Contextual connections to puns in fables: perceived humor

Adding material that provided an associative connection to a pun enhances perceived humor, as shown in a previous series of studies. Because those results had been based on one-sentence statements that may have relied, in part, on brevity for humor, the purpose of the present study was to evaluate reactions to context and puns (mostly spoonerisms) with more lengthy material to add generality to those findings. Three within-subject studies were conducted in which short fables were manipulated systematically such that the final sentence was or was not a pun and contextual information pertaining to both meanings of the pun was or was not present in the body of the stories. Results showed that the pun itself was a powerful contributor to perceived humor and cleverness and that contextual information amplified those perceptions. Arousal, surprise, and detection of appropriate incongruity are discussed.     

Contextual connections to puns in Tom Swifties

Previous research conducted with short fables was replicated in this study with Swifties in which sentence length and presence of a pun were controlled. Of the 24 one-sentence word plays shown to each participant, half had an enhanced contextual connection that was predicted to increase appropriateness and detection of the incongruity, resulting in heightened perceived cleverness and humor. Results supported predictions, showing especially strong enhancement of perceived cleverness. The authors suggest that this outcome could be generalized to other forms of word play.     

Development of the comprehension and appreciation of fables

The authors proposed and tested a model of fable comprehension and appreciation. They proposed that fables are metaphoric in that they teach moral lessons about human activity, and that apprehension of the moral derives from a belief in a just world. In Study 1, children from kindergarten to 8th grade and college students received Aesop fables, reversed-outcome Aesop fables, and fable-like stories. As predicted, kindergartners and some 1st graders did not demonstrate a belief in a just world and did not differentiate between normal and reversed-outcome Aesop fables. Quality of morals provided by older participants was superior to that of younger participants. In Study 2, the quality of fable moral was found to be significantly correlated with quality of proverb and metaphor interpretation. Also, memory for goal or intention story elements was found to be related to quality of moral produced. Directions for future research are identified.     

Contextual Connections to Puns in Tom Swifties

Previous research conducted with short fables was replicated in this study with Swifties in which sentence length and presence of a pun were controlled. Of the 24 one-sentence word plays shown to each participant, half had an enhanced contextual connection that was predicted to increase appropriateness and detection of the incongruity, resulting in heightened perceived cleverness and humor. Results supported predictions, showing especially strong enhancement of perceived cleverness. The authors suggest that this outcome could be generalized to other forms of word play.     

Contextual connections within puns: effects on perceived humor and memory

The supposition that perceived humor or cleverness would be enhanced by adding separate content to the alternative meanings of a pun was explored, using Tom Swifties as the research vehicle. Because detecting a punning word relationship might induce arousal, requiring more effort and attentional resources for processing than noting a contextual connection, memory strength for adverbs was also examined using a recognition procedure. Five studies were conducted in which college students were asked to judge 24 Swifties (content counterbalanced across participants) in which presence of pun and context were manipulated. The punning relationship was primarily responsible for perceived humor and cleverness. Presence of a pun also enhanced memory strength (d') as long as the familiarization task focused on humor and cleverness. Coherent context enhanced perceived cleverness inconsistently. It was suggested that a coherent contextual connection may make a greater contribution in more lengthy forms of pun-based word play, such as fables or "shaggy dog" stories.     

A Computational Model of Linguistic Humor in Puns

Humor plays an essential role in human interactions. Precisely what makes something funny, however, remains elusive. While research on natural language understanding has made significant advancements in recent years, there has been little direct integration of humor research with computational models of language understanding. In this paper, we propose two information‐theoretic measures—ambiguity and distinctiveness—derived from a simple model of sentence processing. We test these measures on a set of puns and regular sentences and show that they correlate significantly with human judgments of funniness. Moreover, within a set of puns, the distinctiveness measure distinguishes exceptionally funny puns from mediocre ones. Our work is the first, to our knowledge, to integrate a computational model of general language understanding and humor theory to quantitatively predict humor at a fine‐grained level. We present it as an example of a framework for applying models of language processing to understand higher level linguistic and cognitive phenomena.     

Contextual Connections Within Puns: Effects on Perceived Humor and Memory

The supposition that perceived humor or cleverness would be enhanced by adding separate content to the alternative meanings of a pun was explored, using Tom Swifties as the research vehicle. Because detecting a punning word relationship might induce arousal, requiring more effort and attentional resources for processing than noting a contextual connection, memory strength for adverbs was also examined using a recognition procedure. Five studies were conducted in which college students were asked to judge 24 Swifties (content counterbalanced across participants) in which presence of pun and context were manipulated. The punning relationship was primarily responsible for perceived humor and cleverness. Presence of a pun also enhanced memory strength (d') as long as the familiarization task focused on humor and cleverness. Coherent context enhanced perceived cleverness inconsistently. It was suggested that a coherent contextual connection may make a greater contribution in more lengthy forms of pun-based word play, such as fables or “shaggy dog” stories.     

