Priming Younger and Older Adults’ Sentence Comprehension: Insights from Dynamic Emotional Facial Expressions and Pupil Size Measures

Abstract

Background:Prior visual-world research has demonstrated that emotional priming of spoken sentence processing is rapidly modulated by age. Older and younger participants saw two photographs of a positive and of a negative event side-by-side and listened to a spoken sentence about one of these events. Older adults' fixations to the mentioned (positive) event were enhanced when the still photograph of a previously-inspected positive-valence speaker face was (vs. wasn't) emotionally congruent with the event/sentence. By contrast, the younger adults exhibited such an enhancement with negative stimuli only. Objective:The first aim of the current study was to assess the replicability of these findings with dynamic face stimuli (unfolding from neutral to happy or sad). A second goal was to assess a key prediction made by socio-emotional selectivity theory, viz. that the positivity effect (a preference for positive information) displayed by older adults involves cognitive effort. Method:We conducted an eye-tracking visual-world experiment. Results:Most priming and age effects, including the positivity effects, replicated. However, against our expectations, the positive gaze preference in older adults did not co-vary with a standard measure of cognitive effort -increased pupil dilation. Instead, pupil size was significantly bigger when (both younger and older) adults processed negative than positive stimuli. Conclusion:These findings are in line with previous research on the relationship between positive gaze preferences and pupil dilation. We discuss both theoretical and methodological implications of these results.

Extending Situated Language Comprehension (Accounts) with Speaker and Comprehender Characteristics: Toward Socially Situated Interpretation

“…In visual inspection behavior, younger adults showed a preference to inspect negative pictures and faces more than positive ones (i.e., the so-called “negativity bias”); older adults showed a preference toward positive pictures and faces (i.e., the so-called “positivity bias,” see e.g., Socioemotional Selectivity Theory: Carstensen et al, 2003 ; Isaacowitz et al, 2006 ). In a visual world eye-tracking study, Carminati and Knoeferle (2013 , 2016) and Münster et al (2014) asked whether this bias generalizes to language comprehension: Younger and older adults inspected a positive or negative emotional prime face of a speaker (3) followed by a negatively and a positively valenced event photograph (presented side by side) and a positively or negatively congruent sentence describing one of the two events ( Carminati and Knoeferle, 2013 , 2016 ; Münster et al, 2014 ). Older and younger participants fixated the corresponding emotionally congruent event photograph more when language and the speaker’s prime face matched (than mismatched) their emotional bias.…”

“…However, even subtle aspects of language style can imperceptibly influence communication and social outcomes such as relationship success ( Niederhoffer and Pennebaker, 2002 ), lending some credence to postulating a link between social behavior and core comprehension processes also. Recent empirical evidence, moreover, suggests that a socially interpreted context (as e.g., provided by the speaker’s facial expression or voice) can modulate not just relationship success or tipping behavior but even real-time comprehension processes (i.e., Van Berkum et al, 2008 ; Carminati and Knoeferle, 2013 , 2016 ).…”

“…This effect could be mediated by visual perception (a perceived smile elicits representations such as ‘happy’) or mimicry (the activation of facial muscles involved in smiling links to a representation of ‘happy’), guiding the comprehender toward matching positive sentence valence without activating further social experiences. Alternatively, or in addition, seeing a speaker smile reactivates associated social experiences, which then in turn guide the comprehender toward a positively valenced sentence interpretation, a guidance that may further vary by comprehender age (e.g., Carminati and Knoeferle, 2013 , 2016 ). Considering experiences associated with voice, the comprehender’s knowledge about what is stereotypical for young children (2) activated by the voice of a speaker (3) (e.g., Van Berkum et al, 2008 ) may also cause him to develop specific expectations regarding the interpretation (and about what will be mentioned next).…”

Explicit (Not Implicit) Attitudes Mediate the Focus of Attention During Sentence Processing

“…For example, a meta-analysis of Greenwald et al (2009) revealed that there is a considerable body of research showing an impact of old and recent experiences on both explicit and implicit measures, especially with regards to domains of stereotyping and prejudice. Furthermore, the effects of such characteristics of the comprehenders as age, education level, and knowledge of foreign languages, were successfully detected in language comprehension tasks using more implicit measurement methods, such as eye tracking ( Huettig et al, 2011 ; Mishra et al, 2012 ; Carminati and Knoeferle, 2013 , 2016 ; Ito et al, 2018 ). The second limitation is that the paradigms used in the present research do not provide a strong test between a propositional network view (e.g., Bower and Rinck, 2001 ) and a situation model view (e.g., Radvansky et al, 1998 ) that may explain the nature of the mental representation used to perform the tasks.…”

Emotional Processing of Ironic Versus Literal Criticism in Autistic and Nonautistic Adults: Evidence From Eye‐Tracking

“…In contrast, recording eye movements provides moment‐to‐moment reading time measures, which can be used to understand what influence the manipulated variable has on individuals' reading behaviors, for example whether any anticipatory processes are involved or whether readers struggle with comprehending certain words/sentences by making regressions or having longer reading times [Rayner, Chace, Slattery, & Ashby, 2006]. More recently, a few studies have applied online measures, such as eye‐tracking and event‐related brain potentials (ERPs), to investigate how readers keep track of temporal and emotional shifts in stories, and have demonstrated that readers are sensitive to mismatches between a character's expected and described emotional states [Carminati & Knoeferle, 2013, 2016; Komeda & Kusumi, 2006; Leuthold, Filik, Murphy, & Mackenzie, 2012; Munster, Carminati, & Knoeferle, 2014; Ralph‐Nearman & Filik, 2018; Rinck & Bower, 2000; Vega, 1996; Zwaan, 1996]. Moreover, some researchers have examined the online processes underlying sarcasm comprehension using eye‐tracking [e.g., Au‐Yeung, Kaakinen, Liversedge, & Benson, 2015; Deliens, Antoniou, Clin, Ostashchenko, & Kissine, 2018; Filik, Howman, Ralph‐Nearman, & Giora, 2018; Filik, Leuthold, Wallington, & Page, 2014; Filik & Moxey, 2010; Kaakinen, Olkoniemi, Kinnari, & Hyönä, 2014; Olkoniemi, Ranta, & Kaakinen, 2016; Olkoniemi, Johander, & Kaakinen, 2019; Olkoniemi, Strömberg, & Kaakinen, 2019; Țurcan & Filik, 2016, 2017].…”