On the perception of sarcasm in dichotic listening.

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the processing of sincere and sarcastic statements by the cerebral hemispheres. Forty right-handed students were asked to localize sincere and sarcastic statements presented dichotically. Participants either indicated the ear that perceived the sarcastic statement or the ear that perceived the sincere statement in counterbalanced blocks of trials. As expected, results revealed a left ear advantage for sarcastic statements and a right ear advantage for sincere statements. In addition, participants showed faster response time when localizing targets (both sarcastic and sincere) to the left ear compared to the right. Finally, a significant negative correlation between laterality effects in the two tasks provided support for causal hemispheric complementarity. Results are discussed with reference to the contribution of the right and left hemispheres to language processing. Their implications for models of sarcasm perception are also discussed.

Hemispheric processing of sarcastic text

“…Although participants in the current study did not listen to sarcastic speech, but instead read sarcastic text, the current findings are consistent with numerous studies that use tone of voice to examine sarcasm comprehension (e.g., Giora et al, 2000;Shamay-Tsoory et al, 2005;Voyer et al, 2008). For example, patients who have right hemisphere damage are less accurate than patients who have left hemisphere damage or non-brain damaged individuals at identifying a speaker's emotions based on the speaker's tone of voice (Pell, 2006;Ross & Monnot, 2008).…”

“…Because individuals who have damage in the right hemisphere are less accurate at detecting sarcasm, it is possible that the right hemisphere is highly involved when readers comprehend sarcasm in a text. In addition, sarcastic speech is more accurately detected when presented to the right hemisphere (i.e., the left ear) than when sarcastic speech is presented to the left hemisphere (i.e., the right ear) in non-brain damaged participants (Voyer et al, 2008). Finally, there is greater neural activity (as measured by fMRI) in the right hemisphere when readers process sarcastic text than when readers process literal text (Eviatar & Just, 2006).…”

“…For example, some research shows that the right and left hemispheres are both highly involved in processing figurative language (Zaidel, Kasher, Soroker, & Batori, 2002;Zempleni, Haverkort, Renken, & Stowe, 2007). However, other research (Eviatar & Just, 2006;Giora, Zaidel, Soroker, Batori, & Kasher, 2000;Voyer, Bowes, & Techentin, 2008) suggests that right hemisphere processes may facilitate the comprehension of sarcastic text. To investigate how each cerebral hemisphere processes sarcastic text, participants in the current study were presented with sarcastic, literal, and neutral texts followed by related target words in either the left visual field-right hemisphere or the right visual field-left hemisphere.…”

Talking and driving: applications of crossmodal action reveal a special role for spatial language

“…We also employed a dichotic listening task to gain leverage on whether the eVects were due to shared-codes that are neurophysiologically speciWc or if the eVects could best be described by just a general diYculty for processing spatial words. Dichotic listening has a long history as a technique used to demonstrate cerebral advantage for the processing of various types of auditory information, such as words (Kimura, 1961(Kimura, , 1967 or the processing of emotions embedded in words such as sarcasm (Voyer, Bowes, & Techentin, 2008) or prosody (Grimshaw, Séguin, & Godfrey, 2009). With a dichotic listening procedure, diVerent streams of information can be presented simultaneously on the diVerent channels (left ear, right ear), with the (attended) left-ear information Wrst being processed by the right hemisphere and the (attended) right-ear information Wrst being processed by the left hemisphere.…”

Subjective Auditory Features of Sarcasm

“…Sarcasm can be considered a special situation in speech perception as it reflects a case where literal and prosodic contents are incongruent (Voyer, Bowes, & Techentin, 2008). In fact, Channon, Pellijeff, and Rule (2005) defined sarcasm as a "remark[s] made with negative or critical intent, where there is an indirect meaning, i.e., a discrepancy between the literal meaning of the words and the social context" (Channon et al, 2005, p. 124).…”