Testing theories of irony processing using eye-tracking and ERPs

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition

Volumn 40, Issue 3, 2014, Pages 811-828

  Filik, Ruth ^a   Leuthold, Hartmut ^b   Wallington, Katie ^a   Page, Jemma ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF TÜBINGEN   (Germany)

Author keywords

ERPs; Eye tracking; Figurative language; Irony

Indexed keywords

ADULT; BRAIN; COMPREHENSION; ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY; EVOKED RESPONSE; FEMALE; HUMAN; MALE; OCULOGRAPHY; PHYSIOLOGY; PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY; RECOGNITION; SPEECH PERCEPTION; YOUNG ADULT;

ADULT; BRAIN; COMPREHENSION; ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY; EVOKED POTENTIALS; EYE MOVEMENT MEASUREMENTS; FEMALE; HUMANS; MALE; PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY; RECOGNITION (PSYCHOLOGY); SPEECH PERCEPTION; YOUNG ADULT;

EID: 84925557366     PISSN: 02787393     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1037/a0035658     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. Attardo, S., Eisterhold, J., Hay, J., & Poggi, I. (2003). Multimodal markers or irony and sarcasm. Humor, 16, 243-260. doi:10.1515/humr.2003.012
2. Baetens, K., Van der Cruyssen, L., Achtziger, A., Vandekerckhove, M., & Van Overwalle, F. (2011). N400 and LPP in spontaneous trait inferences. Brain Research, 1418, 83-92. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2011.08.067
3. Bell, A. J., & Sejnowski, T. J. (1995). An information-maximization approach to blind separation and blind deconvolution. Neural Computation, 7, 1129-1159. doi:10.1162/neco.1995.7.6.1129
4. Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, I., & Schlesewsky, M. (2008). An alternative perspective on "semantic P600" effects in language comprehension. Brain Research Reviews, 59, 55-73. doi:10.1016/j.brainresrev.2008.05 .003
5. Brouwer, H., Fitz, H., & Hoeks, J. (2012). Getting real about semantic illusions: Rethinking the functional role of the P600 in language comprehension. Brain Research, 1446, 127-143. doi:10.1016/j.brainres .2012.01.055
6. Bryant, G. A. (2010). Prosodic contrasts in ironic speech. Discourse Processes, 47, 545-566. doi:10.1080/01638530903531972
7. Bryant, G. A., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2002). Recognizing verbal irony in spontaneous speech. Metaphor and Symbol, 17, 99-119. doi:10.1207/ S15327868MS1702_2
8. Bryant, G. A., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2005). Is there an ironic tone of voice? Language and Speech, 48, 257-277. doi:10.1177/00238309050480030101
9. Burkhardt, P. (2006). Inferential bridging relations reveal distinct neural mechanisms: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Brain and Language, 98, 159-168. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2006.04.005
10. Burkhardt, P. (2007). The P600 reflects cost of new information in discourse memory. NeuroReport, 18, 1851-1854. doi:10.1097/WNR .0b013e3282f1a999
11. Cornejol, C., Simonetti, F., Aldunate, N., Ibanez, A., Lopez, V., & Melloni, L. (2007). Electrophysiological evidence of different interpretative strategies in irony comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 36, 411-430. doi:10.1007/s10936-007-9052-0
12. Coulson, S., & Kutas, M. (2001). Getting it: Human event-related brain response to jokes in good and poor comprehenders. Neuroscience Letters, 316, 71-74. doi:10.1016/S0304-3940(01)02387-4
13. Coulson, S., & Van Petten, C. (2002). Conceptual integration and metaphor: An event-related potential study. Memory & Cognition, 30, 958- 968. doi:10.3758/BF03195780
14. Coulson, S., & Van Petten, C. (2007). A special role for the right hemisphere in metaphor comprehension: ERP evidence from hemifield presentation. Brain Research, 1146, 128-145. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2007 .03.008
15. Cunningham, W. A., & Zelazo, P. D. (2007). Attitudes and evaluations: A social cognitive neuroscience perspective. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 97-104. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.12.005
16. De Grauwe, S., Swain, A., Holcomb, P. J., Ditman, T., & Kuperberg, G. R. (2010). Electrophysiological insights into the processing of nominal metaphors. Neuropsychologia, 48, 1965-1984. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia. 2010.03.017
17. Dews, S., & Winner, E. (1999). Obligatory processing of literal and nonliteral meanings in verbal irony. Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 1579- 1599. doi:10.1016/S0378-2166(99)00005-3
18. Dien, J., & Santuzzi, A. M. (2005). Application of repeated-measures ANOVA to high-density ERP datasets: A review and tutorial. In T. Handy (Ed.), Event related potentials: A methods handbook (pp. 57-82). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
19. Ferretti, T. R., Schwint, C. A., & Katz, A. N. (2007). Electrophysiological and behavioural measures of the influence of literal and figurative contextual constraints on proverb comprehension. Brain and Language, 101, 38-49. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2006.07.002
