The Modulation Effects Of Pictorial And Verbal Metaphor On Implicit Emotions:An ERP Study

Metaphor,a rhetorical device,is also recognized as a means of thinking.The shift of metaphor research from the linguistic to the cognitive domain has triggered extensive investigations on multimodal metaphors.Alongside metaphorical language,sounds,gestures,words,pictures,and other communicative media are perceived as methods of constructing and expressing concepts.Previous studies have primarily explored differences in emotional arousal and valence concerning metaphors across modal representations of emotions from the perspective of explicit emotions(i.e.,the emotional state that individuals express through facial expressions,words,gestures and other symbols).However,studies have ignored the differences in the modulation of implicit emotions(i.e.,the individual’s emotional experiences that are unconscious or difficult to express)by multimodal metaphors in individuals.Therefore,this study aims to examine the effects of multimodal metaphors on implicit emotions,with the objective of exploring the modulating effect of positive graphic metaphors on individuals’ implicit positive emotions and their neural mechanisms under the conditions of different rhetorical levels(metaphorical vs.literal)and different modalities(pictorial vs.verbal)as priming stimuli.The current study employed visual search tasks involving emotional face matrixes,in which participants were required to identify targets that were different in emotion from other face backgrounds in the face matrix.It would lead to two phenomena: the participant’s attention was more easily drawn to positive and negative emotions and shifted from the neutral emotional background,and attention was drawn to the negative emotional background and resulted in the disengagement difficulties.This study utilized a high temporal resolution event-related potentials(ERPs)technique,to examine the variations in reaction time,correct rates,and ERP components N170(which had high sensitivity to faces and indicated the changes in implicit emotion regulation)and LPP(associated with increased positive emotions)in participants who undertook the three face matrix types: neutral-happy(i.e.,searching a happy face in the neutral faces background),neutral-angry,and angry-happy face conditions,under four different priming conditions:metaphorical pictures,literal pictures,metaphorical sentences,and literal sentences.It aims to elucidate the temporal progression of the impacts of different modes and rhetorical degrees of priming on implicit positive emotions in individuals.All priming stimuli were meticulously controlled in terms of their number and presentation order.The study revealed that in all face matrixes,the reaction times were shorter under picture priming than sentence priming,and in the angry-happy face matrix,the correct rates were higher under picture priming than that of sentence priming.In the angry-happy matrix,the reaction times were significantly longer under the priming of sentences than in other face matrixes,which illustrated the attention disengagement difficulty from negative emotions.Furthermore,under the priming of metaphorical stimuli,the reaction times were significantly shorter as compared to literal stimuli.In the neutral-angry matrix,the reaction times were significantly longer than in other face matrixes,which indicated the attention shift of participants who were attracted by the negative emotions.Moreover,the picture priming induced smaller N170 and larger LPP amplitudes as compared to the sentence priming.It suggested that individuals were influenced by the picture priming and tend to enhance implicit positive emotions by suppressing negative responses during early perceptual processing,and consistently increasing positive responses during later processing.Interestingly,the literal priming was found to induce a larger LPP amplitudes compared to the metaphorical priming in the angry-happy matrix,which may be related to the fewer cognitive resources consumed by the literal priming.Those findings indicated that pictorial metaphor priming had a positive effect on automatically enhancing implicit positive emotions and expanding mental resources,as demonstrated by the study.This study supports the idea that people show different levels of positive emotional response when exposed to positive content.Furthermore,the findings serve as confirmation of the influence of modes and rhetoric on the implicit modulation of positive emotion in individuals.Consequently,this study may provide new insights into the judicious utilization of diverse forms of positive pictorial and verbal metaphors,and the potential protective effect thereof on the psychological well-being of individuals.