages for pink–masculine stimuli in P200, N300, N400, and P600. Overall, our results suggested that pink but not blue was a “gendered” color in Chinese culture. Moreover, our ERP findings contributed to the understanding of the neural mechanism underlying the processing of gender–color stereotypes. (shrink)

Spelling errors are ubiquitous in all writing systems. Most studies exploring spelling errors focused on the phonological plausibility of errors. However, unlike typical pseudohomophones, spelling errors occur in naturally produced written language. We investigated the time course of recognition of the most frequent orthographic errors in Russian and the effect of word frequency on this process. During event-related potentials recording, 26 native Russian speakers silently read high-frequency correctly spelled words, low-frequency correctly spelled words, high-frequency words with errors, and low-frequency words (...) with errors. The amplitude of P200 was more positive for correctly spelled words than for misspelled words and did not depend on the frequency of the words. In addition, in the 350–500-ms time window, we found a more negative response for misspelled words than for correctly spelled words in parietal–temporal-occipital regions regardless of word frequency. Considering our results in the context of a dual-route model, we concluded that recognizing misspelled high-frequency and low-frequency words involves common orthographic and phonological processes associated with P200 and N400 components such as whole word orthography processing and activation of phonological representations correspondingly. However, at the 500–700 ms stage, error recognition depends on the word frequency. One possible explanation for these differences could be that at the 500–700 ms stage recognition of high-frequency misspelled and correctly spelled words shifts from phonological to orthographic processes, while low-frequency misspelled words are accompanied by more prolonged phonological activation. We believe these processes may be associated with different ERP components P300 and N400, reflecting a temporal overlap between categorization processes based on orthographic properties for high-frequency words and phonological processes for low-frequency words. Therefore, our results complement existing reading models and demonstrate that the neuronal underpinnings of spelling error recognition during reading may depend on word frequency. (shrink)

We investigate how mood inductions impact the neural processing of emotional adjectives in one’s first language and a formally acquired second language. Twenty-three student participants took part in an EEG experiment with two separate sessions. Happy or sad mood inductions were followed by series of individually presented positive, negative, or neutral adjectives in L1 or L2 and evaluative decisions had to be performed. Visual event-related potentials elicited during word processing were analyzed during N1, Early Posterior Negativities, N400, and the Late (...) Positive Potential. Mood induction differentially impacted word processing already on the N1, with stronger left lateralization following happy than sad mood induction in L1, but not in L2. Moreover, regardless of language, early valence modulation was found following happy but not sad mood induction. Over occipital areas, happy mood elicited larger amplitudes of the mood-congruent positive words, whereas over temporal areas mood-incongruent negative words had higher amplitudes. In the EPN-windows, effects of mood and valence largely persisted, albeit with no difference between L1 and L2. N400 amplitude was larger for L2 than for L1. On the LPP, mood-incongruent adjectives elicited larger amplitudes than mood-congruent ones. Results reveal a remarkably early valence-general effect of mood induction on cortical processing, in line with previous reports of N1 as a first marker of contextual integration. Interestingly, this effect differed between L1 and L2. Moreover, mood-congruent effects were found in perceptual processing and mood-incongruent ERP amplification in higher-order evaluative stages. (shrink)