Frame-shifting instead of incongruity is necessary for pun comprehension: evidence from an ERP study on Chinese homophone puns

Recent psycholinguistic research has made significant progress in understanding the meaning-access process during pun comprehension. However, to date, little research has directly investigated how the two retrieved meanings are integrated into the pun context afterwards. In the current ERP study, we examined this process by comparing homophone puns with two control conditions. Different from previous ERP studies on jokes, we did not observe significantly enhanced N400 amplitudes (300-500 ms) in the pun condition, indicating no apparent detection of incongruity. However, we observed a sustained positivity around the left anterior regions (500-900 ms) and enhanced LPC amplitudes around the central-parietal regions (600-900 ms). These two components could index the sudden access to the second meaning and the additional integration operations to establish a new cognitive model respectively. These findings were compatible with the Space Structure Model, which emphasises the frame-shifting process as a crucial element for understanding verbal humour.

近年来，心理语言学研究在阐明双关语理解过程中的语义通达机制方面取得了显著进展。然而迄今为止，鲜有研究直接探讨双关理解中提取的两种语义后续如何被整合至双关语境之中。在本次事件相关电位（Event-Related Potential, ERP）研究中，我们通过将谐音双关语与两种对照条件进行对比，考察了这一整合过程。与此前针对笑话的ERP研究不同，本研究未在双关条件下观察到显著增强的N400成分波幅（300~500 ms），这表明并未出现明显的语义不协调检测过程。但我们在左侧前额区域观察到了持续时长约500~900 ms的正波成分，且在中央顶叶区域观察到了增强的晚正成分（Late Positive Component, LPC）波幅（600~900 ms）。这两种脑电成分可分别表征对第二种语义的突然通达，以及为建立全新认知模型所需的额外整合操作。本研究结果与空间结构模型（Space Structure Model）相符，该模型强调框架转换过程是理解言语幽默的核心要素。