Perspective-Taking in Sentence Comprehension: Time and Empathy

Abstract

This study examines the neural substrate of perspective-taking by analyzing the electroencephalographic (EEG) activity elicited by the auditory comprehension of sentences for which the comprehender had to adopt the perspective of the person described in them. Recent studies suggest that the ability of perspective-taking can be an integrative function of temporal and spatial information processing. We thus examined the independence and possible interaction of human perspective shifts and temporal perspective-taking by utilizing Japanese subsidiary verbs for giving, namely -ageru and -kureru. We manipulated human perspective shifts and temporal perspective-taking independently in experimental sentences by syntactically changing the subject and the object between the speaker and a third person, while we manipulated the tense to be past or non-past tense via sentence-final particles ru/ta (non-past/past). The EEG analyses via electrodes indicated the suppression of the β band for human perspective shifts in sentences in non-past tense and the absence of such suppression in sentences in past tense. The analyses for the clusters of independent components indicated β suppression for past tense against non-past tense in sentences without a human perspective shift. This response pattern suggests a close relationship between human perspective shifting and temporal perspective-taking. The β suppression for the human perspective shift in our experiment can be understood as a replication of the previous EEG findings observed for perspective-taking in the presentation of visual images. The preceding findings and our result suggest that the ability or the function of perspective-taking is not specific to the modality. Furthermore, the generator of the β suppression for past tense against non-past tense without human perspective shifting was localized in the precuneus, which is consistent with recent findings indicating that the precuneus is deeply involved in time perception.

An EEG Analysis of Honorification in Japanese: Human Hierarchical Relationships Coded in Language

“…The fifth research question of this study is whether different frequency properties exist between honorific and control sentences and between subject-and object-honorific sentences. We highlighted the possible relevance of the β band on the basis of the observation in Tokimoto and Tokimoto (2018). The cluster-based permutation test results revealed a significant difference in the frequency spectrum between the honorific and FIGURE 15 | A decision tree for the acceptability judgments with the type of honorification, appropriateness, gender, and the four scales of the JIRI as independent variables.…”

“…It is reasonable to assume that these social differences can be observed in neural activity. Our preliminary analysis on the perspective-taking in the Japanese sentence comprehension indicated that the individual sociality evaluated by the Autism-Spectrum Quotient in Japanese (Wakabayashi et al, 2006 ), the gender of participants, and their ERP amplitudes were significantly correlated variously (Tokimoto, 2019 ). We will leave this question for future study.…”

“…We also observed several significant differences in ERSP and ITC between the subject-honorific and the object-honorific verbs for Clusters 2 and 3. We predicted the relevance of the β band in honorific processing on the basis of Tokimoto and Tokimoto (2018) and highlighted the possible difference in ITC according to Tokimoto et al (2019). However, no specific hypothesis for the frequency property has been given, and a theory for the exact interpretation of this property needs to be constructed.…”

“…The ERPs elicited by a violation of the linguistic constraint are often associated with the θ band (Roehm et al, 2004 ; Hald et al, 2006 ). However, Tokimoto and Tokimoto ( 2018 ) observed the suppression of the β band for perspective-taking in sentence comprehension. Understanding the human relationships in a sentence can involve perspective-taking of the persons described in the sentence, and thus, we can expect a contrast between honorific and control sentences in the β band.…”

“…Especially for participants who judged the honorific sentences correctly most of the time, the precuneus was the second most strongly activated region in the cerebral cortex. The precuneus is part of the theory of mind circuit (Mahy et al, 2014 ) and is deeply involved in perspective taking (Mizuno et al, 2011 ; Tokimoto and Tokimoto, 2018 ). It is not surprising to find significantly greater activation in the precuneus for the honorification task than for the spelling judgment task because the understanding of honorific expressions includes understanding the mental attitudes of the speaker toward the addressee.…”