TY - JOUR
T1 - Engineering creativity
T2 - Prior experience modulates electrophysiological responses to novel metaphors
AU - Jończyk, Rafal
AU - Kremer, Gül E.
AU - Siddique, Zahed
AU - van Hell, Janet G.
N1 - Funding Information:
The project was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation DUE 1561660 to Zahed Siddique and Janet van Hell, DUE IUSE 1726811 to Janet van Hell, Zahed Siddique, and Gül E. Kremer, SBE 1349110 to Janet van Hell, and by a grant from the Foundation for Polish Science to Rafal Jonczyk
Funding Information:
The project was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation DUE 1561660 to Zahed Siddique and Janet van Hell, DUE IUSE 1726811 to Janet van Hell, Zahed Siddique, and G?l E. Kremer, SBE 1349110 to Janet van Hell, and by a grant from the Foundation for Polish Science to Rafal Jonczyk The authors would like to thank Yushuang Liu, Fatemeh Abdollahi, Carla Fernandez, and Asvi Hanifah for assistance in data collection and/or stimulus preparation, Dr Sarah Laszlo and two anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback on the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors. Psychophysiology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Psychophysiological Research.
PY - 2020/10/1
Y1 - 2020/10/1
N2 - Novel metaphorical language use exemplifies human creativity through production and comprehension of meaningful linguistic expressions that may have never been heard before. Available electrophysiological research demonstrates, however, that novel metaphor comprehension is cognitively costly, as it requires integrating information from distantly related concepts. Herein, we investigate if such cognitive cost may be reduced as a factor of prior domain knowledge. To this end, we asked engineering and nonengineering students to read for comprehension literal, novel metaphorical, and anomalous sentences related to engineering or general knowledge, while undergoing EEG recording. Upon reading each sentence, participants were asked to judge whether or not the sentence was original in meaning (novelty judgment) and whether or not it made sense (sensicality judgment). When collapsed across groups, our findings demonstrate a gradual N400 modulation with N400 being maximal in response to anomalous, followed by metaphorical, and literal sentences. Between-group comparisons revealed a mirror effect on the N400 to novel metaphorical sentences, with attenuated N400 in engineers and enhanced N400 in non-engineers. Critically, planned comparisons demonstrated reduced N400 amplitudes to engineering novel metaphors in engineers relative to non-engineers, pointing to an effect of prior knowledge on metaphor processing. This reduction, however, was observed in the absence of a sentence type × knowledge × group interaction. Altogether, our study provides novel evidence suggesting that prior domain knowledge may have a direct impact on creative language comprehension.
AB - Novel metaphorical language use exemplifies human creativity through production and comprehension of meaningful linguistic expressions that may have never been heard before. Available electrophysiological research demonstrates, however, that novel metaphor comprehension is cognitively costly, as it requires integrating information from distantly related concepts. Herein, we investigate if such cognitive cost may be reduced as a factor of prior domain knowledge. To this end, we asked engineering and nonengineering students to read for comprehension literal, novel metaphorical, and anomalous sentences related to engineering or general knowledge, while undergoing EEG recording. Upon reading each sentence, participants were asked to judge whether or not the sentence was original in meaning (novelty judgment) and whether or not it made sense (sensicality judgment). When collapsed across groups, our findings demonstrate a gradual N400 modulation with N400 being maximal in response to anomalous, followed by metaphorical, and literal sentences. Between-group comparisons revealed a mirror effect on the N400 to novel metaphorical sentences, with attenuated N400 in engineers and enhanced N400 in non-engineers. Critically, planned comparisons demonstrated reduced N400 amplitudes to engineering novel metaphors in engineers relative to non-engineers, pointing to an effect of prior knowledge on metaphor processing. This reduction, however, was observed in the absence of a sentence type × knowledge × group interaction. Altogether, our study provides novel evidence suggesting that prior domain knowledge may have a direct impact on creative language comprehension.
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U2 - 10.1111/psyp.13630
DO - 10.1111/psyp.13630
M3 - Article
C2 - 32672842
AN - SCOPUS:85088023494
VL - 57
JO - Psychophysiology
JF - Psychophysiology
SN - 0048-5772
IS - 10
M1 - e13630
ER -