Vicky Tzuyin Lai

Interests

Research

Dr. Lai is interested in the cognitive processes and the neural bases of meaning and language in context. Her work so far can be categorized in three areas: (1) Figurative language: How do people process metaphorical language? What is the role of metaphor in the embodied views of language? What are the social-affective functions of metaphors? (2) Emotion and language: How is emotion encoded in language? How do language activities such as reading give rise to emotion? How do readers’ mood states influence meaning making in language? (3) Language and thought in bilinguals: Do differences in languages influence how speakers of those languages perceive and reason about the world?

Teaching

Psychology of Language; Neurobiology of Language; Cognitive Science; Cognitive Neuroscience; Language and Thought

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Books

• Lai, V. T., & Coulson, S. (2016). The Metaphorical Brain. Lausanne: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. doi:10.3389/978-2-88919-772-9

Chapters

• Lai, V. T., & Narasimham, B. (2015). Verb Representation and Thinking-for-Speaking Effects in Spanish–English Bilinguals. In Cognitive Science Perspectives on Verb Representation and Processing(pp 235-256). Springer International Publishing.
• Lai, V. T., & Chen, A. (2011). Comb or Coat: the Role of Intonation in Online Reference Resolution in a Second Language. In Sound and Sounds(pp 57-68). Utrecht: UiL OTS.
• Lai, V. T., & Frajzyngier, Z. (2009). Change of Functions of the First Person Pronouns in Chinese. In Historical Linguistics(pp 223-232). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Journals/Publications