20. Filik, R., & Leuthold, H. (2008). Processing local pragmatic anomalies in fictional contexts: Evidence from the N400. Psychophysiology, 45, 554- 558. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2008.00656.x
21. Filik, R., & Leuthold, H. (2013). The role of character-based knowledge in online narrative comprehension: Evidence from eye movements and ERPs. Brain Research, 1506, 94-104. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2013.02 .017
22. Filik, R., & Moxey, L. M. (2010). The on-line processing of written irony. Cognition, 116, 421-436. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.06.005
23. Filik, R., Sanford, A. J., & Leuthold, H. (2008). Processing pronouns without antecedents: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 1315-1326. doi:10.1162/jocn.2008 .20090
24. Frisson, S., & Pickering, M. J. (1999). The processing of metonymy: Evidence from eye movements. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 25, 1366-1383. doi:10.1037/0278- 7393.25.6.1366
25. Frisson, S., & Pickering, M. J. (2007). The processing of familiar and novel senses of a word: Why reading Dickens is easy but reading Needham can be hard. Language and Cognitive Processes, 22, 595-613. doi:10.1080/ 01690960601017013
26. Gibbs, R. W. (1986). On the psycholinguistics of sarcasm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 115, 3-15. doi:10.1037/0096-3445 .115.1.3
27. Gibbs, R. W. (1994). Figurative thought and figurative language. In M. A. Gernsbacher (Ed.), Handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 411-446). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
28. Gibbs, R. W. (2000). Irony in talk among friends. Metaphor and Symbol, 15, 5-27. doi:10.1080/10926488.2000.9678862
29. Gibbs, R. W. (2002). A new look at literal meaning in understanding what is said and implicated. Journal of Pragmatics, 34, 457-486. doi: 10.1016/S0378-2166(01)00046-7
30. Gibbs, R. W., & Colston, H. L. (2012). Interpreting figurative meaning. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139168779
31. Giora, R. (1995). On irony and negation. Discourse Processes, 19, 239- 264. doi:10.1080/01638539509544916
32. Giora, R. (1997). Understanding figurative and literal language: The graded salience hypothesis. Cognitive Linguistics, 8, 183-206. doi: 10.1515/cogl.1997.8.3.183
33. Giora, R. (2003). On our mind: Salience, context, and figurative language. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195136166.001.0001
34. Giora, R., & Fein, O. (1999). Irony: Context and salience. Metaphor and Symbol, 14, 241-257. doi:10.1207/S15327868MS1404_1
35. Giora, R., Fein, O., Laadan, D., Wolfson, J., Zeituny, M., Kidron, R., . . . Shaham, R. (2007). Irony processing: Expectation versus salience-based inferences. Metaphor and Symbol, 22, 119 -146. doi:10.1080/ 10926480701235346
36. Giora, R., Fein, O., & Schwartz, T. (1998). Irony: Graded salience and indirect negation. Metaphor and Symbol, 13, 83-101. doi:10.1207/ s15327868ms1302_1
37. Gouvea, A. C., Phillips, C., Kazanina, N., & Poeppel, D. (2010). The linguistic processes underlying the P600. Language and Cognitive Processes, 25, 149-188. doi:10.1080/01690960902965951
38. Grice, P. H. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Speech acts: Syntax and semantics (pp. 41-58). New York, NY: Academic Press.
39. Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. M. (2000). ERP effects of listening to speech: Semantic ERP effects. Neuropsychologia, 38, 1518-1530. doi:10.1016/ S0028-3932(00)00052-X
40. Hagoort, P., Brown, C. M., & Groothusen, J. (1993). The syntactic positive shift (SPS) as an ERP-measure of syntactic processing. Language and Cognitive Processes, 8, 439-483. doi:10.1080/01690969308407585
41. Hagoort, P., Brown, C. M., & Osterhout, L. (1999). The neurocognition of syntactic processing. In C. M. Brown & P. Hagoort (Eds.), The neurocognition of language (pp. 273-316). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
42. Hagoort, P., Hald, L., Bastiaansen, M., & Petersson, K. M. (2004, April 16). Integration of word meaning and world knowledge in language comprehension. Science, 304, 438-441. doi:10.1126/science.1095455
43. Ito, T. A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2000). Electrophysiological evidence of implicit and explicit categorization processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 36, 660-676. doi:10.1006/jesp.2000.1430
44. Ivanko, S. L., & Pexman, P. M. (2003). Context incongruity and irony processing. Discourse Processes, 35, 241-279. doi:10.1207/ S15326950DP3503_2
45. Kolk, H. H. J., Chwilla, D. J., van Herten, M., & Oor, P. J. (2003). Structure and limited capacity in verbal working memory: A study with event-related potentials. Brain and Language, 85, 1-36. doi:10.1016/ S0093-934X(02)00548-5
46. Kuperberg, G. R. (2007). Neural mechanisms of language comprehension: Challenges to syntax. Brain Research, 1146, 23-49. doi:10.1016/j .brainres.2006.12.063
47. Kutas, M., & Federmeier, K. D. (2011). Thirty years and counting: Finding meaning in the N400 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP). Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 621- 647. doi:10.1146/ annurev.psych.093008.131123
