EEG theta responses induced by emoji semantic violations

Mengmeng Tang,Lun Zhao,Xiufeng Zhao,Bingfei Chen

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-89528-2

Mengmeng Tang, Lun Zhao + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-89528-2

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Abstract

This study investigated emoji semantic processing by measuring changes in event-related electroencephalogram (EEG) power. The last segment of experimental sentences was designed as either words or emojis consistent or inconsistent with the sentential context. The results showed that incongruent emojis led to a conspicuous increase of theta power (4–7 Hz), while incongruent words induced a decrease. Furthermore, the theta power increase was observed at midfrontal, occipital and bilateral temporal lobes with emojis. This suggests a higher working memory load for monitoring errors, difficulty of form recognition and concept retrieval in emoji semantic processing. It implies different neuro-cognitive processes involved in the semantic processing of emojis and words.

Highlights

This study investigated emoji semantic processing by measuring changes in event-related electroencephalogram (EEG) power
Even though an integrated understanding of linguistic processes based on the detailed knowledge of the corresponding neural networks is still incomplete, it has been widely reported that the theta-band oscillations (TBO) (4–7 Hz) play an important role in the activation of neuronal assemblies, representing concepts and words
This category effect was qualified by an interaction between Category with Congruency, F(1,21) = 29.88, p < 0.001, Partial ƞ2 = 0.587, revealing that for congruent condition, the category effect was not significant (p = 0. 615), while for incongruent condition, emoji elicited higher TBO (98.3%) than did words (59.5%; p < 0.001) and that incongruent words induced slightly lower TBO than congruent condition (70.1%; p > 0.1), whereas incongruent emojis induced higher TBO than congruent condition (67.2%; p < 0.001)

Summary

Introduction

This study investigated emoji semantic processing by measuring changes in event-related electroencephalogram (EEG) power. The theta power increase was observed at midfrontal, occipital and bilateral temporal lobes with emojis This suggests a higher working memory load for monitoring errors, difficulty of form recognition and concept retrieval in emoji semantic processing. Despite its significance and unique features, previous literature mainly centered on language processing, like morphology recognition, lexical retrieval, semantic integration and etc., and few accounts on the neuro mechanisms of paralanguage semantic processing It has been hypothesized from the socio-cultural level that in communications with emojis, these visual tokens may not require a large cognitive effort to retrieve and select words, phrases, or use world knowledge associated with the discourse p ractices[3], but no electrophysiological evidence was provided.

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Discussion

Conclusion