Li Yutong, Shi Hanwen, Li Shan, Gao Lei, Gao Xiaolei
School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, China.
School of Education, Tibet University, Lhasa 850000, China.
Brain Sci. 2023 Jan 26;13(2):207. doi: 10.3390/brainsci13020207.
It is controversial whether sarcasm processing should go through literal meaning processing. There is also a lack of eye movement evidence for Chinese sarcasm processing. In this study, we used eye movement experiments to explore the processing differences between sarcastic and literal meaning in Chinese text and whether this was regulated by sentence complexity. We manipulated the variables of complexity and literality. We recorded 33 participants' eye movements when they were reading Chinese text and the results were analyzed by a linear mixed model. We found that, in the early stage of processing, there was no difference between the processing time of the sarcastic meaning and the literal meaning of simple remarks, whereas for complex remarks, the time needed to process the sarcastic meaning was longer than that needed to process the literal meaning. In the later stage of processing, regardless of complexity, the processing time of the sarcastic meaning was longer than that of the literal meaning. These results suggest that sarcastic speech processing in Chinese is influenced by literal meaning, and the effect of literal meaning on sarcastic remarks is regulated by complexity. Sarcastic meaning was expressed differently in different stages of processing. These results support the hierarchical salience hypothesis of the serial modular model.
讽刺性语言的处理是否应该经过字面意义的处理存在争议。对于中文讽刺性语言的处理，也缺乏眼动证据。在本研究中，我们使用眼动实验来探究中文文本中讽刺性语言和字面意义的处理差异，以及这是否受句子复杂性的调节。我们操纵了复杂性和字面性的变量。我们记录了33名参与者阅读中文文本时的眼动情况，并通过线性混合模型对结果进行分析。我们发现，在处理的早期阶段，简单话语的讽刺性意义和字面意义的处理时间没有差异，而对于复杂话语，处理讽刺性意义所需的时间比处理字面意义所需的时间更长。在处理的后期阶段，无论复杂性如何，讽刺性意义的处理时间都比字面意义的处理时间更长。这些结果表明，中文中讽刺性言语的处理受字面意义的影响，字面意义对讽刺性话语的影响受复杂性调节。讽刺性意义在不同的处理阶段有不同的表现。这些结果支持了串行模块化模型的层次显著性假说。
