6,438 research outputs found

    Linking language and emotion: how emotion is understood in language comprehension, production and prediction using psycholinguistic methods

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    Emotions are an integral part of why and how we use language in everyday life. We communicate our concerns, express our woes, and share our joy through the use of non-verbal and verbal language. Yet there is a limited understanding of when and how emotional language is processed differently to neutral language, or of how emotional information facilitates or inhibits language processing. Indeed, various efforts have been made to bring back emotions into the discipline of psycholinguistics in the last decade. This can be seen in many interdisciplinary models focusing on the role played by emotion in each aspect of linguistic experience. In this thesis, I answer this call and pursue questions that remain unanswered in psycholinguistics regarding its interaction with emotion. The general trend that I am using to bring emotion into psycholinguistic research is straightforward. Where applicable and relevant, I use well-established tasks or paradigms to investigate the effects of emotional content in language processing. Hence, I focused on three main areas of language processing: comprehension, production and prediction. The first experimental chapter includes a series of experiments utilising the Modality Switching Paradigm to investigate whether sentences describing emotional states are processed differently from sentences describing cognitive states. No switching effects were found consistently in my 3 experiments. My results suggest that these distinct classes of interoceptive concepts, such as ‘thinking’ or ‘being happy’, are not processed differently from each other, suggesting that people do not switch attention between different interoceptive systems when comprehending emotional or cognitive sentences. I discuss the implications for grounded cognition theory in the embodiment literature. In my second experimental chapter, I used the Cumulative Semantic Interference Paradigm to investigate these two questions: (1) whether emotion concepts interfere with one another when repeatedly retrieved (emotion label objects), and (2) whether similar interference occurs for concrete objects that share similar valence association (emotion-laden objects). This could indicate that people use information such as valence and arousal to group objects in semantic memory. I found that interference occurs when people retrieve direct emotion labels repeatedly (e.g., “happy” and “sad”) but not when they retrieve the names of concrete objects that have similar emotion connotations (e.g., “puppy” and “rainbow”). I discuss my findings in terms of the different types of information that support representation of abstract vs. concrete concepts. In my final experimental chapter, I used the Visual World Paradigm to investigate whether the emotional state of an agent is used to inform predictions during sentence processing. I found that people do use the description of emotional state of an agent (e.g., “The boy is happy”) to predict the cause of that affective state during sentence processing (e.g., “because he was given an ice-cream”). A key result here is that people were more likely to fixate on the emotionally congruent objects (e.g., ice-cream) compared to incongruent objects (e.g., broccoli). This suggests that people rapidly and automatically inform predictions about upcoming sentence information based on the emotional state of the agent. I discuss our findings as a novel contribution to the Visual World literature. I conducted a diverse set of experiments using a range of established psycholinguistic methods to investigate the roles of emotional information in language processing. I found clear results in the eye-tracking study but inconsistent effects in both switching and interference studies. I interpret these mixed findings in the following way: emotional content does not always have effects in language processing and that effect are most likely in tasks that explicitly require participants to simulate emotion states in some way. Regardless, not only was I successful in finding some novel results by extending previous tasks, but I was also able to show that this is an avenue that can be explored more to advance the affective psycholinguistic field

