Findings from a recent research performed by the University of Arizona reveal that individuals are more likely to notice contradictions in what they read when they are in a negative frame of mind.
The research, which was published in Frontiers in Communication, expands upon previous studies of how the brain handles language.
Associate professor of psychology and cognitive science at the University of Arizona Vicky Lai and her Dutch colleagues investigated the differences in how people’s brains process language depending on whether they are in a positive or negative state of mind.
Multiple brain networks seem to be at work supporting both mood and language. However, we only have one brain, and both are processed by that one brain; this means that there is considerable overlap between the two.
Participants’ feelings were measured both before and after they watched the clips using an online questionnaire. Researchers observed that although individuals’ emotions were unaffected by the humorous films, they were negatively affected by the sad ones.
The subjects next listened to a series of audio recordings of neutrally-narrated tales, each of which featured a crucial line that either confirmed or contradicted participants’ default, or common, word knowledge. EEG, a test that analyzes brain waves, was used to keep tabs on the subjects when that text was shown to them on a computer screen, one word at a time.
When reading a tale about nighttime driving, for instance, the crucial last phrase is “With the lights on, you can see more,” so this is what the researchers did in their study. The same pivotal statement was changed to say “With the lights on, you can see less” in another narrative about stargazing.
Though true when looking at the stars, the thought that turning on the lights would reduce one’s visibility is counterintuitive and so not well known.
The researchers also provided other versions of the narrative in which key lines had been switched around. The narrative about nighttime driving, for instance, may contain the line “With the lights on, you can see less.”
After that, they examined how different states of mind affected people’s reactions to the discrepancies. Participants’ unfavorable survey replies were shown to be accompanied with brain activity characteristic of re-analysis.
