Researchers explore how people's brains react to language depending on the mood

 When people are in a negative mood, they may be quicker to spot inconsistencies in things they read, a new University of Arizona-led study suggests.

The study, published in Frontiers in Communication, builds on existing research on how the brain processes language.

Vicky Lai, a UArizona assistant professor of psychology and cognitive science, worked with collaborators in the Netherlands to explore how people's brains react to language when they are in a happy mood versus a negative mood.

Lai and her study co-authors set out to manipulate study participants' moods by showing them clips from a sad movie – "Sophie's Choice" – or a funny television show – "Friends." A computerized survey was used to evaluate participants' moods before and after watching the clips. While the funny clips did not impact participants' moods, the sad clips succeeded in putting participants in a more negative mood, the researchers found.

The participants then listened to a series of emotionally neutral audio recordings of four-sentence stories that each contained a "critical sentence" that either supported or violated default, or familiar, word knowledge. That sentence was displayed one word at a time on a computer screen, while participants' brain waves were monitored by EEG, a test that measures brain waves.

For example, the researchers presented study participants with a story about driving at night that ended with the critical sentence "With the lights on, you can see more." In a separate story about stargazing, the same critical sentence was altered to read "With the lights on, you can see less." Although that statement is accurate in the context of targazing, the idea that turning on the lights would cause a person to see less is a much less familiar concept that defies default knowledge.

The researchers also presented versions of the stories in which the critical sentences were swapped so that they did not fit the context of the story. For example, the story about driving at night would include the sentence "With the lights on, you can see less."

Source: news-medical