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Negation interacts with motivational direction in understanding action sentences
Hipólito Marrero1,2, Sara Nila Yagual1,2,3, Elena Gámez1,2
1Departamento de Psicología Cognitiva, Social y organizacional, Universidad de La Laguna, La Laguna, Spain.
Plos One
|June 23, 2020
Summary
Linguistic negation reverses motivational direction in sentence understanding. Negated avoidance sentences require more complex processing, suggesting implicit negativity in avoidance verbs.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Linguistics
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Linguistic negation typically inhibits information, often implying positive alternatives.
- Motivational direction (approach/avoidance) is conveyed through verb semantics.
- The interaction between negation and motivational direction in sentence comprehension is not fully understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how linguistic negation interacts with motivational direction (approach vs. avoidance) during sentence comprehension.
- To determine if negation reverses the perceived motivational direction of a sentence.
- To examine the processing complexity of negated avoidance sentences.
Main Methods:
- Offline judgments of sentence motivational direction for affirmative and negative sentences.
- Two probe recognition experiments with varying delays (500 ms and 1500 ms) after sentence offset.
- Analysis of target word recognition times to infer processing load.
Main Results:
- Offline judgments confirmed that negation reverses the interpreted motivational direction.
- At a 1500 ms delay, negated avoidance sentences showed significantly slower target recognition.
- At a 500 ms delay, negation impaired target recognition for both approach and avoidance sentences, indicating an unspecific inhibitory effect.
Conclusions:
- Negation interacts with motivational direction, reversing interpretation and potentially increasing processing complexity for negated avoidance.
- Avoidance verbs may carry implicit negative valence, contributing to processing load when negated.
- Negation exhibits both specific (meaning-driven) and unspecific (inhibitory) effects during sentence processing.
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