What’s behind a P600? Integration Operations during Irony Processing

Abstract

The combined knowledge of word meanings and grammatical rules does not allow a listener to grasp the intended meaning of a speaker’s utterance. Pragmatic inferences on the part of the listener are also required. The present work focuses on the processing of ironic utterances (imagine a slow day being described as “really productive”) because these clearly require the listener to go beyond the linguistic code. Such utterances are advantageous experimentally because they can serve as their own controls in the form of literal sentences (now imagine an active day being described as “really productive”) as we employ techniques from electrophysiology (EEG). Importantly, the results confirm previous ERP findings showing that irony processing elicits an enhancement of the P600 component (Regel et al., 2011). More original are the findings drawn from Time Frequency Analysis (TFA) and especially the increase of power in the gamma band in the 280–400 time-window, which points to an integration among different streams of information relatively early in the comprehension of an irony. This represents a departure from traditional accounts of language processing which generally view pragmatic inferences as late-arriving. We propose that these results indicate that unification operations between the linguistic code and contextual information play a critical role throughout the course of irony processing and earlier than previously thought.

No laughing matter: How the presence of laughing witnesses changes the perception of insults.

“…That would mean that the differences that we observed between insults and compliments in the presence of a laughing crowd are not solely due to the differential processing of the insults, but (partially) to the compliments. However, previous work on sarcasm and irony processing (Katz et al, 2004;Regel et al, 2010;Spotorno et al, 2013) shows that sarcastic statements actually increase the amplitude of the late positivity in the ERP. As such, if adding laughter to a compliment would indeed alter its meaning from positive to sarcastic, this would mean an increase in amplitude of the late positivity for compliments with Laughter, compared to No Laughter.…”

“…In a similar vein, Regel and colleagues (Regel, Coulson, & Gunter, 2010) showed that knowledge about the personality of specific people influences language perception. Previous research on sarcasm processing has shown that ironic or sarcastic statements evokes a larger late positive component compared to literal statements (Katz, Blasko, & Kazmerski, 2004;Spotorno, Cheylus, Van Der Henst, & Noveck, 2013), an indication that sarcasm evokes more intense processing of a sentence than literal messages. However, when the reader or listener knows that the person who uttered a sarcastic statement is actually a very sarcastic person (based on previous utterances from that same person), this immediately changes how sarcastic statements are processed: When readers know that a person is likely to use sarcasm, sarcastic sentences are perceived just as literal messages, and receive no additional processing (Regel et al, 2010).…”

Language Processing, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of

“…Direct comparison between the ironic and the literal conditions showed higher activation for the ironic sentence in the right medial prefrontal cortex, the right precentral gyrus, and the left STG. Spotorno et al (2013) found that verbal irony comprehension activated brain regions involved in the processing of TOM, including the bilateral temporal-parietal junction, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the precuneus. These results suggest that right fronto-temporal regions play important roles in irony comprehension, and that brain regions involved in emotion processing and processing of TOM contribute to understanding of irony.…”

A social Bayesian brain: How social knowledge can shape visual perception

“…One interesting example from language perception focusses on sarcasm (Regel, Coulson, & Gunter, 2010). Statements that convey irony or sarcasm, such as describing a day spent binge-watching Netflix as 'very productive', are known to evoke increased early syntactic processing (as indicated by the P600, Spotorno, Cheylus, Van Der Henst, & Noveck, 2013). However, when participants know certain individuals to often speak in a sarcastic way, their ironic statements no longer evoke this relative increase in linguistic processing (Regel et al, 2010).…”