| Title | Effects of contextual relevance on pragmatic inference during conversation: An fMRI study |
| Authors | Feng, Wangshu Wu, Yue Jan, Catherine Yu, Hongbo Jiang, Xiaoming Zhou, Xiaolin |
| Affiliation | Peking Univ, Ctr Brain & Cognit Sci, Beijing 100871, Peoples R China. Peking Univ, Sch Psychol & Cognit Sci, 5 Yiheyuan Rd, Beijing 100871, Peoples R China. McGill Univ, Sch Commun Sci & Disorders, Montreal, PQ H3A 1G1, Canada. Peking Univ, Minist Educ, Key Lab Computat Linguist, Beijing 100871, Peoples R China. Peking Univ, Beijing Key Lab Behav & Mental Hlth, Beijing 100871, Peoples R China. Peking Univ, PKU IDG McGovern Inst Brain Res, Beijing 100871, Peoples R China. |
| Keywords | Pragmatic inference Indirect reply Conversational implicature Contextual relevance fMRI Functional connectivity TEMPORAL-PARIETAL JUNCTION STORY COMPREHENSION TEXT COMPREHENSION PREFRONTAL CORTEX SOCIAL COGNITION NEURAL BASES LANGUAGE BRAIN MIND METAANALYSIS |
| Issue Date | 2017 |
| Publisher | BRAIN AND LANGUAGE |
| Citation | BRAIN AND LANGUAGE.2017,171,52-61. |
| Abstract | Contextual relevance, which is vital for understanding conversational implicatures (CI), engages both the frontal-temporal language and theory-of-mind networks. Here we investigate how contextual relevance affects CI processing and regulates the connectivity between Cl-processing-related brain regions. Participants listened to dialogues in which the level of contextual relevance to dialogue-final utterance (reply) was manipulated. This utterance was either direct, indirect but relevant, irrelevant with contextual hint, or irrelevant with no contextual hint. Results indicated that compared with direct replies, indirect replies showed increased activations in bilateral IFG, bilateral MTG, bilateral TPJ, dmPFC, and precuneus, and increased connectivity between rTPJ/dmPFC and both IFG and MTG. Moreover, irrelevant replies activated right MTG along an anterior-posterior gradient as a function of the level of irrelevance. Our study provides novel evidence concerning how the language and theory-of-mind networks interact for pragmatic inference and how the processing of CI is modulated by level of contextual relevance. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. |
| URI | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11897/469069 |
| ISSN | 0093-934X |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.bandl.2017.04.005 |
| Indexed | SCI(E) SSCI |
| Appears in Collections: | 心理与认知科学学院 计算语言学教育部重点实验室 行为与心理健康北京市重点实验室 |
