Hemispheric asymmetry and pun comprehension: When cowboys have sore calves

Brain and Language

Volumn 100, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 172-187

  Coulson, Seana ^a   Severens, Els ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^b GHENT UNIVERSITY   (Belgium)

Author keywords

Ambiguity; ERP; Hemifield presentation; Humor; Jokes; Laterality; N400; Puns; Word play

Indexed keywords

ADULT; ARTICLE; BRAIN ASYMMETRY; COMPREHENSION; CONTROLLED STUDY; EVENT RELATED POTENTIAL; FEMALE; HEMISPHERE; HUMAN; HUMAN EXPERIMENT; LEFT HEMISPHERE; MALE; NORMAL HUMAN; STIMULUS; VISUAL FIELD;

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; ATTENTION; BRAIN MAPPING; CEREBRAL CORTEX; COMPREHENSION; DOMINANCE, CEREBRAL; ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY; EVOKED POTENTIALS; FEMALE; HUMANS; MALE; METAPHOR; PSYCHOLINGUISTICS; REACTION TIME; SEMANTICS; WIT AND HUMOR;

EID: 33947581636     PISSN: 0093934X     EISSN: 10902155     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2005.08.009     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. Ahrens K., Liu H.-L., Lee C.-Y., Gong S.-P., Fang S.-Y., and Hsu Y.-Y. Functional MRI of conventional and anomalous metaphors in Mandarin Chinese. Brain & Language 100 (2007) 163-171
2. Beeman M.J., and Chiarello C. Complementary right- and left-hemisphere language comprehension. Current Directions in Psychological Science 7 1 (1998) 2-8
3. Beeman M.J., Friedman R., Grafman J., Perez E., Diamond S., and Lindsay M. Summation priming and coarse coding in the right hemisphere. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 6 (1994) 26-45
4. Bihrle A., Brownell H., and Gardner H. Comprehension of humorous and nonhumorous materials by left- and right- brain damaged patients. Brain & Cognition 5 (1986) 399-411
5. Brown W., Paul L., Symington M., and Dietrich R. Comprehension of humor in primary agenesis of the corpus callosum. Neuropsychologia 43 (2005) 906-916
6. Brownell H., Michel D., Powelson J., and Gardner H. Surprise but not coherence: Sensitivity to verbal humor in right-hemisphere patients. Brain & Language 18 (1983) 20-27
7. Burgess C., and Lund K. Modeling cerebral asymmetries in high-dimensional space. In: Beeman M.J., and Chiarello C. (Eds). Right hemisphere language comprehension: Perspectives from cognitive neuroscience (1998), Lawrence Erbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ 215-244
8. Burgess C., and Simpson G. Cerebral hemispheric mechanisms in the retrieval of ambiguous word meaning. Brain & Language 42 (1988) 203-217
9. Chiarello C., Burgess C., Richards L., and Pollock A. Semantic and associative priming in the cerebral hemisphere: Some words do, some words don't... sometimes, some places. Brain & Language 38 (1990) 75-104
10. Chiarello C., Liu S., and Faust M. Bihemispheric sensitivity to sentence anomaly. Neuropsychologia 39 13 (2001) 1451-1463
11. Coney J., and Evans K. Hemispheric asymmetries in the resolution of lexical ambiguity. Neuropsychologia 38 (2000) 272-282
12. Copland D., Chenery H., and Murdoch B. Hemispheric contributions to lexical ambiguity resolution: Evidence from individuals with complex language impairment following left-hemisphere lesions. Brain & Language 81 (2002) 131-143
13. Coulson S. Semantic leaps: Frame-shifting and conceptual blending in meaning construction (2001), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
14. Coulson S., Federmeier K.D., Van Petten C., and Kutas M. Right hemisphere sensitivity to word- and sentence-level context: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 31 (2005) 129-147
15. Coulson S., and Kutas M. Getting it: Human event-related brain response in good and poor comprehenders. Neuroscience Letters 316 (2001) 71-74
16. Coulson S., and Lovett C. Handedness, hemispheric asymmetries, and joke comprehension. Cognitive Brain Research 19 (2004) 275-288
17. Coulson S., and Williams R.W. Hemispheric asymmetries and joke comprehension. Neuropsychologia 43 (2005) 128-141
18. Coulson S., and Wu Y.C. Right hemisphere activation of joke-related information: An event-related potential study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 17 3 (2005) 494-506
19. Faust M. Obtaining evidence of language comprehension from sentence priming. In: Beeman M.J., and Chiarello C. (Eds). Right hemisphere language comprehension: Perspectives from cognitive neuroscience (1998), Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ 161-186
20. Faust M., and Chiarello C. Sentence context and lexical ambiguity resolution by the two hemispheres. Neuropsychologia 36 9 (1998) 827-835
21. Faust M., and Gernsbacher M. Cerebral mechanisms for suppression of inappropriate information during sentence comprehension. Brain & Language 53 (1996) 234-259
