Left–right coding of past and future in language: The mental timeline during sentence processing

The metaphoric mapping theory suggests that abstract concepts, like time, are represented in terms of concrete dimensions such as space. This theory receives support from several lines of research ranging from psychophysics to linguistics and cultural studies; especially strong support comes from recent response time studies. These studies have reported congruency effects between the dimensions of time and space indicating that time evokes spatial representations that may facilitate or impede responses to words with a temporal connotation. The present paper reports the results of three linguistic experiments that examined this congruency effect when participants processed past- and future-related sentences. Response time was shorter when past-related sentences required a left-hand response and future-related sentences a right-hand response than when this mapping of time onto response hand was reversed (Experiment 1). This result suggests that participants can form time–space associations during the processing of sentences and thus this result is consistent with the view that time is mentally represented from left to right. The activation of these time–space associations, however, appears to be non-automatic as shown by the results of Experiments 2 and 3 when participants were asked to perform a non-temporal meaning discrimination task.     

Correlation between trait hostility and faster reading times for sentences describing angry reactions to ambiguous situations

The hypothesis that trait anger is associated with an increased tendency to interpret ambiguous situations as anger-provoking was investigated in a reading time study. A total of 48 healthy volunteers read a series of short narrative passages and were asked to adopt the perspective of the main character, identified at the start of each passage. Reading times for key sentences, which described the main characters' angry or nonangry reactions to ambiguous anger-provoking situations, were recorded. Trait anger and impulsivity were negatively correlated with reading time for sentences describing both types of reaction, but anger was also correlated with relatively faster processing of sentences describing angry reactions. This study suggests that those with angrier dispositions are more likely to anticipate angry reactions from others.     

Correlation between trait hostility and faster reading times for sentences describing angry reactions to ambiguous situations

The hypothesis that trait anger is associated with an increased tendency to interpret ambiguous situations as anger‐provoking was investigated in a reading time study. A total of 48 healthy volunteers read a series of short narrative passages and were asked to adopt the perspective of the main character, identified at the start of each passage. Reading times for key sentences, which described the main characters' angry or nonangry reactions to ambiguous anger‐provoking situations, were recorded. Trait anger and impulsivity were negatively correlated with reading time for sentences describing both types of reaction, but anger was also correlated with relatively faster processing of sentences describing angry reactions. This study suggests that those with angrier dispositions are more likely to anticipate angry reactions from others.     

焦点阅读中信息加工的意识性研究

采用独立记得-知道范式(IRK)和加工分离范式(PDP)探讨焦点阅读中文本表征的意识性。根据阅读材料中人物特征与其目标行为的关系,创设一致和恢复一致两种实验条件,实验1、2分别使用独立记得-知道范式,加工分离范式研究文本表征的意识性问题。研究结果发现被试在两种实验条件下的有意识加工和无意识加工指标上有显著差异,说明在焦点阅读中命题表征和情境模型的建构都是有意识的。     

On Timothy Findley’s The Wars and Classrooms as Communities of Remembrance

In this paper I explore the connection between narrative ethics and the increasing emphasis on historical consciousness as a way to cultivate moral responsibility in history education. I use Timothy Findley’s World War I novel, The Wars, as an example of how teachers might help students to see history neither simply as a collection of artefacts from the past, nor as an effort to construct an objective view about what went on in those other times and places, but rather as something that makes ethical demands on us here and now. Theoretically, this paper draws on Adam Zachary Newton’s conception of narrative ethics and Roger Simon’s conception of historical consciousness, both of which rest on the Levinasian themes of irreducible difference, the face, and subjectivity as a position of ethical responsibility to and for the other.     

Queer sentences,ambiguity, and levels of processing

Subjects judged linguistic strings "meaningful" or "meaningless." Meaningful sentences were identical for all subjects; however, for each of five groups, meaningless foils containing different kinds of linguistic violation were interspersed among the meaningful sentences. Type of foil influenced processing time for meaningful items, suggesting that laboratory language processing may be determined by the entire set of linguistic materials used. Effect of foil type on comprehension depth for meaningful items was assessed from the extent to which three kinds of ambiguity slowed judgments on those items as compared to unambiguous sentences. Foil type appears to affect depth of meaningful sentence processing in such a way as to support a "levels of analysis" view of sentence comprehension. Foil type and kind of ambiguity interacted to suggest that sentence comprehension requires computation of underlying logical relationships prior to computation of surface structural relationships and the unequivocal determination of word meanings.     

Binding,narcissistic pathology and the psychoanalytic process

This article discusses the question of truth claims in psychoanalysis, revolving around the concepts “construction”, “reconstruction”, “historical truth” and “narrative truth”. In Part I of the article, these concepts are discussed in an historical context, in particular, Freud's view, the narrative tradition and some of Bion's ideas. In Part II, an attempt is made to synthesize these concepts. It is argued that the constructed character of the unconscious has to be integrated into the patient's reconstruction of his/her life story. The psychoanalytic project enables the patient to create a new narrative that claims to possess historical validity. It is important in this context not to understand the notion of “history” objectivisticallv as if it were a question of revealing certain objective historical facts. Instead, it is suggested that the connection between the present understanding of the past and the past as it was experienced in the past should be understood as a fusion of horizons. Finally, the necessary function of consciousnesslself-consciousness for the psychoanalytic project of acquiring knowledge about one's unconscious is pointed out.     

