Dynamic Representations Of Emotion In Language Comprehension

Perceptual symbol system proposed by Barsalou is a new theory about representation of knowledge, its core viewpoint suppose that perceptual symbol is component of cognition. The theory is broadly used and gets many experimental supports in language comprehension. Based on this Zwaan proposed the Immersed Experiencer Frame(IEF),which assumed that the comprehender was an immersed experiencer of the described situation and comprehension was the vicarious experience of the described events. So that emotional dynamic mental representation is the result of tracing and simulating the emotional experience on the base of reading comprehension.The research adopted mixed experimental designs, uses sentence-picture verification task, and uses sentences including emotional information as experimental materials.The response latency of judgment of picture was collected as the experimental data to explore the mental representation and time course of static emotion and dynamic emotion during language comprehension.In experiment 1, it took the sentences of depicting static emotion as experimental materials.Each sentence expresses positive emotion or negative emotion,and the picture presented after different time distance also positive or negative emotion. If the process speed is quicker when the sentence and the picture are consistent than they're inconsistent,it shows that the participants putting out accurately mental simulation of the emotional information in the sentence.And we can speculate the time couese of simulation according matching degree through different time distance.Experiment 2 and 3 use different procedures to review the mental representation of dynamic emotion and its time course. It took the sentences of depicting emotion's changing as experimental materials.A sort of sentence is changing positive emotion to negative emotion and the other sort is changing negative emotion to positive emotion.The research indicated:(1) Participants can mentally simulate the emotional information during language comprehension,and it is consistent with the sentence. Emotion context can highly active participants'experience simulation.(2)The representation for static emotion finished at the earlier period in language comprehension, besides once formed it held stability and perdurability. (3) Participants can mentally simulate the dynamic emotion, and finished at the later period.The representation for the sentence of different emoton transformation is influenced by former emotion state. Participants are stick to the former negative emotion and cannot represent the positive emotion easily when reading the sentence which transform negative emotion to positive emotion.