    An American Knightmare: Joker, Fandom, and Malicious Movie Meaning-Making

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    This monograph concerns the long-standing communication problem of how individuals can identify and resist the influence of unethical public speakers. Scholarship on the issue of what Socrates & Plato called the “Evil Lover” – i.e., the ill-intended rhetor – began with the Greek philosophers, but has carried into [post]Modern anxieties. For instance, the study of Nazi propaganda machines, and the rhetoric of Hitler himself, rejuvenated interest in the study of speech and communication in the U.S. and Europe. Whereas unscrupulous sophists used lectures and legal forums, and Hitler used a microphone, contemporary Evil Lovers primarily draw on new, internet-related tools to share their malicious influence. These new tools of influence are both more far-reaching and more subtle than the traditional practices of listening to a designated speaker appearing at an overtly political event. Rhetorician Ashley Hinck has recently noted the ways that popular culture – communication about texts which are commonly accessible and shared – are now significant sites through which citizens learn moral and political values. Accordingly, the talk of internet influencers who interpret popular texts for other fans has the potential to constitute strong persuasive power regarding ethics and civic responsibility. The present work identifies and responds to a particular case example of popular culture text that has been recently, and frequently, leveraged in moral and civic discourses: Todd Phillips’ Joker. Specifically, this study takes a hermeneutic approach to understanding responses, especially those explicitly invoking political ideology, to Joker as a method of examining civic meaning-making. A special emphasis is placed on the online film criticisms of Joker from white nationalist movie fans, who clearly exemplify ways that media responses can be leveraged by unethical speakers (i.e., Evil Lovers) and subtly diffused. The study conveys that these racist movie fans can embed values related to “trolling,” incelism, and xenophobia into otherwise seemingly innocuous talk about film. While the sharing of such speech does not immediately mean its positive reception, this kind of communication yet constitutes a new and understudied attack on democratic values such as justice and equity. The case of white nationalist movie fan film criticism therefore reflects a particular brand of communicative strategy for contemporary Evil Lovers in communicating unethical messages under the covert guise of mundane movie talk

    Facilitating prosociality through technology: Design to promote digital volunteerism

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    Volunteerism covers many activities involving no financial rewards for volunteers but which contribute to the common good. There is existing work in designing technology for volunteerism in HumanComputer Interaction (HCI) and related disciplines that focuses on motivation to improve performance, but it does not account for volunteer wellbeing. Here, I investigate digital volunteerism in three case studies with a focus on volunteer motivation, engagement, and wellbeing. My research involved volunteers and others in the volunteering context to generate recommendations for a volunteer-centric design for digital volunteerism. The thesis has three aims: 1. To investigate motivational aspects critical for enhancing digital volunteers’ experiences 2. To identify digital platform attributes linked to volunteer wellbeing 3. To create guidelines for effectively supporting volunteer engagement in digital volunteering platforms In the first case study I investigate the design of a chat widget for volunteers working in an organisation with a view to develop a design that improves their workflow and wellbeing. The second case study investigates the needs, motivations, and wellbeing of volunteers who help medical students improve their medical communication skills. An initial mixed-methods study was followed by an experiment comparing two design strategies to improve volunteer relatedness; an important indicator of wellbeing. The third case study looks into volunteer needs, experiences, motivations, and wellbeing with a focus on volunteer identity and meaning-making on a science-based research platform. I then analyse my findings from these case studies using the lens of care ethics to derive critical insights for design. The key contributions of this thesis are design strategies and critical insights, and a volunteer-centric design framework to enhance the motivation, wellbeing and engagement of digital volunteers

    Eating Behavior In-The-Wild and Its Relationship to Mental Well-Being

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    The motivation for eating is beyond survival. Eating serves as means for socializing, exploring cultures, etc. Computing researchers have developed various eating detection technologies that can leverage passive sensors available on smart devices to automatically infer when and, to some extent, what an individual is eating. However, despite their significance in eating literature, crucial contextual information such as meal company, type of food, location of meals, the motivation of eating episodes, the timing of meals, etc., are difficult to detect through passive means. More importantly, the applications of currently developed automated eating detection systems are limited. My dissertation addresses several of these challenges by combining the strengths of passive sensing technologies and EMAs (Ecological Momentary Assessment). EMAs are a widely adopted tool used across a variety of disciplines that can gather in-situ information about individual experiences. In my dissertation, I demonstrate the relationship between various eating contexts and the mental well-being of college students and information workers through naturalistic studies. The contributions of my dissertation are four-fold. First, I develop a real-time meal detection system that can detect meal-level episodes and trigger EMAs to gather contextual data about one’s eating episode. Second, I deploy this system in a college student population to understand their eating behavior during day-to-day life and investigate the relationship of these eating behaviors with various mental well-being outcomes. Third, based on the limitations of passive sensing systems to detect short and sporadic chewing episodes present in snacking, I develop a snacking detection system and operationalize the definition of snacking in this thesis. Finally, I investigate the causal relationship between stress levels experienced by remote information workers during their workdays and its effect on lunchtime. This dissertation situates the findings in an interdisciplinary context, including ubiquitous computing, psychology, and nutrition.Ph.D