• Hubbard, R., Bulkes, N., & Lai, V. T. (2023). Predictability and decomposability separately contribute to compositional processing of idiomatic language. Psychophysiology, e14269.
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  When reading, comprehenders construct a message-level representation and integrate new information as it becomes available. Such compositional processing may differ for idioms, where the meanings of the individual words do not always relate to the figurative meaning. Here, we examined how predictability and idiom decomposability contribute to compositional processing. Participants' EEG was recorded while they read sentences containing idioms that varied in decomposability and phrase-final word cloze probability, or their literal match (break the ice/slip on the ice) with little context prior to the phrase, along with adjective insertion conditions (break the freezing ice/slip on the freezing ice). Cloze probability modulated N400 amplitudes to critical words for both idiomatic and literal phrases, whereas P600 amplitudes only elicited by idiomatic phrases were also modulated. Phrases with adjective insertions reduced acceptability judgments, particularly for idioms, and led to N400 amplitude differences compared to critical words, but only for idioms. N400 differences were also found between idiomatic and literal contexts at the point of adjective insertion. Additionally, both cloze probability and decomposability modulated gamma band activity, with greater gamma activity for more predictable and less decomposable idioms, but at different times and with different scalp topographies, suggesting dissociable components of processing. These results support a hybrid model of processing in which multiple linguistic factors determine the type of processing engaged by the brain to comprehend non-literal language. When prior context is minimal, compositional processing may still be engaged when reading idioms.
• Donahoo, S. A., Pfeifer, V., & Lai, V. T. (2022). Cursed Concepts: New insights on combinatorial processing from ERP correlates of swearing in context. Brain and Language, 226, 105079.
• Kamenetski, A., Lai, T. Y., & Flecken, M. (2022). Minding the manner: Attention to motion events in Turkish–Dutch early bilinguals. Language and Cognition. Language and Cognition, 14(3), 456 - 478. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2022.10
• Ku, L., Allen, J. J., & Lai, V. T. (2022). Attention and regulation during emotional word comprehension in older adults: Evidence from event-related potentials and brain oscillations. Brain and Language, 227, 105086.
• Lai, V. T., Berkum, J., & Hagoort, P. (2022). Negative affect increases reanalysis of conflicts between discourse context and world knowledge. Frontiers in Communication, 7, 262.
• Pfeifer, V. A., Armstrong, E. L., & Lai, T. Y. (2022). Do all facial emojis communicate emotion? The impact of facial emojis on perceived sender emotion and text processing.. Computers in Human Behavior, 126, 107016. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.107016
• Pfeifer, V., & Lai, V. T. (2021). The Comprehension of Irony in High and Low Emotional Contexts. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology.
• Sendek, K., Pfeifer, V. A., Herzmann, G., & Lai, T. Y. (2021). Social acquisition context matters: Increased neural responses for native but not non-native taboo words. Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, 1-21. doi:https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-021-00951-4
• Donahoo, S. A., & Lai, T. Y. (2020). The mental representation and social aspect of expressives. Cognition and Emotion, 1-16.
• Hakim, Z. M., Ebner, N. C., Oliveira, D. S., Getz, S. J., Levin, B. E., Lin, T., Lloyd, K., Grilli, M. D., Lai, V. T., & Wilson, R. C. (2020). The Phishing Email Suspicion Test (PEST) a lab-based task for evaluating the cognitive mechanisms of phishing detection. Behavior Research Methods, 1-11. doi:https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-020-01495-0
• Ku, L., Chan, S., & Lai, T. Y. (2020). Personality traits and emotional word recognition: An ERP study. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 1-16.
• Lai, T. Y., Howerton, O., & Rutvik, D. H. (2019). Concrete Processing of Action Metaphors: Evidence from ERP. Brain Research, 1714, 202-209.
• Van Dam, W. O., Speed, L. J., Lai, V. T., Vigliocco, G., & Desai, R. H. (2017). Effects of motion speed in action representations. Brain and Language, 168, 47-56. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2017.01.003
• Coulson, S., & Lai, V. T. (2016). Editorial: The Metaphorical Brain. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9.
• Desai, R. H., Choi, W., Lai, T. Y., & Henderson, J. M. (2016). Toward Semantics in the Wild: Activation to Manipulable Nouns in Naturalistic Reading. Journal of Neuroscience, 36(14), 4050-4055.
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  The neural basis of language processing, in the context of naturalistic reading of connected text, is a crucial but largely unexplored area. Here we combined functional MRI and eye tracking to examine the reading of text presented as whole paragraphs in two experiments with human subjects. We registered high-temporal resolution eye-tracking data to a low-temporal resolution BOLD signal to extract responses to single words during naturalistic reading where two to four words are typically processed per second. As a test case of a lexical variable, we examined the responseto noun manipulability. In both experiments, signal in the left anterior inferior parietal lobule and posterior inferior temporal gyrus and sulcus was positively correlated with noun manipulability. These regions are associated with both action performance and action semantics, and their activation is consistent with a number of previous studies involving tool words and physical tool use. The results show that even during rapid reading of connected text, where semantics of words may be activated only partially, the meaning of manipulable nouns is grounded in action performance systems. This supportsthe grounded cognition view of semantics, which posits a close link between sensory–motor and conceptual systems of the brain. On the methodological front, these results demonstrate that BOLD responses to lexical variables during naturalistic reading can be extracted by simultaneous use of eye tracking. This opens up new avenues for the study of language and reading in the context of connected text.
• Lai, V. T., & Desai, R. H. (2016). The grounding of temporal metaphors. Cortex, 76, 43-50.
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  Grounded cognition suggests that the processing of conceptual knowledge cued by language relies on the sensory-motor regions. Does temporal language similarly engage brain areas involved in time perception? Participants read sentences that describe the temporal extent of events with motion verbs (The hours crawled until the release of the news) and their static controls. Comparison conditions were fictive motion (The trail crawled until the end of the hills) and literal motion (The caterpillar crawled towards the top of the tree), along with their static controls. Several time sensitive locations, identified using a meta-analysis, showed activation specific to temporal metaphors, including in the left insula, right claustrum, and bilateral posterior superior temporal sulci. Fictive and literal motion contrasts did not show this difference. Fictive motion contrast showed activation in a conceptual motion sensitive area of the left posterior inferior temporal sulcus (ITS). These data suggest that language of time is at least partially grounded in experiential time. In addition, motion semantics has different consequences for events and objects: temporal events become animate, while static entities become motional.
• Lai, V. T., & Huettig, F. (2016). When prediction is fulfilled: Insight from emotion processing. Neuropsychologia, 85, 110-117.
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  Research on prediction in language processing has focused predominantly on the function of predictive context and less on the potential contribution of the predicted word. The present study investigated how meaning that is not immediately prominent in the contents of predictions but is part of the predicted words influences sentence processing. We used emotional meaning to address this question. Participants read emotional and neutral words embedded in highly predictive and non-predictive sentential contexts, with the two sentential contexts rated similarly for their emotional ratings. Event Related Potential (ERP) effects of prediction and emotion both started at 200 ms. Confirmed predictions elicited larger P200s than violated predictions when the target words were non-emotional (neutral), but such an effect was absent when the target words were emotional. Likewise, emotional words elicited larger P200s than neutral words when the target words were non-predictive, but such effect were absent when the contexts were predictive. We conjecture that the prediction and emotion effects at 200 ms may share similar neural process(es). We suggest that such process(es) could be affective, where confirmed predictions and word emotion give rise to ‘aha’ or rewarding feelings, and/or cognitive, where both prediction and word emotion quickly engage attention.
