During much of the past century, it was widely believed that phonemes--the human speech sounds that constitute words--have no inherent semantic meaning, and that the relationship between a combination of phonemes (a word) and its referent is simply arbitrary. Although recent work has challenged this picture by revealing psychological associations between certain phonemes and particular semantic contents, the precise mechanisms underlying these associations have not been fully elucidated. Here we provide novel evidence that certain phonemes have an inherent, non-arbitrary emotional (...) quality. Moreover, we show that the perceived emotional valence of certain phoneme combinations depends on a specific acoustic feature--namely, the dynamic shift within the phonemes' first two frequency components. These data suggest a phoneme-relevant acoustic property influencing the communication of emotion in humans, and provide further evidence against previously held assumptions regarding the structure of human language. This finding has potential applications for a variety of social, educational, clinical, and marketing contexts. (shrink)

Stolz, Ärger, Angst, Neid - das ganze Spektrum der Gefühle wird philosophischen Einzelanalysen unterzogen. Ausgehend von der Alltagserfahrung stehen die gemeinsamen Merkmale und die Differenzen der einzelnen Gefühle im Vordergrund. Dabei wird Bezug genommen auf die Philosophiegeschichte und aktuelle philosophische Kontroversen. Nicht nur Struktur und Gehalt der Gefühle, sondern auch ihre leibliche Erfahrung werden betrachtet. Ein einmaliges Nachschlagewerk für Philosophen und Psychologen.

(1) The induced colours led to perceptual grouping and pop-out, (2) a grapheme rendered invisible through ‘crowding’ or lateral masking induced synaesthetic colours — a form of blindsight — and (3) peripherally presented graphemes did not induce colours even when they were clearly visible. Taken collectively, these and other experiments prove conclusively that synaesthesia is a genuine percep- tual phenomenon, not an effect based on memory associations from childhood or on vague metaphorical speech. We identify different subtypes of number–colour synaesthesia (...) and propose that they are caused by hyperconnectivity between col- our and number areas at different stages in processing; lower synaesthetes may have cross-wiring (or cross-activation) within the fusiform gyrus, whereas higher synaesthetes may have cross-activation in the angular gyrus. This hyperconnec- tivity might be caused by a genetic mutation that causes defective pruning of con- nections between brain maps. The mutation may further be expressed selectively (due to transcription factors) in the fusiform or angular gyri, and this may explain the existence of different forms of synaesthesia. If expressed very diffusely, there may be extensive cross-wiring between brain regions that represent abstract concepts, which would explain the link between creativity, metaphor and synaesthesia (and the higher incidence of synaesthesia among artists and poets). Also, hyperconnectivity between the sensory cortex and amygdala would explain the heightened aversion synaesthetes experience when seeing numbers printed in the ‘wrong’ colour. Lastly, kindling (induced hyperconnectivity in the temporal lobes of temporal lobe epilepsy [TLE] patients) may explain the purported higher incidence of synaesthesia in these patients. We conclude with a synaesthesia-based theory. (shrink)

What are 'emotions'? This book offers a balanced survey of facts and theory.

This paper assumes that the literary work of art is a "stratified system of norms", and that the description of each stratum may require a different kind of logic. One of the main problems is the meaningful integration of these descriptions. A speech sound may be described on an acoustic, a phonetic and a phonemic level; normally, its acoustic description is irrelevant to its linguistic or poetic significance. However, in certain circumstances, the acoustic description may account for the emotional quality (...) of the speech sound, may yield insight into the rhythmic structure of a poem, etc. Furthermore, pieces of poetry may be used to illustrate psychological theories about the aesthetic event; or psychological theories may be used to yield insight into the aesthetic nature of pieces of poetry. The paper focuses on the methodological issues involved in foregrounding the possible aesthetic significance of the transitions from one level of description to another. In doing this, it attempts to carefully navigate between two theoretical extremes: a reductionist view of literary theory according to which all the "special sciences " can be reduced to "more basic sciences" and, eventually, to physics; and the one formulated by Wellek and Warren as follows: "The psychology of the reader, however interesting in itself and useful for pedagogical purposes, will always remain outside the object of literary study [...] it must be unrelated either to the structure or the quality of a poem ". The middle course here proposed relies on "the principle of marginal control", that is, "the control exercised by the organizational principle of a higher level on the particulars forming its lower level". Paraphrasing Polânyi, the principles of literature may be said to govern the boundary conditions of a cognitive system—a set of conditions that is explicitly left undetermined by the laws of lower processes — physical, cognitive, and linguistic. If one knows more about these "lower" processes, one may get a better understanding of the principles of literature that govern those boundary conditions. It is claimed that in this way Cognitive Poetics is capable of discerning and explaining significant literary phenomena which present insurmountable difficulties to other approaches. (shrink)

"It is... remarkable that Reeve's is the first new English translation since Fowler's Loeb edition of 1926. Fortunately, Reeve has done an excellent job. His version is not slavishly literal but is in general very accurate. It is also very clear and readable. Reeve is particularly to be congratulated for having produced versions of some of the more torturous passages, which are not only faithful to the text but also make good sense in English. The long and detailed introduction is (...) worth reading in its own right." --R. F. Stalley, _The Classical Review_. (shrink)