    Writing Facts: Interdisciplinary Discussions of a Key Concept in Modernity

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    "Fact" is one of the most crucial inventions of modern times. Susanne Knaller discusses the functions of this powerful notion in the arts and the sciences, its impact on aesthetic models and systems of knowledge. The practice of writing provides an effective procedure to realize and to understand facts. This concerns preparatory procedures, formal choices, models of argumentation, and narrative patterns. By considering "writing facts" and "writing facts", the volume shows why and how "facts" are a result of knowledge, rules, and norms as well as of description, argumentation, and narration. This approach allows new perspectives on »fact« and its impact on modernity

    Dialogue without barriers. A comprehensive approach to dealing with stuttering

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    Serving to secure "Global Korea": Gender, mobility, and flight attendant labor migrants

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    This dissertation is an ethnography of mobility and modernity in contemporary South Korea (the Republic of Korea) following neoliberal restructuring precipitated by the Asian Financial Crisis (1997). It focuses on how comparative “service,” “security,” and “safety” fashioned “Global Korea”: an ongoing state-sponsored project aimed at promoting the economic, political, and cultural maturation of South Korea from a once notoriously inhospitable, “backward” country (hujin’guk) to a now welcoming, “advanced country” (sƏnjin’guk). Through physical embodiments of the culturally-specific idiom of “superior” service (sƏbisƭ), I argue that aspiring, current, and former Korean flight attendants have driven the production and maintenance of this national project. More broadly, as a driver of this national project, this occupation has emerged out of the country’s own aspirational flights from an earlier history of authoritarian rule, labor violence, and xenophobia. Against the backdrop of the Korean state’s aggressive neoliberal restructuring, globalization efforts, and current “Hell Chosun” (HelchosƏn) economy, a group of largely academically and/or class disadvantaged young women have been able secure individualized modes of pleasure, self-fulfillment, and class advancement via what I deem “service mobilities.” Service mobilities refers to the participation of mostly women in a traditionally devalued but growing sector of the global labor market, the “pink collar” economy centered around “feminine” care labor. Korean female flight attendants share labor skills resembling those of other foreign labor migrants (chiefly from the “Global South”), who perform care work deemed less desirable. Yet, Korean female flight attendants elude the stigmatizing, classed, and racialized category of “labor migrant.” Moreover, within the context of South Korea’s unique history of rapid modernization, the flight attendant occupation also commands considerable social prestige. Based on ethnographic and archival research on aspiring, current, and former Korean flight attendants, this dissertation asks how these unique care laborers negotiate a metaphorical and literal series of sustained border crossings and inspections between Korean flight attendants’ contingent status as lowly care-laboring migrants, on the one hand, and ostensibly glamorous, globetrotting elites, on the other. This study contends the following: first, the flight attendant occupation in South Korea represents new politics of pleasure and pain in contemporary East Asia. Second, Korean female flight attendants’ enactments of soft, sanitized, and glamorous (hwaryƏhada) service help to purify South Korea’s less savory past. In so doing, Korean flight attendants reconstitute the historical role of female laborers as burden bearers and caretakers of the Korean state.U of I OnlyAuthor submitted a 2-year U of I restriction extension request

    The Diasporic Sublime in the Works of Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

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    The doctoral research aims to redefine the theory of the sublime within the transcultural identities through the works of Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. The involvement and elevation of Indian American women in migration has not been emphasised enough in the discussion of indentured labour, globalization and effects of cultural appropriation. Considering the German traditions of aesthetics, specifically Immanuel Kant’s theorization of the sublime in his Observations on the Feeling of the Beauty and the Sublime (1790/2011), the dissertation focuses to challenge the specific Kantian notion of female inability to be the sovereign and elevated (sublime) subject. ‘Diasporic sublime’ hence highlights the journey of Indian immigrant women in the United States of America and facing the conflicts to reach the sublime state of body and mind. The dissertation structures the conceptualisation of the postcolonial fear, power and agency through the changes of body, food and home to evince the manifestation of the sublime. Following the contemporary works of Christina Battersby, Bonnie Mann and Barbara Claire Freeman, the dissertation renegotiates the term sublime as a process to confront the submissive identity, dehumanised socio-economical state of immigrant women
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