The N1–N2–LPC Pattern in Processing Advertising Pictorial Metaphors: An ERP Study

Abstract

We investigated what the temporal processing is of advertising pictorial metaphors. After presenting “a word of product” and “its advertising pictures,” the experiment instructed participants to make a follow-up true–false judgment considering what the picture intended to suggest. A repeated-measures ANOVAs for a 2 (picture type: metaphor, non-metaphor) × 2 (prime–target condition: congruent, incongruent) × 3 (electrode site: Fz, Cz, Pz) experimental condition was conducted on three components, N1 (100–150 ms), N2 (200–300 ms), and LPC (400–600 ms and 600–1,000 ms). The results show that metaphor pictures elicited larger amplitude in N1 (broadly distributed), N2 (frontally biased) and LPC (parietally biased), roughly reflecting an entire process with an initial response to visual onsets, an early recognition of semantic violations and a prolonged reanalysis process of semantic integration. We argue that, different than verbal metaphors, this faster processing occurred due to the involvement of visual pathway.

Matching different-structured advertising pictorial metaphors with verbalization forms: incongruity-based evoked response potentials evidence

“…The matching of two verbalization forms with each type of PMs all induced N1 effect, indicating that this initial response observed in the early window was caused by visual stimuli of the experimental pictures with different visual structures. This finding was in line with the previous one ( Cao et al, 2018 ) that both metaphor and literal pictures could elicit N1 due to the perceptual stimulation of the shape of experimental pictures. But for LS, there was significant difference between two verbalization forms.…”

A Facilitatory Effect of Perceptual Incongruity on Target-Source Matching in Pictorial Metaphors of Chinese Advertising: EEG Evidence

“…Thirdly, N300 is image-specific and elicited in semantically incongruous conditions such as between-category mismatches (Federmeier & Kutas, 2002;Hamm et al, 2002;Franklin et al, 2007) and discourse-level mismatches (West & Holcomb, 2002). The N300 amplitude is reportedly larger in processing metaphorical than literal sentence (Balconi & Amenta, 2010), but we assume that in the pictorial modality, the involvement of the visual pathway will facilitate the processing of metaphorical comprehension (Cao et al, 2018). As N270 can be evoked in different stimulus conflicting conditions, it is reasonable to propose that early N270 would reflect the mental conflict when the brain accesses incongruous information, perceptual and/or conceptual.…”

Falling into the trap: A study of the cognitive neural mechanisms of immediate rewards impact on consumer attitudes toward forwarding perk advertisements

“…P2, as an important indicator of attentional resource allocation, reflects the impact of instant rewards on unconscious attentional allocation in cognitive processing of information diagnosticity during individuals’ immediate change of attitudes towards perk advertisement. N2 representing cognitive conflict indicates propositional conflict and trade-offs in individuals’ subsequent deeper cognitive processing [ 80 ].…”