Getting it: human event-related brain response to jokes in good and poor comprehenders.
Joke comprehension has been decomposed into surprise registration followed by a coherence stage, involving frame-shifting (retrieving a new frame from long-term memory to reinterpret information in working memory). We examined this view by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) from adults reading one-line jokes or non-joke controls with equally unexpected endings. Joke and non-joke ERPs differed in several respects depending on participants' ability to get the joke and contextual constraint. In good joke comprehenders, all jokes elicited a left-lateralized sustained negativity (500-900 ms), indexing frame-shifting, low constraint jokes elicited a frontal positivity (500-900 ms), and high constraint jokes elicited an N400 and later posterior positivity. By contrast, poor joke comprehenders showed only a right frontal negativity (300-700 ms) to jokes. This pattern of effects does not map readily onto a two-stage model of joke comprehension.
Coulson
S
S
University of California, San Diego, CA, USA. coulson@cogsci.ucsd.edu
Kutas
M
M
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014925:Wit and Humor as Topic / Q000523:psychology*