Using puns to study contextual influences on lexical ambiguity resolution: Evidence from eye movements

Participants’ eye movements were monitored while they read sentences containing biased homographs in either a single-meaning context condition that instantiated the subordinate meaning of the homograph without ruling out the dominant meaning (e.g., “The man with a toothache had a crown made by the best dentist in town”) or a dual-meaning pun context condition that supported both the subordinate and dominant meanings (e.g., “The king with a toothache had a crown made by the best dentist in town”). In both of these conditions, the homographs were followed by disambiguating material that supported the subordinate meaning and ruled out the dominant meaning. Fixation times on the homograph were longer in the single-meaning condition than in the dual-meaning condition, whereas the reverse pattern was demonstrated for fixation times on the disambiguating region; these effects were observed as early as first-fixation duration. The findings strongly support the reordered access model of lexical ambiguity resolution.     

Visual perception of orientation is categorical near vertical and continuous near horizontal

Four experiments were conducted to examine whether visual-orientation information is perceived categorically. In experiments 1 and 3, adult participants sorted oriented line stimuli into broad oblique and narrow vertical or horizontal categories. Experiments 2 and 4 showed that categorical discrimination of orientation occurred only near the vertical-oblique boundary. The data indicate that there is categorical perception near vertical and more continuous perception near horizontal. The results are relevant to the debate over whether categorical perception is derived from perceptual structure, verbal coding, or within-task learning. In addition, the asymmetrical perception of orientation around vertical and horizontal is consistent with the possibility that there may be differences in the functional significance of orientation near the two main axes.     

Perceptual-attentional and motor-intentional bias in near and far space

Spatial bias demonstrated in tasks such as line-bisection may stem from perceptual-attentional (PA) "where" and motor-intentional (MI) "aiming" influences. We tested normal participants' line bisection performance in the presence of an asymmetric visual distracter with a video apparatus designed to dissociate PA from MI bias. An experimenter stood as a distractor to the left or right of a video monitor positioned in either near or far space, where participants viewed lines and a laser point they directed under (1) natural and (2) mirror-reversed conditions. Each trial started with the pointer positioned at either the top left or top right corner of the screen, and alternated thereafter. Data analysis indicated that participants made primarily PA leftward errors in near space, but not in far space. Furthermore, PA, but not MI, bias increased bilaterally in the direction of distraction. In contrast, MI, but not PA, bias was shifted bilaterally in the direction of startside. Results support the conclusion that a primarily PA left sided bias in near space is consistent with right hemisphere spatial attentional dominance. A bottom-up visual distractor specifically affected PA "where" spatial bias while top-down motor cuing influenced MI "aiming" bias.     

Sentential constants in systems near R

An Ackermann constant is a formula of sentential logic built up from the sentential constant t by closing under connectives. It is known that there are only finitely many non-equivalent Ackermann constants in the relevant logic R. In this paper it is shown that the most natural systems close to R but weaker than it-in particular the non-distributive system LR and the modalised system NR-allow infinitely many Ackermann constants to be distinguished. The argument in each case proceeds by construction of an algebraic model, infinite in the case of LR and of arbitrary finite size in the case of NR. The search for these models was aided by the computer program MaGIC (Matrix Generator for Implication Connectives) developed by the author at the Australian National University.     

Addiction to near death in adolescence

This paper takes Betty Joseph's concept of ‘addiction to near death’, which describes a clinical situation in which sadism and masochism dominate the relationships of a particular group of patients, and applies it specifically to the case material of a girl in adolescent psychotherapy treatment. A link is made between the patient's retreat from mature genital sexuality as she approaches adulthood and the use of sadism and masochism towards this aim. The paper concludes with a discussion on the increase in strength and potency of sadism and masochism in adolescence as contributing to the high risk of destructive and self-destructive behaviour present in this age group.     