22. Faust M., and Lavidor M. Semantically convergent and semantically divergent priming in the cerebral hemispheres: Lexical decision and semantic judgment. Cognitive Brain Research 17 (2003) 585-597
23. Federmeier K.D., and Kutas M. Right words and left words: Electrophysiological evidence for hemispheric differences in meaning processing. Cognitive Brain Research 8 (1999) 373-392
24. Giora R. On the cognitive aspects of the joke. Journal of Pragmatics 16 (1991) 465-485
25. Giora R. On our mind: Salience, context, and figurative language (2003), Oxford University Press, New York
26. Goel V., and Dolan R.J. The functional anatomy of humor: Segregating cognitive and affective components. Nature Neuroscience 4 (2001) 237-238
27. Hull R., Chen H.-C., Vaid J., and Martinez F. Great expectations: Humor comprehension across hemispheres. Brain & Cognition 57 (2005) 281-282
28. Huynh H., and Feldt L.S. Estimation of the box correction for degrees of freedom from sample data in the randomized block and split plot designs. Journal of Educational Statistics 1 (1978) 69-82
29. Klepousniotou E., and Baum S. Unilateral brain damage effects on processing homonymous and polysemous words. Brain & Language 93 (2005) 308-326
30. Koriat A. Semantic facilitation in lexical decision as a function of prime-target association. Memory and Cognition 9 (1981) 587-598
31. Kucera H., and Francis W.N. Computational analysis of present-day American English (1967), Brown University Press, Providence
32. Kutas M., and Hillyard S.A. Reading senseless sentences: Brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity. Science 207 (1980) 203-205
33. Kutas M., and Van Petten C. Psycholinguistics electrified. In: Gernsbacher M. (Ed). Handbook of psycholinguistics (1994), Academic Press, San Diego, CA 83-143
34. Mashal N., Faust M., Hendler T., and Jung-Beeman M. An fMRI investigation of the neural correlates underlying the processing of novel metaphoric expressions. Brain & Language 100 (2007) 115-126
35. Neville H.J., Kutas M., and Schmidt A. Event-related potential studies of cerebral specialization during reading: I. Studies of normal adults. Brain & Language 16 2 (1982) 300-315
36. Oldfield R.C. The assessment and analysis of handedness: The Edinburgh inventory. Neuropsychologia 9 (1971) 97-113
37. Paller K., and Kutas M. Brain potentials during memory retrieval provide neurophysiological support for the distinction between conscious recollection and primin. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 4 (1992) 375-391
38. Papagno, C., & Caporali, A. submitted. Testing idiom comprehension in aphasic patients: The modality and the type of idiom effects. Brain & Language.
39. Ranganath C., and Paller K. Neural correlates of memory retrieval and evaluation. Cognitive Brain Research 9 (2000) 209-222
40. Rapp A., Leube D., Erb M., Grodd W., and Kircher T. Laterality in metaphor processing: Lack of evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging for the right hemisphere theory. Brain & Language 100 (2007) 142-149
41. Rugg M.D., Cox C., Doyle M.C., and Wells T. Event-related potentials and the recollection of low and high frequency words. Neuropsychologia 33 (1995) 471-484
42. Rugg M.D., Mark R.E., Walla P., Schloerscheidt A.M., Birch C.S., and Allan K. Dissociation of the neural correlates of implicit and explicit memory. Nature 392 (1998) 595-597
43. Rugg M.D., and Yonelinas A.P. Human recognition memory: A cognitive neuroscience perspective. Trends in Cognitive Science 7 (2003) 313-319
44. Schmidt G., DeBuse C., and Seger C. Right hemisphere metaphor processing? Characterizing the lateralization of semantic processes. Brain & Language 100 (2007) 127-141
45. Shammi P., and Stuss D.T. Humour appreciation: A role of the right frontal lobe. Brain 122 (1999) 657-666
46. Stringaris, A., Medford, N., Brammar, M. J., & Giampetro, V. (2005, this volume). Deriving meaning: distinct neural mechanisms in the semantic network. Brain & Language.
47. Titone D. Hemispheric differences in context sensitivity during lexical ambiguity resolution. Brain & Language 65 3 (1998) 361-394
48. Vaid J., Hull R., Heredia R., Gerkens D., and Martina F. Getting a joke: The time course of meaning activation in verbal humor. Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 1431-1449
49. Van Petten C. Words and sentences: Event-related brain potential measures. Psychophysiology 32 6 (1995) 511-525
50. Van Petten C., Kutas M., Kluender R., Mitchiner M., and McIsaac H. Fractionating the word repetition effect with event-related potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 3 2 (1991) 131-150
51. Wild B., Rodden F., Grodd W., and Ruch W. Neural correlates of laughter and humour. Brain 126 (2003) 2121-2138
52. Zaidel D. A view of the world from a split brain perspective. In: Critchley E. (Ed). Neurological boundaries of reality (1994), Farrand Press, London 161-174