Inducing And Reorganizing The Cognitive Neural Mechanism Of The Poetry Appreciation Process Under The Epiphany Paradigm

Classical Chinese poetry appreciation is a kind of mental processes,which,with the aesthetic psychological structure,makes readers change the words of poem into imageries,and produce a whole image to grasp the profound meaning of the poem.This process often brings the readers a strong sense of insight.Although the psychological mechanisms of poem appreciation process had been widely concerned by the fields of literature,psychology and cognitive linguistics,the research still stays in the phase of theoretical analysis as the process of poem appreciation is very complicated.Luckily,we found that insight was the key link of poem appreciation process.Given obtaining poetic insight experience and solving of insight problems have very similar psychological processes,the insight moment was selected as the entry point,and guessing-catalytic paradigm and anagram task were employed in this research.The materials of two paradigms were selected and evaluated rigorously.Guessing-catalytic paradigm and high-density event related potentials(ERP)were then employed to investigate the neural mechanism of insight during aha moment,preparation and recognition stages.Firstly,we found RT to non-insight responses is significantly larger than RT to insight responses.Secondly,ERP waveform analysis revealed that insight responses elicited a more positive deflection than no insight ones did in 500?900ms.The ERP difference wave showed the peak latency of the component was at about 600ms.A voltage map of the difference wave showed strong activity was located at the parietal lobe and right temporal lobe.These results indicated poetic eye and the current semantic representation can be integrated into an updated representation during the poetry appreciation.Thirdly,the analysis of mental preparation revealed that compared with no insight responses,insight ones elicited a more negative deflection in-1000?-800ms and-800?-600ms before the first verse presentation.A voltage map of the difference wave showed there was a strong activity at the prefrontal lobe.These results revealed that a distinct type of mental preparationfacilitated insight associated with the inhibition of inappropriate mental representations.Lastly,behavioral data showed that insight responses were related to a better memory results.ERP waveform analysis revealed that compared with no insight responses and new verses,insight ones elicited a more positive deflection in 550?750ms at the left temporal lobe.These results indicated that the semantic integration enhance the e ffects of re collection in associative recognition.Guessing-catalytic paradigm and ERPs were adopted to investigate the effects that form and emotion have on poetry appreciation and especially on their neural mechanisms.First of all,taking use of behavioral test we found that antithesis and emotion facilitated apprecia tion independently,while they have a joint effect on insight.In addition,analysis revealed that antithesis verses elicited a more negative deflection than the non-antithesis ones did in 300?450ms and 500?900ms.The first negative component reflected the greater conflict aroused by semantic expectation effect.The later deflection reflected the less cognitive effect dues to the facilitation of double clues of antithesis.At last,ERP waveform analysis revealed that different from the neutral verses,negative verses elicited a more positive deflection in 280-400ms and 500-900ms.These results indicated the smaller conflict and more cognitive effort were caused by emotion processing.In the last research,anagram task was employed.Both behavior and ERPs were adopted to investigate the effects that completion form,complexity and poetry form have on creative poetry appreciation.First of all,behavioral data showed that RT to analysis solutions is significantly larger than RT to insight solutions.Secondly,ERP waveform analysis revealed that insight solved verses elicited a more positive deflection compared with analysis ones in 140?280ms and 500?800ms.The former positive component is regarded as a P2 component,which reflected metacognitive monitoring and attention strengthen effects while the later positive deflection is associated with formation of novel and remote relationships.Additionally,the verses with chunks were more difficult to solve than the verses without chunks.Analysis revealed that verses with chunks elicited a more positive deflection in 1200?1500ms and 1500-1800ms.The P1200-1500 might reflect breaking mental sets during reconstruction of the verses.And the P1500-1800 might reflect forming novel associations when the characters were regrouped.At last,analysis revealed that antithesis verses elicited a more negative deflection in 250?500ms and 500?850ms.As these results were similar to the results in the research with guessing-catalytic paradigm,the cognitive processes under the two tasks may be similar.In summary,this study adopted a serial of behavioral and electrophysio logical experiments to examine the neural mechanism underlying poetry appreciation.Results revealed that insight induced a specific EEG activity which reflected semantic integration by remote association of images.A distinct type of mental preparation facilitated insight associated with the inhibition of inappropriate mental representations.And because of associative memory and recollection,the verses with insight had a better memory effect.Both antithesis and emotion facilitated poetry gestalt,while chunk played a different role.After breaking mental sets of chunk,novel associations of images could be formed.These creative research systems can be applied to verify the theoretical concept of literary psychology.