An Event-Related Potential Study for the Effect of Emotional Expectation in Sentence Processing
Date Issued
2016
Date
2016
Author(s)
Chou, Ling-Chen
Abstract
Previous research using pictorial stimuli has shown that emotional expectations enhance brain activations to emotional events. However, whether emotional expectations built up through linguistic means similarly modulate brain responses to subsequent emotional events is still unknown. Here we propose a metric for quantifying emotional expectations in linguistic context by summing over valence values of possible endings of a sentence weighted by their cloze probability in that particular context. Sentential contexts with strong or weak valence constraints were then completed with plausible or implausible emotional or neutral words. Event-related brain potentials were recorded while 27 participants read these sentences word by word from a computer screen and responses time-locked to the sentence final words were analyzed. Replicating the classical ERP plausibility effects, implausible critical words elicited larger responses on the N400 and the late positivity components (LPC) than did plausible words, reflecting the integration difficulty and subsequent reanalysis in the implausible sentences. In addition, consistent with past findings, emotional words also elicited larger LPCs than did neutral words, regardless of sentence plausibility and valence constraints, reflecting additional attention resources and deeper assessment of the immediate situation due to motivational significance. Of central interest to this study, sentential valence constraints modulate the processing of the upcoming word in that responses to both emotional and neutral words in both the N400 and LPC time windows were found to be more positive to critical words in strong versus weak valence constraint sentences, again indicating the engagement of motivation system that allocates attention resource and interior tension as a preparation for the subsequent emotional events. More importantly, our results showed that response differences to plausible emotion words in strong versus weak valence constraint sentences can be predicted by individuals’ empathy scores, with higher scores associated with smaller response differences. Over all, the current findings extend our understandings about emotion processing by demonstrating that emotional expectations established based on linguistic means also enhance responses from the attention and motivation systems to the imminent events, and that this ability positively correlates with individual’s ability to recognize and understand others’ emotions through non-verbal cues.
Subjects
emotional expectation
language
event-related potential
empathy
late positivity component
Type
thesis
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