48. Kutas, M., & Hillyard, S. A. (1980, January 11). Reading senseless sentences: Brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity. Science, 207, 203-205. doi:10.1126/science.7350657
49. Kutas, M., & Hillyard, S. A. (1984, January 12). Brain potentials during reading reflect word expectancy and semantic association. Nature, 307, 161-163. doi:10.1038/307161a0
50. Lau, E. F., Phillips, C., & Poeppel, D. (2008). A cortical network for semantics: (De)constructing the N400. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9, 920-933. doi:10.1038/nrn2532
51. León, I., Díaz, J. M., de Vega, M., & Hernández, J. A. (2010). Discoursebased emotional consistency modulates early and middle components of event-related potentials. Emotion, 10, 863-873. doi:10.1037/a0019983
52. Leuthold, H., Filik, R., Mackenzie, I. G., & Murphy, K. (2012). The on-line processing of socio-emotional information in prototypical scenarios: Inferences from brain potentials. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7, 457-466. doi:10.1093/scan/nsr029
53. Maris, E., & Oostenveld, R. (2007). Nonparametric statistical testing of EEG- and MEG-data. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 164, 177-190. doi:10.1016/j.jneumeth.2007.03.024
54. Nieuwland, M. S., & van Berkum, J. J. A. (2005). Testing the limits of the semantic illusion phenomenon: ERPs reveal temporary semantic change deafness in discourse comprehension. Cognitive Brain Research, 24, 691-701. doi:10.1016/j.cogbrainres.2005.04.003
55. Nolan, H., Whelan, R., & Reilly, R. B. (2010). FASTER: Fully automated statistical thresholding for EEG artifact rejection. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 192, 152-162. doi:10.1016/j.jneumeth.2010.07.015
56. Oostenveld, R., Fries, P., Maris, E., & Schoffelen, J. M. (2011). FieldTrip: Open source software for advanced analysis of MEG, EEG, and invasive electrophysiological data. Computational Intelligence & Neuroscience, 2011, 156869. doi:10.1155/2011/156869
57. Osterhout, L., & Holcomb, P. (1992). Event-related brain potentials elicited by syntactic anomaly. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 785-806. doi:10.1016/0749-596X(92)90039-Z
58. Regel, S. (2009). The comprehension of figurative language: Electrophysiological evidence on the processing of irony (Doctoral dissertation, University of Potsdam, Germany). Retrieved from http://opus.kobv.de/ ubp/volltexte/2009/3337/
59. Regel, S., Coulson, S., & Gunter, T. C. (2010). The communicative style of a speaker can affect language comprehension? ERP evidence from the comprehension of irony. Brain Research, 1311, 121-135. doi:10.1016/ j.brainres.2009.10.077
60. Regel, S., Gunter, T. C., & Friederici, A. D. (2011). Isn't it ironic? An electrophysiological exploration of figurative language processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 277-293. doi:10.1162/jocn.2010 .21411
61. Sanford, A. J., Leuthold, J., Bohan, J., & Sanford, A. (2011). Anomalies at the borderline of awareness: An ERP study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 514-523. doi:10.1162/jocn.2009.21370
62. Schumacher, P. B. (2011). The hepatitis called . . .: Electrophysiological evidence for enriched composition. In J. Meibauer & M. Steinbach (Eds.), Experimental pragmatics/semantics (pp. 199-219). Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins.
63. Schwoebel, J., Dews, S., Winner, E., & Srinivas, K. (2000). Obligatory processing of the literal meaning of ironic utterances: Further evidence. Metaphor and Symbol, 15, 47-61. doi:10.1080/10926488.2000.9678864
64. Searle, J. R. (1979). Expression and meaning: Studies in the theory of speech and acts. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511609213.007
65. Searle, J. (1993). Metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd ed., pp. 83-111). doi:10.1017/CBO9781139173865.008
66. Spotorno, N., Cheylus, A., Van Der Henst, J.-B., & Noveck, I. A. (2013). What's behind a P600? Integration operations during irony processing. PLoS ONE, 8, e66839. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0066839
67. Utsumi, A. (1999). Explaining the time-course of literal and nonliteral comprehension. Poster presented at the 16th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Cognitive Science Society Joint Conference (ICCS/JCSS99), Tokyo, Japan. Retrieved from http://www.jcss.gr.jp/iccs99OLP/p2-19/ p2-19.htm
68. Van Berkum, J. J. A. (2012). The electrophysiology of discourse and conversation. In M. Spivey, M. Joanisse, & K. McRae (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 589-612). doi:10.1017/ CBO9781139029377.040
69. Van Berkum, J. J. A., Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. M. (1999). Semantic integration in sentences and discourse: Evidence from the N400. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 11, 657- 671. doi:10.1162/ 089892999563724
70. Van De Meerendonk, N., Kolk, H. H. J., Chwilla, D. J., & Vissers, C. T. W. M. (2009). Monitoring in language perception. Language and Linguistics Compass, 3, 1211-1224. doi:10.1111/j.1749-818X.2009 .00163.x