Irony as a Test of the Presupposition-Denial Account: An ERP Study.

According to the Presupposition-Denial Account, complement set reference arises when focus is on the shortfall between the amount conveyed by a natural language quantifier and a larger, expected amount. Negative quantifiers imply a shortfall, through the denial of a presupposition, whereas positive quantifiers do not. An exception may be provided by irony. One function of irony is to highlight, through indirect negation, the shortfall between what is expected/desired, and what is observed. Thus, a positive quantifier used ironically should also lead to a shortfall and license complement set reference. Using ERPs, we examined whether reference to the complement set is more felicitous following a positive quantifier used ironically than one used non-ironically. ERPs during reading showed a smaller N400 for complement set reference following an ironic compared to a non-ironic context. The shortfall generated thorough irony is sufficient to allow focus on the complement set, supporting the Presupposition-Denial Account.

Perception problems of the verbal scale.

Many forensic scientists use a verbal scale to describe the significance or weight to be attached to their opinion. Although there is a considerable amount of work in the field of psychology regarding people's perception of quantitative descriptors such as those used in the verbal scale, there has been no published work relating to the use of such descriptors in a forensic context. Our aim was to assess the extent to which the verbal expressions used by the expert in court are perceived and the extent to which they are differentiated by potential jurors. Four hundred volunteers were asked to indicate the level of strength they perceived from the use of the verbal scale characters within excerpts from purported expert witness statements. Although preliminary, these results show that there are serious misunderstandings of the verbal scale. It does not achieve the purpose for which it was created. The terms used are unlikely to be understood properly by lay people and it would appear that they are actually misunderstood.

Strengthening handover communication in pediatric cardiac intensive care.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate knowledge transfer and perceptions using a structured handover process for the postoperative pediatric cardiac patient being admitted to intensive care. The hypothesis being that knowledge transfer could be optimized by the implementation of this handover structure. AIM: To investigate the effects of the implementation of a structured handover in the intensive care unit, including preadmission cardiac reports and operating room information. BACKGROUND: Patient handover following pediatric cardiac surgery involves a multidisciplinary team and a potentially unstable patient, which may create multiple cognitive demands for the treating team. This may lead to an increased risk of information error with potentially significant sequelae for the patient. METHODS: A prospective interventional study in a tertiary pediatric hospital providing both general and cardiac intensive care in the United Kingdom was undertaken in the postoperative cardiac group. Twenty-one preintervention and 22 postintervention handovers were observed by a trained independent observer. Three phases of the handover, prepatient readiness, prehandover readiness, and information conveyed, were assessed as well as attentiveness, organization of the team, and flow of information during the handover. The duration and number of interruptions were also recorded. Staff perceptions of the handover were also assessed. RESULTS: All three phases of the handover were significantly improved with the handover intervention. The observer scores were also significantly improved as were the perceptions of the staff following the implementation of the handover tool. There was no significant increase in the duration of the handover. CONCLUSIONS: Communication between the operating room and intensive care staff, regarding postoperative pediatric cardiac patients, significantly improved with the implementation of a structured handover.

Negation in context: Evidence from the visual world paradigm.

Literature assumes that negation is more difficult to understand than affirmation, but this might depend on the pragmatic context. The goal of this paper is to show that pragmatic knowledge modulates the unfolding processing of negation due to the previous activation of the negated situation. To test this, we used the visual world paradigm. In this task, we presented affirmative (e.g., her dad was rich) and negative sentences (e.g., her dad was not poor) while viewing two images of the affirmed and denied entities. The critical sentence in each item was preceded by one of three types of contexts: an inconsistent context (e.g., She supposed that her dad had little savings) that activates the negated situation (a poor man), a consistent context (e.g., She supposed that her dad had enough savings) that activates the actual situation (a rich man), or a neutral context (e.g., her dad lived on the other side of town) that activates neither of the two models previously suggested. The results corroborated our hypothesis. Pragmatics is implicated in the unfolding processing of negation. We found an increase in fixations on the target compared to the baseline for negative sentences at 800 ms in the neutral context, 600 ms in the inconsistent context, and 1450 ms in the consistent context. Thus, when the negated situation has been previously introduced via an inconsistent context, negation is facilitated.

Anaphoric reference to quantified antecedents: an event-related brain potential study.

We report an event-related brain potential (ERP) study examining how readers process sentences containing anaphoric reference to quantified antecedents. Previous studies indicate that positive (e.g. many) and negative (e.g. not many) quantifiers cause readers to focus on different sets of entities. For example in Many of the fans attended the game, focus is on the fans who attended (the reference set), and subsequent pronominal reference to this set, as in, Their presence was a boost to the team, is facilitated. In contrast, if many is replaced by not many, focus shifts to the fans who did not attend (the complement set), and reference to this set, as in, Their absence was disappointing, is preferred. In the current studies, the electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded while participants read positive or negative quantified statements followed by anaphoric reference to the reference set or complement set. Results showed that the pronoun their elicited a larger N400 following negative than positive quantifiers. There was also a larger N400 on the disambiguating word (presence/absence) for complement set reference following a positive quantifier, and for reference set reference following a negative quantifier. Findings are discussed in relation to theoretical accounts of complement anaphora.

The on-line processing of written irony.

We report an eye-tracking study in which we investigate the on-line processing of written irony. Specifically, participants' eye movements were recorded while they read sentences which were either intended ironically, or non-ironically, and subsequent text which contained pronominal reference to the ironic (or non-ironic) phrase. Results showed longer reading times for ironic comments compared to a non-ironic baseline, suggesting that additional processing was required in ironic compared to non-ironic conditions. Reading times for subsequent pronominal reference indicated that for ironic materials, both the ironic and literal interpretations of the text were equally accessible during on-line language comprehension. This finding is most in-line with predictions of the graded salience hypothesis, which, in conjunction with the retention hypothesis, states that readers represent both the literal and ironic interpretation of an ironic utterance.

Perspective in statements of quantity, with implications for consumer psychology.

We demonstrate that presentation of information about quantities, whether expressed in natural language or by using numbers, induces a perspective that influences subsequent processing. Experiment 1 shows this to be true for natural language quantifiers, with negative and positive expressions inducing different perspectives. In Experiment 2, we examined the application of this idea to the specific case of perspectives induced by describing products as containing x% fat or as being x% fat free. We found that the percentage-fat description appears to induce a perspective that is sensitive to the level offat being depicted, with products being judged as less healthy at higher amounts of fat. However, this effect was lessened (Experiment 2) or eliminated (Experiment 3) with the percentage-fat-free description. The experiments suggest the fat-free perspective blocks access to assumptions about healthy fat levels.