title: Enjoying vs. smiling: Facial muscular activation in response to emotional language.
abstract: The present study examined whether emotionally congruent facial muscular activation - a somatic index of emotional language embodiment can be elicited by reading subject-verb sentences composed of action verbs, that refer directly to facial expressions (e.g., Mario smiles), but also by reading more abstract state verbs, which provide more direct access to the emotions felt by the agent (e.g., Mario enjoys). To address this issue, we measured facial electromyography (EMG) while participants evaluated state and action verb sentences. We found emotional sentences including both verb categories to have valence-congruent effects on emotional ratings and corresponding facial muscle activations. As expected, state verb-sentences were judged with higher valence ratings than action verb-sentences. Moreover, despite emotional congruent facial activations were similar for the two linguistic categories, in a late temporal window we found a tendency for greater EMG modulation when reading action relative to state verb sentences. These results support embodied theories of language comprehension and suggest that understanding emotional action and state verb sentences relies on partially dissociable motor and emotional processes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, SociaLab, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat 5, 40127 Bologna, Italy; Department of Sociology, Psychology and Education, SocialBrainLab, University Marin Barleti, Rr. Sami Frasheri, 41, 1000 Tirana, Albania. Electronic address: sbl@umb.edu.al.
authors.forename: Edita
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Fino
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, SociaLab, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat 5, 40127 Bologna, Italy. Electronic address: m.menegatti@unibo.it.
authors.forename: Michela
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Menegatti
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Centre for studies and research in Cognitive Neuroscience (CsrNC), Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Viale Europa 980, 47521 Cesena, Italy; IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Via Ardeatina 306, 00179 Roma, Italy. Electronic address: alessio.avenanti@unibo.it.
authors.forename: Alessio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Avenanti
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, SociaLab, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat 5, 40127 Bologna, Italy. Electronic address: monica.rubini@unibo.it.
authors.forename: Monica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rubini
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D004576:Electromyography; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005152:Facial Muscles / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D012904:Smiling / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Corrugator; EMG; Embodied cognition; Emotion language; Linguistic abstraction; Zygomaticus