The effects of near wins and near losses on self-perceived personal luck and subsequent gambling behavior

Which person would be most likely to continue gambling? A person who has just experienced a big win or a person who has just experienced a big loss? The answer appears often to be whichever gambler feels personally luckier. Two experiments investigated how perceptions of luck, understood as a personal quality, are affected by near, but unrealized outcomes during a game of chance. In Experiment 1, a near big loss at a gambling game heightened perceptions of personal luck relative to a near big win, even though all participants actually won the same modest amount. In addition, participants who experienced a near big loss generated significantly more downward counterfactuals than did those participants in the near big win condition. Most importantly, differences in self-perceived luck influenced future gambling behavior. Participants who experienced a near big loss on a wheel-of-fortune wagered significantly more on the outcome of a subsequent game of roulette than did those participants who experienced a near big win. Experiment 2 extended these results by testing the possible influence of a different type of near outcome and by including a control group. The discussion focuses on the emerging picture of how people understand luck.     

Predicting the near and distant future

Four studies investigated individuals' confidence in predicting near future and distant future outcomes. Study 1 found that participants were more confident in theory-based predictions of psychological experiments when these experiments were expected to take place in the more distant future. Studies 2-4 examined participants' confidence in predicting their performance on near and distant future tests. These studies found that in predicting their more distant future performance, participants disregarded the format of the questions (e.g., multiple choice vs. open ended) and relied, instead, on their perceived general knowledge (e.g., history knowledge). Together, the present studies demonstrate that predictions of the more distant future are based on relatively abstract information. Individuals feel more confident in predicting the distant future than the near future when the predictions concern outcomes that are implied by relatively abstract information.     

Judging near and distant virtue and vice

We propose that people judge immoral acts as more offensive and moral acts as more virtuous when the acts are psychologically distant than near. This is because people construe more distant situations in terms of moral principles, rather than attenuating situation-specific considerations. Results of four studies support these predictions. Study 1 shows that more temporally distant transgressions (e.g., eating one’s dead dog) are construed in terms of moral principles rather than contextual information. Studies 2 and 3 further show that morally offensive actions are judged more severely when imagined from a more distant temporal (Study 2) or social (Study 3) perspective. Finally, Study 4 shows that moral acts (e.g., adopting a disabled child) are judged more positively from temporal distance. The findings suggest that people more readily apply their moral principles to distant rather than proximal behaviors.     

Influencing attitudes toward near and distant objects

It is argued that the temporal distance of attitude objects systematically changes how the object is mentally represented, and thus influences the strength of particular persuasive appeals. Three experiments tested the hypothesis that people preferentially attend to arguments that highlight primary, abstract (high-level) vs. incidental, concrete (low-level) features when attitude objects are temporally distant vs. near. Results suggested that when attitude objects are temporally distant vs. near, arguments emphasizing primary vs. secondary features (Study 1), desirability vs. feasibility features (Study 2), and general classes vs. specific cases are more persuasive (Study 3). The relation of construal theory to dual process theories of persuasion and persuasion phenomena, such as personal relevance effects and functional matching effects, are discussed.     

Bisecting the mental number line in near and far space

Much evidence suggests that common posterior parietal mechanisms underlie the orientation of attention in physical space and along the mental number line. For example, the small leftward bias (pseudoneglect) found in paper-and-pencil line bisection is also found when participants “bisect” number pairs, estimating (without calculating) the number midway between two others. For bisection of physical lines, pseudoneglect has been found to shift rightward as lines are moved from near space (immediately surrounding the body) to far space. We investigated whether the presentation of stimuli in near or far space also modulated spatial attention for the mental number line. Participants bisected physical lines or number pairs presented at four distances (60, 120, 180, 240 cm). Clear rightward shifts in bias were observed for both tasks. Furthermore, the rate at which this shift occurred in the two tasks, as measured by least-squares regression slopes, was significantly correlated across participants, suggesting that the transition from near to far distances induced a common modulation of lateral attention in physical and numerical space. These results demonstrate a tight coupling between number and physical space, and show that even such prototypically abstract concepts as number are modulated by our on-line interactions with the world.     

Representations of the self in the near and distant future

Seven studies provide evidence that representations of the self at a distant-future time point are more abstract and structured than are representations of the self at a near-future time point and that distant-future behaviors are more strongly related to general self-conceptions. Distant-future self-representations incorporate broader, more superordinate identities than do near-future self-representations (Study 1) and are characterized by less complexity (Study 2), more cross-situational consistency (Study 3), and a greater degree of schematicity (Study 4). Furthermore, people's behavioral predictions of their distant-future (vs. near-future) behavior are more strongly related to their general self-characteristics (Study 5), distant-future behaviors are seen as more self-expressive (Study 6), and distant-future behaviors that do not match up with acknowledged self-characteristics are more strongly rejected as reflections of the self (Study 7). Implications for understanding both the nature of the self-concept and the way in which distance may influence a range of self-processes are discussed.