What's behind a P600? Integration operations during irony processing.

The combined knowledge of word meanings and grammatical rules does not allow a listener to grasp the intended meaning of a speaker's utterance. Pragmatic inferences on the part of the listener are also required. The present work focuses on the processing of ironic utterances (imagine a slow day...

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Main Authors: Nicola Spotorno, Anne Cheylus, Jean-Baptiste Van Der Henst, Ira A Noveck
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2013-01-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3691266?pdf=render
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author Nicola Spotorno
Anne Cheylus
Jean-Baptiste Van Der Henst
Ira A Noveck
author_facet Nicola Spotorno
Anne Cheylus
Jean-Baptiste Van Der Henst
Ira A Noveck
author_sort Nicola Spotorno
collection DOAJ
description The combined knowledge of word meanings and grammatical rules does not allow a listener to grasp the intended meaning of a speaker's utterance. Pragmatic inferences on the part of the listener are also required. The present work focuses on the processing of ironic utterances (imagine a slow day being described as "really productive") because these clearly require the listener to go beyond the linguistic code. Such utterances are advantageous experimentally because they can serve as their own controls in the form of literal sentences (now imagine an active day being described as "really productive") as we employ techniques from electrophysiology (EEG). Importantly, the results confirm previous ERP findings showing that irony processing elicits an enhancement of the P600 component (Regel et al., 2011). More original are the findings drawn from Time Frequency Analysis (TFA) and especially the increase of power in the gamma band in the 280-400 time-window, which points to an integration among different streams of information relatively early in the comprehension of an irony. This represents a departure from traditional accounts of language processing which generally view pragmatic inferences as late-arriving. We propose that these results indicate that unification operations between the linguistic code and contextual information play a critical role throughout the course of irony processing and earlier than previously thought.
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spelling doaj.art-bf7a0eaaeb714e6f8f68311474f1a4212022-12-21T19:17:28ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032013-01-0186e6683910.1371/journal.pone.0066839What's behind a P600? Integration operations during irony processing.Nicola SpotornoAnne CheylusJean-Baptiste Van Der HenstIra A NoveckThe combined knowledge of word meanings and grammatical rules does not allow a listener to grasp the intended meaning of a speaker's utterance. Pragmatic inferences on the part of the listener are also required. The present work focuses on the processing of ironic utterances (imagine a slow day being described as "really productive") because these clearly require the listener to go beyond the linguistic code. Such utterances are advantageous experimentally because they can serve as their own controls in the form of literal sentences (now imagine an active day being described as "really productive") as we employ techniques from electrophysiology (EEG). Importantly, the results confirm previous ERP findings showing that irony processing elicits an enhancement of the P600 component (Regel et al., 2011). More original are the findings drawn from Time Frequency Analysis (TFA) and especially the increase of power in the gamma band in the 280-400 time-window, which points to an integration among different streams of information relatively early in the comprehension of an irony. This represents a departure from traditional accounts of language processing which generally view pragmatic inferences as late-arriving. We propose that these results indicate that unification operations between the linguistic code and contextual information play a critical role throughout the course of irony processing and earlier than previously thought.http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3691266?pdf=render
spellingShingle Nicola Spotorno
Anne Cheylus
Jean-Baptiste Van Der Henst
Ira A Noveck
What's behind a P600? Integration operations during irony processing.
PLoS ONE
title What's behind a P600? Integration operations during irony processing.
title_full What's behind a P600? Integration operations during irony processing.
title_fullStr What's behind a P600? Integration operations during irony processing.
title_full_unstemmed What's behind a P600? Integration operations during irony processing.
title_short What's behind a P600? Integration operations during irony processing.
title_sort what s behind a p600 integration operations during irony processing
url http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3691266?pdf=render
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