0000000000451951

AUTHOR

Huili Wang

The Applications of Cognitive Mechanism of Verbal Humour to the Adjustment of Depressive Mood

Aims: To apply the findings of neurolinguistic research to the practical technological artifact design, the cognitive mechanism of verbal humour is comprehensively investigated and designed with EEG-based Brain Computer interfaces and Mobile Health, under the guidance of technology design theory, to help with the adjustment of depressive mood. Application Base: The intervention effect of verbal humour on depressive mood is rooted in their cognitive mechanisms. The right hemisphere of the brain has a dominant effect on both verbal humour and depressive mood; some specific brain regions, such as amygdala, nucleus accumbens, hippocampus etc., are particularly activated during the processing of…

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Effect of parametric variation of center frequency and bandwidth of morlet wavelet transform on time-frequency analysis of event-related potentials

Time-frequency (TF) analysis of event-related potentials (ERPs) using Complex Morlet Wavelet Transform has been widely applied in cognitive neuroscience research. It has been widely suggested that the center frequency (fc) and bandwidth (σ) should be considered in defining the mother wavelet. However, the issue how parametric variation of fc and σ of Morlet wavelet transform exerts influence on ERPs time-frequency results has not been extensively discussed in previous research. The current study, through adopting the method of Complex Morlet Continuous Wavelet Transform (CMCWT), aims to investigate whether time-frequency results vary with different parametric settings of fc and σ. Besides, …

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A Facilitatory Effect of Perceptual Incongruity on Target-Source Matching in Pictorial Metaphors of Chinese Advertising: EEG Evidence

Using evoked response potentials, we investigated the implicit detection of incongruity during target-source matching in pictorial metaphors of Chinese advertising. Participants saw an image of a product (the target in a visual metaphorical relationship), and then made a same-different judgment in response to a second image (the source in a visual metaphorical relationship) which was (in)congruous to the first image in terms of shape and/or function. We collected behavioral (button-press reaction time and accuracy), and neural (N270, delta and theta band activity) measures. The time-frequency analysis showed faster processing of incongruous visual information. Moreover, shape and conceptual…

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The embodiment of emotion-label words and emotion-laden words : Evidence from late Chinese–English bilinguals

Although increasing studies have confirmed the distinction between emotion-label words (words directly label emotional states) and emotion-laden words (words evoke emotions through connotations), the existing evidence is inconclusive, and their embodiment is unknown. In the current study, the emotional categorization task was adopted to investigate whether these two types of emotion words are embodied by directly comparing how they are processed in individuals’ native language (L1) and the second language (L2) among late Chinese-English bilinguals. The results revealed that apart from L2 negative emotion-laden words, both types of emotion words in L1 and L2 produced significant emotion effe…

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Examining stability of independent component analysis based on coefficient and component matrices for voxel-based morphometry of structural magnetic resonance imaging

Independent component analysis (ICA) on group-level voxel-based morphometry (VBM) produces the coefficient matrix and the component matrix. The former contains variability among multiple subjects for further statistical analysis, and the latter reveals spatial maps common for all subjects. ICA algorithms converge to local optimization points in practice and the mostly applied stability investigation approach examines the stability of the extracted components. We found that the practically stable components do not guarantee to produce the practically stable coefficients of ICA decomposition for the further statistical analysis. Consequently, we proposed a novel approach including two steps: …

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Struggling with L2 alphabet: The role of proficiency in orthographic learning

The present study examined the process of L2 orthographic learning in bilinguals with distant L1–L2 orthographies. Chinese–English bilinguals with various English proficiency levels were trained with novel L2 words during a reading task. In contrast to higher proficient learners, those with lower L2 proficiency exhibited increased effects of length, frequency, and lexicality across exposures and at-chance recognition of trained words. Importantly, an additional post-training task assessing the lexical integration of trained words evidenced the engagement in different L1–L2 reading strategies across different levels of L2 proficiency, hence suggesting the L1 holistic processing at the base …

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Electrical brain activity and facial electromyography responses to irony in dysphoric and non-dysphoric participants

We studied irony comprehension and emotional reactions to irony in dysphoric and control participants. Electroencephalography (EEG) and facial electromyography (EMG) were measured when spoken conversations were presented with pictures that provided either congruent (non-ironic) or incongruent (ironic) contexts. In a separate session, participants evaluated the congruency and valence of the stimuli. While both groups rated ironic stimuli funnier than non-ironic stimuli, the control group rated all the stimuli funnier than the dysphoric group. N400-like activity, P600, and EMG activity indicating smiling were larger after the ironic stimuli than the non-ironic stimuli for both groups. Further…

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