Neural Correlates of Causal Inferences in Discourse Understanding and Logical Problem-Solving: A Meta-Analysis Study

In discourse comprehension, we need to draw inferences to make sense of discourse. Previous neuroimaging studies have investigated the neural correlates of causal inferences in discourse understanding. However, these findings have been divergent, and how these types of inferences are related to causal inferences in logical problem-solving remains unclear. Using the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) approach, the current meta-analysis analyzed 19 experiments on causal inferences in discourse understanding and 20 experiments on those in logical problem-solving to identify the neural correlates of these two cognitive processes and their shared and distinct neural correlates. We found that causal inferences in discourse comprehension recruited a left-lateralized frontotemporal brain system, including the left inferior frontal gyrus, the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG), and the bilateral medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), while causal inferences in logical problem-solving engaged a nonoverlapping brain system in the frontal and parietal cortex, including the left inferior frontal gyrus, the bilateral middle frontal gyri, the dorsal MPFC, and the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL). Furthermore, the pattern similarity analyses showed that causal inferences in discourse understanding were primarily related to the terms about language processing and theory-of-mind processing. Both types of inferences were found to be related to the terms about memory and executive function. These findings suggest that causal inferences in discourse understanding recruit distinct neural bases from those in logical problem-solving and rely more on semantic knowledge and social interaction experiences.

The features of the learning of political linguistics at higher education institutions

The article is devoted to the problem of political-linguistics education at universities of Ukraine. The place of political linguistics is defined as a new interdisciplinary branch of scientific knowledge. The necessary of learning this discipline is argued at higher education institutions, especially at the postgraduate studies (PhD’s level). The paper touches upon the problem of political discourse determination as the main subject of the political linguistics. Although it is comparatively the young discipline and the definitions of its main categories aren’t universal enough, but the learning of political linguistics and its general components comes actively into educational and scientific syllabuses of Ukrainian higher education. The aim of the article is defining of the main specific principle and features of political linguistics learning at higher educational institutions in Ukraine. Such principles and features depend directly on specific peculiarities of political discourse and the interdisciplinary character of political linguistics. The author analyzes the problem of political discourse understanding as the subject of political linguistics study and the features of its categories representations in different syllabuses. She explores the researches about the learning methodology of political linguistics and of some tangent disciplines at universities of Ukraine.

Discursive work in resisting stereotypic representations of the Chinese among Chinese students

The negative effects of stereotyping arising from a victim’s acceptance and internalisation of stereotype identities are well-known. As stereotypes are created and maintained in discourse, understanding how targets of stereotyping employ discursive resources to resist the constraining structures of stereotypic identities imposed upon them can provide insight into the process of stereotyping and contribute to efforts to reduce the threat of stereotyping. We examined the strategies used by targets of stereotyping in contesting stereotypic representations of their social group through the mobilisation of a range of discourse strategies when presented with stereotyping attacks on the group. The findings revealed that stereotypes are subtle in nature and may not be easily recognised and hence, difficult to resist. Participants employed a number of discourse strategies to repair their fragmented self and group identities. However, in their attempt to maintain identity coherence, they ended up using stereotyping discourses themselves to devalue the perceived outgroup as well as subgroups they created within their own social group. The study highlights the complexity of stereotyping and its self-perpetuating character, and sheds light on the difficulty faced by targets of stereotyping discourse in reconciling their identities through intense discursive and identity work.

Working Memory-Driven Neural Networks with a Novel Knowledge Enhancement Paradigm for Implicit Discourse Relation Recognition

Recognizing implicit discourse relation is a challenging task in discourse analysis, which aims to understand and infer the latent relations between two discourse arguments, such as temporal, comparison. Most of the present models largely focus on learning-based methods that utilize only intra-sentence textual information to identify discourse relations, ignoring the wider contexts beyond the discourse. Moreover, people comprehend the meanings and the relations of discourses, heavily relying on their interconnected working memories (e.g., instant memory, long-term memory). Inspired by this, we propose a Knowledge-Enhanced Attentive Neural Network (KANN) framework to address these issues. Specifically, it establishes a mutual attention matrix to capture the reciprocal information between two arguments, as instant memory. While implicitly stated knowledge in the arguments is retrieved from external knowledge source and encoded as inter-words semantic connection embeddings to further construct knowledge matrix, as long-term memory. We devise a novel paradigm with two ways by the collaboration of the memories to enrich the argument representation: 1) integrating the knowledge matrix into the mutual attention matrix, which implicitly maps knowledge into the process of capturing asymmetric interactions between two discourse arguments; 2) directly concatenating the argument representations and the semantic connection embeddings, which explicitly supplements knowledge to help discourse understanding. The experimental results on the PDTB also show that our KANN model is effective.

SPECIFICS OF DISCOURSE SITUATION MODELS (ANALYSIS OF THE RESEARCH OF T. A. VAN DIJK)

This paper deals with discourse situation models that are the mental models of episodic memory and the mechanisms of the activation of intertextual and interdiscursive inclusions. The situation model is constructed on the basis of the situation schema that contains a limited number of terminal categories. The situation model is created on the basis of the text and the knowledge of the person rather than on propositions of the textbase. The personality-based knowledge accumulates personal experience, sets, feelings and emotions as well as information that is not available in the text. Discourse understanding is carried out by means of the cognitive representation of text-based situations, actions and people. If events, actions and people are well presented in situation models, the understanding of the text is effective. In the course of nontextual analysis the person makes inferences on the basis of situation models. Discourse processing is performed on a conceptual level rather than a linguistic one. Situation models are the basis for frames and scripts, which represent abstract knowledge. The context model is a link between the situation model and textbase.

New Paradigm of Contemporary Hermeneutics: Analysis of Religious Text Discourse Understanding of Paul Ricoeur’s Perspective

The hermeneutic study about discourse before the existence of Paul Ricoeur was around three points: romantic hermeneutics, onology hermeneutics, and dialectical hermeneutics. They have characteristics that other mainsteams do not have. Ricoeur’s thought style cannot be included in any of those three hermeneutic thoughts. In fact, his thought covers almost all contemporary philosophical topics. One of the points of Ricoeur’s contemporary hermeneutics is how to combine the phenomenology of Husserl’s metaphysical tendencies with Heidegger’s existential phenomenology. The text is essentially autonomous to carry out “de-contextualization” (the process of liberating oneself from context) and “re-contextualization” (the process of returning to context). Ricoeur’s thought patterns cannot be included in one of the three hermeneutic thought. In fact, his thought allegedly covers almost all contemporary philosophical topics. One of Ricoeur’s contemporary hermeneutics is how to combine the phenomenology of Husserl’s metaphysical tendencies with Heidegger’s existential phenomenology.