Memory-based versus on-line processing: Implications for attitude strength

Three experiments tested whether the manner in which attitudes are created—through on-line or memory-based processing—can impact the resultant strength of those attitudes. In each study, participants were presented with 20 behavioral statements about a person named Marie. Whereas some participants were asked to continually evaluate Marie based upon each sentence and then report their overall evaluation (on-line processing), others were asked to focus on the sentence structure and to evaluate Marie only after they had read all the sentences (memory-based processing). Even when controlling for attitude accessibility, attitudes created through on-line processing were stronger than attitudes created through memory-based processing: Experiment 1 showed that participants in the on-line condition felt more certain of their attitudes, Experiment 2 showed that on-line attitudes were better predictors of participants’ evaluative preferences, while Experiment 3 showed that on-line attitudes manifested stronger attitude-behavioral intention correspondence.     

The dramatic essence of the narrative approach

Even though it is not a methodology on the level of principlism or casuistry, narrative bioethics nonetheless contributes to and guides decision-making in the field of biomedical ethics. However, unlike other methodologies, the narrative approach lacks a set of specific patterns and formal rules for doing so. This deficiency leaves this approach more vulnerable to the influence of historical factors; in fact, the vital history of a person is made up of thousands of scenes, which one must select and group under different norms. Yet the historicity of narrative does not destroy its normative value; rather, it gives rise to a confluence of stories that contradict one another on the basis of their practical consequences. This problem is less severe in traditional cultures, where some stories take precedence over others according to the normative value conferred through the supposed authority of their sources. But it manifests in an intense manner within current multicultural societies. It is imperative to find the thread that leads outside the labyrinth of subjectivity. This paper shows that the end of this thread lies, paradoxically, not in actions but in the subject-actors that perform them—specifically when such subjects are conceived as dramaturgical characters in narrative.     

Feelings of control restore distorted time perception of emotionally charged events

Humans perceive time with millisecond precision. However, when experiencing negative or fearful events, time appears to slow down and aversive events are judged to last longer than neutral or positive events of equal duration. Feelings of control have been shown to attenuate increases in arousal triggered by anxiety-provoking events. Here, we tested whether feelings of control can go as far as influencing people’s perception of the world, by modulating the perceived duration of aversive events. Observers judged the duration of images depicting positive or negative content, and we manipulated the amount of control experienced by participants. Crucially, participants never had any real control over events. All control was illusory. Results showed that when participants experienced low levels of control, negative images were judged as lasting longer than positive images. However, when participants illusorily experienced high levels of control, they no longer experienced aversive negative images as lasting longer than positive images.     

Do Master Narratives Change Among High School Students? A Characterization of How National History Is Represented

Master narratives frame students’ historical knowledge, possibly hindering access to more historical representations. A detailed analysis of students’ historical narratives about the origins of their own nation is presented in terms of four master narrative characteristics related to the historical subject, national identification, the main theme and the nation concept. The narratives of Argentine 8th and 11th graders were analyzed to establish whether a change toward a more complex historical account occurred. The results show that the past is mostly understood in master narrative terms but in the 11th grade narratives demonstrate a more historical understanding. Only identification appears to be fairly constant across years of history learning. The results suggest that in history education first aiming at a constructivist concept of nation and then using the concept to reflect on the national historical subject and events in the narrative might help produce historical understanding of a national past.     

Congruity Effects in Time and Space: Behavioral and ERP Measures

Two experiments investigated whether motion metaphors for time affected the perception of spatial motion. Participants read sentences either about literal motion through space or metaphorical motion through time written from either the ego-moving or object-moving perspective. Each sentence was followed by a cartoon clip. Smiley-moving clips showed an iconic happy face moving toward a polygon, and shape-moving clips showed a polygon moving toward a happy face. In Experiment 1, using an explicit judgment task, participants judged smiley-moving cartoons as related to ego-moving sentences about space and about time, and shape-moving cartoons as related to object-moving sentences. In Experiment 2, participants viewed the same stimuli, but the cartoons were task-irrelevant. Event-related brain potentials revealed an early attentional effect of congruity on cartoons following sentences about space, and a later semantic effect on cartoons following sentences about time. Results are most consistent with accounts that posit differences in the processing of novel and conventional metaphors.     

Effects of contextual questions on experimentally induced dysphoria

In a replication and extension of Watkins, Teasdale, and Williams (2003), a scrambled sentences paradigm was used to test whether prompting contextual processing of negative cognitive primes would limit the activation of dysphoric mood. Participants were divided into two groups and, after a dysphoric mood induction procedure, were asked to unscramble sentences that either did or did not emphasise the contextual aspects of moods. Consistent with Watkins et al., participants’ despondency decreased significantly more in the contextual group than in the neutral group. This effect could not be accounted for by variations in the way sentences were unscrambled.     

