Brain activity when reading sentences and emoticons: an fMRI study of verbal and nonverbal communication

Yuasa, Masahide; Saito, Keiichi; Mukawa, Naoki

doi:10.1002/ecj.10311

Cited by 44 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 11 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The emotions tied to facial expressions should also be easier to spot (GANSTER et al, 2012, p. 229). In this sense, Yuasa et al (2011) showed how these graphic emoticons activate the area used in emotional discrimination and also the area that is typically activated when seeing a human face, although to a lesser degree. Finally, the eventual relevance of the overall message (verbal content plus emoticon) should also increase due to a lowering of mental effort needed to ascribe meaning to the graphic emoticon.…”

Section: Iconicitymentioning

confidence: 97%

Not All Emoticons Are Created Equal

Yus

2014

Ling. (dis)curso

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

TEXT DEFORMATION, EMOTICONS, AND INTERNET-MEDIATED COMMUNICATIONText deformation (e.g. creative use of punctuation marks, repetition of letters or strategic use of capitalisation) and emoticons (or smileys) are typical in Internetmediated communication in both asynchronous messages (e.g. comments to entries on Facebook) and synchronous text-based interactions (e.g. Facebook chat and instant messaging on the mobile phone). These discursive strategies aim at producing a string of text rich enough to direct the recipient not only towards (supposedly) the intended interpretation of the message, but also towards an identification and measurement of the underlying propositional attitudes, affective attitudes, feelings and emotions attached to the message when it is typed on the computer keyboard (YUS, 2005). Indeed, the repertoire of words available in one"s language is limited for communicating the full range of feelings, emotions and attitudes that can be experienced while interacting on the Net (what I call funnel effect). As Fussell and Moss (1998) state, the conventional affective lexicon does not suffice for expressing the nuances of specific emotional experiences. Many affective terms are used loosely and therefore may not have the precision speakers desire. Faced with this limitation, users tend to resort to text deformation (also called oralized written text in YUS, 2001YUS, , 2010YUS, , 2011 and emoticons in order to ensure a more adequate coding (and the addressee user"s eventual inference) of this non-propositional information.

show abstract

Section: Iconicitymentioning

confidence: 97%

Not All Emoticons Are Created Equal

Yus

2014

Ling. (dis)curso

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It remains then to see if this conscious effect is replicated in more unconscious behavioural measures, such as facial and neural response. Yuasa, Saito, and Mukawa (2011b) address the question of neural response. They used fMRI to localize the neural activity of subjects viewing verbal statements accompanied by sentence final textual emoticons.…”

Section: Perception Of Emoticonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Researchers suggest that emoticons fill the gap left by facial expression (Rezabek & Cochenour, 1998;Thompson & Foulger, 1996). The fMRI research of Yuasa, Saito, and Mukawa (2011b), in contrast, finds that viewing ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) emoticons (e.g., :), :( ) does not activate the same parts of the brain as does viewing facial expressions. In the current study, an online survey was conducted to investigate the effects of emoticons on perception of ambiguous sentences and users' beliefs about the effects of and reasons for emoticon use.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mirror, Mirror on the Screen, What Does All this ASCII Mean?: A Pilot Study of Spontaneous Facial Mirroring of Emotions

O'Neill¹

2013

TAR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Though an ever-increasing mode of communication, computer-mediated communication (CMC) faces challenges in its lack of paralinguistic cues, such as vocal tone and facial expression. Researchers suggest that emoticons fill the gap left by facial expression (Rezabek & Cochenour, 1998;Thompson & Foulger, 1996). The fMRI research of Yuasa, Saito, and Mukawa (2011b), in contrast, finds that viewing ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) emoticons (e.g., :), :( ) does not activate the same parts of the brain as does viewing facial expressions. In the current study, an online survey was conducted to investigate the effects of emoticons on perception of ambiguous sentences and users' beliefs about the effects of and reasons for emoticon use. In the second stage of the study, eleven undergraduate students participated in an experiment to reveal facial mimicry responses to both faces and emoticons. Overall, the students produced more smiling than frowning gestures. Emoticons were found to elicit facial mimicry to a somewhat lesser degree than photographs of faces, while male and female participants differed in response to both ASCII emoticons and distractor images (photos of non-human, non-facial subjects used to prevent participants from immediately grasping the specific goal of the study). This pilot study suggests that emoticons, though not analogous to faces, affect viewers in ways similar to facial expression whilst also triggering other unique effects.

show abstract

“…These findings suggest that these kinds of emoticons may be associated with emotional discrimination. In a posterior study, Yuasa et al (2011) investigated brain activations during the exposure to emoticons presented after sentences. Results showed that emoticons are associated with nonverbal information processing and that the brain areas involved in verbal and nonverbal information processing are more active when sentences are followed by emoticons than when they are not.…”

Section: What Does Neuroscience Tell Us About Emoticons?mentioning

confidence: 99%

An Integrated Review of Emoticons in Computer-Mediated Communication

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Facial expressions constitute a rich source of non-verbal cues in face-to-face communication. They provide interlocutors with resources to express and interpret verbal messages, which may affect their cognitive and emotional processing. Contrarily, computer-mediated communication (CMC), particularly text-based communication, is limited to the use of symbols to convey a message, where facial expressions cannot be transmitted naturally. In this scenario, people use emoticons as paralinguistic cues to convey emotional meaning. Research has shown that emoticons contribute to a greater social presence as a result of the enrichment of text-based communication channels. Additionally, emoticons constitute a valuable resource for language comprehension by providing expressivity to text messages. The latter findings have been supported by studies in neuroscience showing that particular brain regions involved in emotional processing are also activated when people are exposed to emoticons. To reach an integrated understanding of the influence of emoticons in human communication on both socio-cognitive and neural levels, we review the literature on emoticons in three different areas. First, we present relevant literature on emoticons in CMC. Second, we study the influence of emoticons in language comprehension. Finally, we show the incipient research in neuroscience on this topic. This mini review reveals that, while there are plenty of studies on the influence of emoticons in communication from a social psychology perspective, little is known about the neurocognitive basis of the effects of emoticons on communication dynamics.

show abstract

Brain activity when reading sentences and emoticons: an fMRI study of verbal and nonverbal communication

Cited by 44 publications

References 11 publications

Not All Emoticons Are Created Equal

Not All Emoticons Are Created Equal

Mirror, Mirror on the Screen, What Does All this ASCII Mean?: A Pilot Study of Spontaneous Facial Mirroring of Emotions

An Integrated Review of Emoticons in Computer-Mediated Communication

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About