An ERPs Approach To Gender Differences In Processing Chinese Irony

It is well-known that human language can be dichotomized into literal and non-literal language(figurative language)on the basis of degree of complexity in the process of construal.As a typical non-literal language,irony reflects the complexity of human cognition,and meanwhile what cannot be ignored is that it occupies an important role in our daily communication.Irony,as one of the common rhetorical devices,has been discussed all along by so many researchers favorably in varieties of fields such as in literature,rhetoric and linguistics,etc.Recently,the rapid development of neuro-cognitive linguistics provides brand new directions and train of thought for studies on irony.Although researches on gender differences have always been conducted in full swing in many fields especially in literature and sociolinguistics,studies from scientifically experimental perspectives like electrophysiology are rare and these studies are almost devoid of gender differences in Chinese figurative languages.So this thesis employing the ERPs method explores gender differences in Chinese irony construal considering that irony,as one of the most significant Chinese rhetorical devices,is closely related to our daily life.The present experiment is conducted in the Key Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience & Foreign Language Learning in SISU regarding reaction time and ERPs data as the major referential indexes with 2(males and females)×3(ironic,literal and nonsensical sentences)experimental paradigm.All the subjects are asked to comprehend the context and one key sentence within a given time,then make a judgment on whether the probe word is real or pseudo and finally decide whether the assertive sentence is consistent with the previous description or not by pressing the corresponding button.It is noted that all the materials involved are commonly used.The EEG is recorded and collected by the software Neuroscan 4.5 and Synaps 2 after which the behavioral data and the ERPs data are analyzed off-line.At last,statistical analyses have been conducted with the software SPSS16.0.Research results are as follows:(1)Behavioral results reveal the fact that in the task of judging the probe words male and female subjects need 1134.59 ms and1035.06 ms respectively under the condition of irony,they need 1087.43 ms and1026.17 ms under the condition of literal sentences and 1197.79 ms and1064.07 ms under the condition of nonsensical sentences.On average,female needs less time than male to react in this task but this distinctness is not so significant.It seems that both genders share the sameness that literal sentences need shortest time,nonsensical sentences need longest time while irony is in the middle of the two.Male and female subjects enjoy 97.2% and 97.6% accuracy rate respectively on the condition of irony and 98.7% and 98.4% on the condition of literal sentences,which both genders share almost no differences.(2)ERPs data demonstrates that in the time window of 50ms-150 ms,both genders share significant differences [t=-3.4765,p=0.002<0.05] of N100 amplitude with female subjects evoking larger amplitude.In the time window of 150ms—250ms,two genders share noticeable distinctness of P200 latency [t= 4.485,p=0.001<0.05] in which women need shorter time than men and under the condition of irony across literal sentences,male sujects [t= 1.332,p=0.022<0.05] enjoy larger P200 amplitude than female [t= 2.171,p=0.048<0.05].Similarly,in the time window of 250ms-450 ms,these two groups enjoy significant differences of N400 latency [t= 5.243,p=0.000<0.05] in which shorter time has been needed for female and they [t= 2.874,p=0.012<0.05] enjoy larger N400 amplitude while male sujects have no such significance across three conditions.In the time window of 450ms-1000 ms,two genders share significant distinctness of LPC amplitude [t=-4.745,p=0.000<0.05] in which female subjects enjoy larger amplitude.All the above results show that the gender differences do exist in this construal process,which proves that male and female subjects adopt distinct mechanism and strategies to process Chinese irony.Female subjects are more sensitive than males in processing Chinese irony so faster concentration has appeared but male subjects enjoy faster reaction to visual stimulus resulting in larger P200.And females enjoy faster semantic processing during Chinese irony construal so larger N400 has show up.As for brain activation,more comprehensive activation has been completed for female.It is probably reasonable that previous personal experiences and knowledge stimulate this processing so that larger LPC which stands for deeper conceptual processing has been produced.However,for both genders,literal sentences are the easiest one to handle;nonsensical sentences are the toughest while irony is in the middle of the two.Owning to the familiarity of the irony taken in the present study,sometimes there is no distinctness between irony and literal sentences,which demonstrates that possible features has been successfully retrieved on the condition of irony while it cannot be retrieved on the condition of nonsensical sentences.