Differential Sensitivity to the Gender of a Person by English and Chinese Speakers

Can a linguistic device of a language orient its speakers to a particular aspect of the world and result in increased sensitivity to that aspect? The question was examined with respect to the biological gender marker in English and the lack of it in Chinese. In Experiment 1, English and Chinese participants listened to stories and answered gender and non-gender related questions immediately after. It was found that, relative to the non-gender-related questions, the English participants were much faster and more accurate than the Chinese participants in answering the gender-related questions. In Experiment 2, English and Chinese participants were asked to determine which of two pictures matched the sentence shown immediately before. Relative to the non-gender-related sentences, the English participants were less slower and more accurate than the Chinese participants in responding to the gender-related sentences. The findings support the view that language can have an effect on information processing in human cognition.     

Pronominal Resolution and Gap Filling in Agrammatic Aphasia: Evidence from Eye Movements

This paper reports the results of three studies examining comprehension and real-time processing of pronominal (Experiment 1) and Wh-movement (Experiments 2 and 3) structures in agrammatic and unimpaired speakers using eyetracking. We asked the following questions: (a) Is off-line comprehension of these constructions impaired in agrammatic listeners?, (b) Do agrammatic, like unimpaired, listeners show eye movement patterns indicative of automatic pronominal reference resolution and/or gap-filling?, and (c) Do eyetracking patterns differ when sentences are correctly versus incorrectly interpreted, or do automatic processes prevail in spite of comprehension failure? Results showed that off-line comprehension of both pronoun and Wh-movement structures was impaired in our agrammatic cohort. However, the aphasic participants showed visual evidence of real-time reference resolution as they processed binding structures, including both pronouns and reflexives, as did our unimpaired control participants. Similarly, both the patients and the control participants showed patterns consistent with successful gap filling during processing of Wh-movement structures. For neither pronominal nor movement structures did we find evidence of delayed processing. Notably, these patterns were found for the aphasic participants even when they incorrectly interpreted target sentences, with the exception of object relative constructions. For incorrectly interpreted sentences, we found end of sentence lexical competition effects. These findings indicate that aberrant lexical integration, rather than representational deficits or generally slowed processing, may underlie agrammatic aphasic listener’s comprehension failure.     

The voice of emotional memory: content-filtered speech in panic disorder, social phobia, and major depressive disorder.

We asked patients with either panic disorder, social phobia, or major depressive disorder and healthy control participants to describe their most frightening experience and to describe an emotionally neutral experience. Both fear and neutral autobiographical memories were audiotaped and processed through a low-pass filter that eliminated frequencies above 400 Hz, thereby abolishing semantic content but leaving paralinguistic aspects like rate, pitch, and loudness intact, and these convey emotional cues. Raters blind to content and diagnosis rated the content-filtered speech clips on emotional dimensions. The results revealed that content-filtered fear memories received significantly higher ratings on anxious, aroused, and dominant (but not sad or negative) scales than did content-filtered neutral memories, irrespective of the diagnostic status of the speaker. Content-filtered speech appears promising as an on-line probe of emotional processing during accessing of autobiographical memories.     

特征整合与加工深度对道德概念容器隐喻联结的影响

提出了隐喻提取假说将隐喻联结的形成和提取进行分离, 并通过3个实验探究了道德概念与容器空间的隐喻联结及其受知觉加工深度和特征整合程度的影响。实验1采用空间Stroop范式, 实验2a和实验2b均采用启动范式, 实验3a和实验3b均采用加入任务要求的Stroop范式。结果发现：(1)在经典Stroop范式中未发现道德概念与容器空间的隐喻联结; (2)在启动范式中发现, 较深知觉加工深度下道德概念与容器空间存在较弱的隐喻联结; (3)在较高特征整合程度的Stroop任务中, 道德概念与容器空间存在较强的隐喻联结。结果表明：道德概念与容器空间存在道德为内、不道德为外的隐喻联结, 这种隐喻联结在映射上表现为双向性, 并且受到特征整合程度和知觉加工深度的影响, 同时也为隐喻提取假说提供了证据支持。     

Sometimes stories sell: When are narrative appeals most likely to work?

Research has demonstrated that narratives can be effective in eliciting attitude change, especially when recipients become transported into the narrative. In three studies, we addressed whether some people are predisposed to be influenced by narratives and whether narrative and rhetorical appeals are differentially effective for different people. In Study 1, participants read an experimental or a control narrative, and completed measures of attitudes, need for affect (NFA), need for cognition (NFC), transportation, and transportability. The results revealed that NFA and NFC were positively correlated with transportation and transportability. In Study 2, participants read either a narrative appeal or a rhetorical appeal about cervical cancer and completed a measure of attitudes and the individual difference constructs. Study 3 was a replication of Study 2 using a different topic (organ donation). In both studies, the results revealed a consistent pattern of correlations among the individual difference measures. Further, we found that although the narrative and rhetorical appeals were judged to be of equal efficacy, the persuasiveness of the narrative appeal differed as function of individual differences in NFA and NFC. The implications for narrative persuasion are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.