Facial Action and Emotional Language: ERP Evidence that Blocking Facial Feedback Selectively Impairs Sentence Comprehension

Abstract

There is a lively and theoretically important debate about whether, how, and when embodiment contributes to language comprehension. This study addressed these questions by testing how interference with facial action impacts the brain's real-time response to emotional language. Participants read sentences about positive and negative events (e.g., "She reached inside the pocket of her coat from last winter and found some (cash/bugs) inside it.") while ERPs were recorded. Facial action was manipulated within participants by asking participants to hold chopsticks in their mouths using a position that allowed or blocked smiling, as confirmed by EMG. Blocking smiling did not influence ERPs to the valenced words (e.g., cash, bugs) but did influence ERPs to final words of sentences describing positive events. Results show that affectively positive sentences can evoke smiles and that such facial action can facilitate the semantic processing indexed by the N400 component. Overall, this study offers causal evidence that embodiment impacts some aspects of high-level comprehension, presumably involving the construction of the situation model.

The effect of facial feedback on the evaluation of statements describing everyday situations and the role of awareness

“…While previous studies finding facial feedback effects without awareness employed mainly pictorial stimuli (e.g. Davis et al, 2009;Dimberg & Söderkvist, 2011;Soussignan, 2004), we found no effect on ratings of verbal statements describing relatively common life events, corroborating a similar finding by Davis et al (2015). Other studies investigating facial effects on emotional sentences did not directly measure evaluative outcomes, but found that selectively blocking smiling/frowning increased reading times of emotion-congruent sentences (Havas et al, 2010(Havas et al, , 2007.…”

“…Overall, the current study is in line with a limited view of facial feedback effects, suggesting that facial feedback is not necessarily a determinant of evaluative outcomes (Reisenzein & Studtmann, 2007;Wagenmakers et al, 2016), which leaves open the possibility that its influence is relevant under special circumstances (cf. Davis et al, 2015;Maringer, Krumhuber, Fischer, & Niedenthal, 2011). Experimentally distinguishing between affect-related processes that are or are not dependent on bodily feedback such as the state of our facial muscles, will be necessary in order to further our understanding of the role of embodiment in our everyday life.…”

“…While these studies mainly measured the effect of facial activity on time and effort needed to comprehend emotional sentences, it is less clear if muscle tension affects the actual interpretative outcome as well. Davis et al (2015) for example found no effect of facial feedback on subsequent ratings of target sentences. Since their procedure was optimized for EEG measurements during reading, the ratings were performed only after a delay of several seconds when emotion-relevant facial activation was not enacted anymore which might have diminished the effect on the ratings.…”

“…In line with this view it has been found that selective suppression of facial feedback during the reading of emotional sentences (e.g. blocking of smiles for positive statements) can lead to an increase in comprehension time (Havas, Glenberg, Gutowski, Lucarelli, & Davidson, 2010;Havas, Glenberg, & Rinck, 2007), as well as EEG responses indicating increased processing effort (Davis, Winkielman, & Coulson, 2015). While these studies mainly measured the effect of facial activity on time and effort needed to comprehend emotional sentences, it is less clear if muscle tension affects the actual interpretative outcome as well.…”

Sensorimotor simulation and emotion processing: Impairing facial action increases semantic retrieval demands

“…Some of these concerns were addressed in a study that examined how facial interference impacts the processing of emotional language (J. D. Davis et al, 2015). Both EMG and EEG were recorded as participants read sentences such as, BShe reached inside the pocket of her coat from last winter and found some CASH/BUGS inside it,^and judged their valence.…”