Hemispheric processing of sarcastic text

Briner, Stephen W.; Joss, Laura Motyka; Virtue, Sandra

doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2011.02.001

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…In the irony literature, less salient ironic interpretations consistently show slower time-course of meaning activation compared to salient literal expressions (indicating processing costs) (e.g., Giora & Fein, 1999;Giora, Fein & Schwartz, 1998) and fMRI studies indicate RH involvement for ironic language too (e.g., Shibata, Toyomura, Itoh & Abe, 2010). Similarly, sarcasm-related processing costs, compared both to literal baseline controls, and metaphors, were reported (Olkoniemi, Ranta & Kaakinen, 2016) as well as RH facilitation for sarcastic texts (Briner, Joss & Virtue, 2011). Our study further strengthens the relationship between greater processing costs and RH involvement for non-literal language by showing that the same relationship holds for puns in young healthy adult populations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Right hemisphere involvement for pun processing – Effects of idiom decomposition

Koleva

Mon-Williams

Klepousniotou

2019

Journal of Neurolinguistics

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The present study investigated hemispheric processing of puns involving decomposable idioms (e.g. Old skiers never die, they just go downhill) and non-decomposable ones (e.g., Old cleaners never die, they just bite the dust) using a divided visual field paradigm. In two crossmodal priming experiments, participants listened to puns and made lexical decisions for targets presented either in the left or right visual fields. To investigate hemispheric asymmetries at different processing stages (early vs. late), the prime-target inter-stimulus interval was 0ms in Experiment 1 and was increased to 750ms in Experiment 2. The results from both experiments demonstrated a left hemisphere advantage for processing puns triggered by non-decomposable idioms; puns motivated by decomposable idioms were processed equally fast in both hemispheres, suggesting that this type of pun induced right hemisphere involvement and led to bilateral processing. We discuss the results in light of predictions derived from the graded salience hypothesis and the fine-coarse coding hypothesis and argue that the data are more consistent with the graded salience hypothesis.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Right hemisphere involvement for pun processing – Effects of idiom decomposition

Koleva

Mon-Williams

Klepousniotou

2019

Journal of Neurolinguistics

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“…Together, this strongly suggests right-hemispheric activation as a potential mediator. This contention is strengthened by research showing the unique role of the right hemisphere in understanding sarcasm (Briner, Joss, & Virtue, 2011;Shamay-Tsoory, Tomer, & Aharon-Peretz, 2005). A second candidate responsible for the integration of various informational sources to create meaning may be a similarity focus, which is linked to global processing (Förster, 2009) and metaphoric understanding (in terms of structural alignment; Bowdle & Gentner, 2005;Gentner & Markman, 1997).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving communicative understanding: The benefits of global processing

Woltin

Corneille

Yzerbyt

2012

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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“…In comparison, metaphors seem to engage more extended semantic-conceptual integration as shown by an N400-P600 pattern (e.g., Coulson and Van Petten, 2002 ), which accords with findings of enhanced activation in the middle temporal cortex in response to metaphors ( Eviatar and Just, 2006 ), one of the regions generating N400 (for review see Lau et al, 2008 ). An engagement of different processing mechanisms for metaphors and sarcasm was also confirmed in visual field studies, with sarcasm showing greater activation of the right hemisphere ( Briner et al, 2011 ). Other studies revealed modulations of N400 in response to metaphors due to preceding contextual information ( Pynte et al, 1996 ; Bambini et al, 2016 ) as well as cloze probability ( Tartter et al, 2002 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 67%

Don’t Get Me Wrong: ERP Evidence from Cueing Communicative Intentions

Regel

Gunter

2017

Front. Psychol.

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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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Hemispheric processing of sarcastic text

Cited by 8 publications

References 52 publications

Right hemisphere involvement for pun processing – Effects of idiom decomposition

Right hemisphere involvement for pun processing – Effects of idiom decomposition

Improving communicative understanding: The benefits of global processing

Don’t Get Me Wrong: ERP Evidence from Cueing Communicative Intentions

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