Uncover the Offensive Side of Disparagement Humor: An fMRI Study

Disparagement humor is a kind of humor that denigrates, belittles an individual or a social group. In the aim to unveil the offensive side of these kinds of jokes, we have run an event-related fMRI study asking 30 healthy volunteers to judge the level of fun of a series of verbal stimuli that ended with a sentence that was socially inappropriate but funny (disparagement joke -DJ), socially inappropriate but not funny (SI) or neutral (N). Behavioral results showed disparagement jokes are perceived as funny and at the same time offensive. However, the level of offense in DJ is lower than that registered in SI stimuli. Functional data showed that DJ activated the insula, the SMA, the precuneus, the ACC, the dorsal striatum (the caudate nucleus), and the thalamus. These activations suggest that in DJ a feeling of mirth (and/or a desire to laugh) derived from the joke (e.g., SMA and precuneus) and the perception of the jokes’ social inappropriateness (e.g., ACC and insula) coexist. Furthermore, DJ and SI share a common network related to mentalizing and to the processing of negative feelings, namely the medial prefrontal cortex, the putamen and the right thalamus.

The “butterfly wings” and midbrain “V” sign of Artery of Percheron infarction

An 80-year-old woman with history of hypertension presented to the emergency department following a fall. Her mental status quickly deteriorated and became obtunded. She was stuporous, and unresponsive to verbal stimuli. She had minimally reactive pupils and was moving extremities to painful stimuli. An MRI scan was performed following an unrevealing CT brain.

Structure shapes the representation of a novel category

Concepts contain rich structures that support flexible semantic cognition. These structures can be characterized by patterns of feature covariation: certain clusters of features tend to occur in the same items (e.g., feathers, wings, can fly). Existing computational models demonstrate how this kind of structure can be leveraged to slowly learn the distinctions between categories, on developmental timescales. It is not clear whether and how we leverage feature structure to quickly learn a novel category. We thus investigated how the internal structure of a new category is extracted from experience and what kinds of representations guide this learning. We predicted that humans can leverage feature clusters within an individual category to benefit learning and that this relies on the rapid formation of distributed representations. Novel categories were designed with patterns of feature associations determined by carefully constructed graph structures (Modular, Random, and Lattice). In Experiment 1, a feature inference task using verbal stimuli revealed that Modular categories—containing clusters of reliably covarying features—were more easily learned than non-Modular categories. Experiment 2 replicated this effect using visual categories. In Experiment 3, a temporal statistical learning paradigm revealed that this Modular benefit persisted even when category structure was incidental to the task. We found that a neural network model employing distributed representations was able to account for the effects, whereas prototype and exemplar models could not. The findings constrain theories of category learning and of structure learning more broadly, suggesting that humans quickly form distributed representations that reflect coherent feature structure.

Aesthetics-based mystery in advertising: the roles of consumers’ high-end product perceptions and the construal level of ad words

Purpose This study aims to focus on whether and furthermore how aesthetics-based mystery affects consumers’ responses toward relevant products. Design/methodology/approach Three experimental studies are reported. In Studies 1–2, smartphone ad flyers varying in mystery and non-mystery styles were adopted. A total of 187 undergraduate participants were recruited in Study 1 and 245 undergraduate participants in Study 2. In Study 3, a total of 193 participants who work in a range of businesses were recruited and wristwatch ad flyers were adopted. Findings Findings demonstrate that consumers are more willing to pay for products promoted via mystery appeal (versus non-mystery). Such positive impacts occur through consumers’ high-end perceptions of the products. Concrete, rather than abstract, verbal description of quality product features facilitate the impact of mystery appeal on consumer purchase decisions. Research limitations/implications The findings advance an extant understanding of mystery appeal in advertising. It is among the first few to demonstrate that high-end product perceptions carry over the positive influence of mystery on consumers. This research is enlightening by suggesting an incongruity effect between pictorial stimuli and verbal information in the advertisement. This study’s scope is limited to visual mystery-evoking stimuli and Chinese participants. Practical implications When marketers/advertisers promoting products/brands with high prices, aesthetics-based mystery appeal should be considered as an effective option. This appeal is implicated as effective across gender. Moreover, visual mystery-evoking stimuli, combined with a concrete (not abstract) verbal description of product features should be optimal in promoting products. Originality/value The findings contribute to the limited empirical research on the influence processes of aesthetics-based mystery appeal. Different from the intuition, it is suggested that incongruity between visual and verbal stimuli in mystery ads that enhances the positive effect of mystery appeal.

Investigation of the semantics of the proper name as a phenomenon of linguistic consciousness (according to psycholinguistic experiments)

