May 30 – Arthur Glenberg: Using Emotion to Understand Language

One tenet of the embodiment approach to language is that neural systems used for perception, action, and emotion are also used in language comprehension.   I will present data from several research projects that illustrate this claim in regard to understanding language with emotional content.    The first set of experiments demonstrates that having participants generate smiles or frowns interacts with the emotional content of the sentences to determine the time needed for comprehension.   Then, the coolest experiments in cognitive psychology demonstrate the likely role of the amygdala in producing this interaction.  The next set of experiments is based on the rather obvious fact that men and women have different bodies, and hence might come to language comprehension tasks with different representations, skills, or biases.   In fact, women tend to read sentences describing sad situations faster than sentences describing angry ones, and the reverse is found for men.  The final set of experiments links emotion to motivational systems that support action.   Reading about different types of emotional situations primes different sorts of actions, and conversely, manipulating those action systems differentially affects reading times.  Finally, all of that interacts with gender!   There is no need to get your gender-hackles raised, however, because the effects of gender are statistically very small.