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Mommy doesn't like it when I curse: an ERP study on taboo word processing and psychosocial characteristics
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Poster A25 in Poster Session A, Tuesday, October 24, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
Claudiane Silva-Nasser1, Marije Soto1; 1Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Taboo words are frequent emotional words but they are processed differently from non-taboo frequent emotional words (i.e. negative or positive words). It has been argued that individual psychosocial factors such religiosity and family environment can affect the way one produces and perceives taboo words. In neurolinguistic experiments, taboo words have been known to elicit early and late ERP components associated with their emotional and social load. An effect for taboo words in the Late Positive Complex (LPC) window, especially, has been thought to reflect processing of pragmatic content, commonly described as the reason why taboo words are processed differently from non-taboo emotional words. However, few studies have been carried out in languages other than English. In this study in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), we aimed to examine the difference in processing taboo and non-taboo emotional stimuli priorly normed in a psycholinguistic experiment. Moreover, we examined how self-reported psychosocial characteristics such as religiosity, usage , tolerance in family environment and general tendency to be offended by taboo words interact with lexical processing of taboo words. Twenty seven undergraduates participated in a lexical decision task with 27 taboo words, 27 neutral words, 27 negative words and 81 pseudowords in BP whilst having their neurophysiological responses recorded by EEG. Mean amplitudes were analyzed for word type effect with a linear mixed effect model, in 8 Regions of Interest (ROI), with additional models including religiosity, usage, family tolerance and offendedness as factors. Different from other studies that report P200 responses for taboo words, we unexpectedly found enhanced N1 responses for taboo words in frontal and frontocentral ROIs, which we suggest could be explained as a reflection of the high frequency of taboo words and possibly enhanced attention due to the high arousal attached to taboo stimuli, as well as their unexpectedness in experimental settings. Instead, we found P200 in the central and frontocentral ROIs only for negative words, which we relate to the processing of emotional load. As expected, pseudowords elicited an N400 effect in the occipital, parietal, frontocentral and centroparietal ROIs. Validating findings reported in the literature, in centroparietal, parietal and occipital ROIs, a robust effect in the LPC window was found for taboo words, linked to the cost of processing the social and pragmatic meaning of taboo words. As for the psychosocial characteristics, we found some modulation of N1 amplitudes, suggestive of higher sensitivity for taboo words in correlation to religiosity, less tolerance, infrequent usage and higher offendedness; however, there were no clear tendencies for the influence of these factors on the N400 or LPC effect. We suggest that future studies with a broader sample might be able to assess this possible influence with more statistical power.
Topic Areas: Meaning: Lexical Semantics,