This article deals with the problem of the semantics of proper names. It is stated that onyms, in addition to lexicographic meanings recorded in toponymic dictionaries, also have psycholinguistic meanings. Lexicographic meanings are traditionally described in dictionaries in accordance with the principle of reductionism, which involves minimizing the features included in the meaning with a limited volume of the dictionary entry. Numerous experiments have allowed us to discover a new kind of meaning, which we call psycholinguistic. Psycholinguistic meaning is a meaning that is actually represented in the linguistic consciousness of native speakers of a particular language. The psycholinguistic meaning is identified and described in accordance with the algorithm developed by us in 5 stages: 1) conducting psycholinguistic experiments 2) constructing associative fields of word-stimuli, which are a set of associative responses to verbal stimuli, ordered in descending order of frequency, obtained during psycholinguistic experiments 3) semantic interpretation of associative fields and identification of semantic components 4) sememic attribution of semes and the formulation of the final psycholinguistic meaning 5) contrastive analysis, it includes a comparison of regional variants of psycholinguistic meanings. In this article, this algorithm is described by analyzing the semantics of the toponym “Voronezh”. The psycholinguistic meaning of the toponym “Voronezh” was revealed as a result of semantic interpretation of the data obtained during psycholinguistic experiments in Voronezh and Grozny. The brightness indices of semantic components and sememes, according to which their field affiliation is determined, are calculated. False semes were detected. A comparative analysis of regional (Voronezh and Grozny) variants of meanings with each other, as well as with the lexicographic meaning of the toponym “Voronezh”, recorded in the dictionary of E. M. Pospelov, is carried out.

EEG Correlates of Old/New Discrimination Performance Involving Abstract Figures and Non-Words

The processing of pre-experimentally unfamiliar stimuli such as abstract figures and non-words is poorly understood. Here, we considered the role of memory strength in the discrimination process of such stimuli using a three-phase old/new recognition memory paradigm. Memory strength was manipulated as a function of the levels of processing (deep vs. shallow) and repetition. Behavioral results were matched to brain responses using EEG. We found that correct identification of the new abstract figures and non-words was superior to old item recognition when they were merely studied without repetition, but not when they were semantically processed or drawn. EEG results indicated that successful new item identification was marked by a combination of the absence of familiarity (N400) and recollection (P600) for the studied figures. For both the abstract figures and the non-words, the parietal P600 was found to differentiate between the old and new items (late old/new effects). The present study extends current knowledge on the processing of pre-experimentally unfamiliar figurative and verbal stimuli by showing that their discrimination depends on experimentally induced memory strength and that the underlying brain processes differ. Nevertheless, the P600, similar to pre-experimentally familiar figures and words, likely reflects improved recognition memory of meaningless pictorial and verbal items.

Relationship between Verbal and Nonverbal Tests of Auditory Temporal Processing

Background Audiologists may choose to evaluate auditory temporal processing in assessing auditory processing abilities. Some may decide to use measures of nonverbal stimuli such as tonal or noise gap detection. Others may decide to use verbal measures such as time compressed sentences (TCS). Many may choose to use both. Purpose Since people typically come to audiologists for auditory processing testing complaining of problems processing verbal stimuli, the question arises whether measures of nonverbal stimuli provide evidence regarding a person's abilities to processing verbal stimuli. That is, are there significant correlations between measures of verbal stimuli and nonverbal stimuli that are used to evaluate auditory temporal processing? Research Design The present investigation is an exploratory study using file review of 104 people seen for routine auditory processing evaluations by the authors. Study Sample A file review was completed based on data from 104 people seen for auditory processing evaluations. Data Collection and Analyses The data from these 104 files were used to evaluate whether there are any correlations between verbal and nonverbal measures of auditory temporal processing. The verbal measure used was the TCS subtest of the SCAN-3 while the nonverbal measures included the gap detection screening from the SCAN-3 as well as the gaps-in-noise measures. Results from these tests were compared to determine whether any significant correlations were found based on results from Pearson product moment correlational analyses. Results None of the nonverbal measures were found to have a significant correlation with the TCS test findings based on the Pearson correlations used to analyze the data. Conclusion Results indicate that there are no significant correlations (relationships) between measures of auditory temporal processing using nonverbal stimuli versus verbal stimuli based on the tests used in the present investigation. These findings lead to a conclusion that tests using nonverbal stimuli are measuring different auditory processes than the measure of verbal stimuli used in the present investigation. Since people typically come complaining about understanding verbal input, it is concluded that audiologists should use some verbal measure of auditory temporal processing in their auditory processing test battery.

Do we Worry about the Past and Grieve for the Future? Situated Anxiety or Depression, Mood Valence and Affective Time Travel, Separated by Experiment in a Questionnaire

Some psychologists have viewed sadness and depression as reactions to past loss, while regarding fear and anxiety as responses to future threat. Such assumptions conflict with common experience of gloom about the future and worry about the past. Recent research on these issues by experiment and/or by questionnaire remains inconclusive. The psychometric questionnaires purport to be situation-free and the laboratory experiments use artificial tasks; hence, neither approach addresses realities in the present, past or future. In recent psychometrics, the distinction between anxiety and depression has been dissolved into one category of negative affect. One widely used inventory for separating the two emotions conflates depression with the absence of a good mood. These deficiencies were addressed in a diverse convenience sample (N = 379) by running an experiment entirely within a questionnaire. Each of the 40 question items was a miniature vignette, describing a past or future emotive situation while in bad or good mood. Five categories of situation varied in proportion of threat to loss. Strength and valence of affective response were measured by degree of autobiographical assent to or dissent from an item. This inventory provides fully affect-balanced situation-oriented depression / anxiety scaling.Effect sizes from analysis of variance showed that anxiety arises from past as well as future threats, while depression is at least as strongly oriented to losses in the future as in the past. Variation in category of situation or in valence of mood also had substantial effects. It is concluded that worry and gloom travel freely across time and situations, whether present mood is bad or good. Both laboratory experiments and psychometric scales come closer to actual processes of emotion and motivation when they revivify familiar situations using valence-balanced verbal stimuli.