• Lai, V. T., Willems, R. M., & Hagoort, P. (2015). Feel between the lines: implied emotion in sentence comprehension. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27(8), 1528-41.
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  This study investigated the brain regions for the comprehension of implied emotion in sentences. Participants read negative sentences without negative words, for example, "The boy fell asleep and never woke up again," and their neutral counterparts "The boy stood up and grabbed his bag." This kind of negative sentence allows us to examine implied emotion derived at the sentence level, without associative emotion coming from word retrieval. We found that implied emotion in sentences, relative to neutral sentences, led to activation in some emotion-related areas, including the medial prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, and the insula, as well as certain language-related areas, including the inferior frontal gyrus, which has been implicated in combinatorial processing. These results suggest that the emotional network involved in implied emotion is intricately related to the network for combinatorial processing in language, supporting the view that sentence meaning is more than simply concatenating the meanings of its lexical building blocks.
• Lai, V. T., van, D. W., Conant, L. L., Binder, J. R., & Desai, R. H. (2015). Familiarity differentially affects right hemisphere contributions to processing metaphors and literals. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9.
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  The role of the two hemispheres in processing metaphoric language is controversial. While some studies have reported a special role of the right hemisphere (RH) in processing metaphors, others indicate no difference in laterality relative to literal language. Some studies have found a role of the RH for novel/unfamiliar metaphors, but not conventional/familiar metaphors. It is not clear, however, whether the role of the RH is specific to metaphor novelty, or whether it reflects processing, reinterpretation or reanalysis of novel/unfamiliar language in general. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the effects of familiarity in both metaphoric and non-metaphoric sentences. A left lateralized network containing the middle and inferior frontal gyri, posterior temporal regions in the left hemisphere (LH), and inferior frontal regions in the RH, was engaged across both metaphoric and non-metaphoric sentences; engagement of this network decreased as familiarity decreased. No region was engaged selectively for greater metaphoric unfamiliarity. An analysis of laterality, however, showed that the contribution of the RH relative to that of LH does increase in a metaphor-specific manner as familiarity decreases. These results show that RH regions, taken by themselves, including commonly reported regions such as the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), are responsive to increased cognitive demands of processing unfamiliar stimuli, rather than being metaphor-selective. The division of labor between the two hemispheres, however, does shift towards the right for metaphoric processing. The shift results not because the RH contributes more to metaphoric processing. Rather, relative to its contribution for processing literals, the LH contributes less.
• Samur, D., Lai, V. T., Hagoort, P., & Willems, R. M. (2015). Emotional context modulates embodied metaphor comprehension. Neuropsychologia, 78, 108-114.
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  Emotions are often expressed metaphorically, and both emotion and metaphor are ways through which abstract meaning can be grounded in language. Here we investigate specifically whether motion-related verbs when used metaphorically are differentially sensitive to a preceding emotional context, as compared to when they are used in a literal manner. Participants read stories that ended with ambiguous action/motion sentences (e.g., he got it), in which the action/motion could be interpreted metaphorically (he understood the idea) or literally (he caught the ball) depending on the preceding story. Orthogonal to the metaphorical manipulation, the stories were high or low in emotional content. The results showed that emotional context modulated the neural response in visual motion areas to the metaphorical interpretation of the sentences, but not to their literal interpretations. In addition, literal interpretations of the target sentences led to stronger activation in the visual motion areas as compared to metaphorical readings of the sentences. We interpret our results as suggesting that emotional context specifically modulates mental simulation during metaphor processing.
• Lai, V. T., Rodriguez, G. G., & Narasimhan, B. (2014). Thinking-for-speaking in early and late bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17(1), 139-152.
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  When speakers describe motion events using different languages, they subsequently classify those events in language-specific ways (Gennari, Sloman, Malt & Fitch, 2002). Here we ask if bilingual speakers flexibly shift their event classification preferences based on the language in which they verbally encode those events. English–Spanish bilinguals and monolingual controls described motion events in either Spanish or English. Subsequently they judged the similarity of the motion events in a triad task. Bilinguals tested in Spanish and Spanish monolinguals were more likely to make similarity judgments based on the path of motion versus bilinguals tested in English and English monolinguals. The effect is modulated in bilinguals by the age of acquisition of the second language. Late bilinguals based their judgments on path more often when Spanish was used to describe the motion events versus English. Early bilinguals had a path preference independent of the language in use. These findings support “thinking-for-speaking” (Slobin, 1996) in late bilinguals.
• Lai, V. T., & Boroditsky, L. (2013). The immediate and chronic influence of spatio-temporal metaphors on the mental representations of time in english, mandarin, and mandarin-english speakers. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 142.
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  In this paper we examine whether experience with spatial metaphors for time has an influence on people's representation of time. In particular we ask whether spatio-temporal metaphors can have both chronic and immediate effects on temporal thinking. In Study 1, we examine the prevalence of ego-moving representations for time in Mandarin speakers, English speakers, and Mandarin-English (ME) bilinguals. As predicted by observations in linguistic analyses, we find that Mandarin speakers are less likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are English speakers. Further, we find that ME bilinguals tested in English are less likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are English monolinguals (an effect of L1 on meaning-making in L2), and also that ME bilinguals tested in Mandarin are more likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are Mandarin monolinguals (an effect of L2 on meaning-making in L1). These findings demonstrate that habits of metaphor use in one language can influence temporal reasoning in another language, suggesting the metaphors can have a chronic effect on patterns in thought. In Study 2 we test Mandarin speakers using either horizontal or vertical metaphors in the immediate context of the task. We find that Mandarin speakers are more likely to construct front-back representations of time when understanding front-back metaphors, and more likely to construct up-down representations of time when understanding up-down metaphors. These findings demonstrate that spatio-temporal metaphors can also have an immediate influence on temporal reasoning. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that the metaphors we use to talk about time have both immediate and long-term consequences for how we conceptualize and reason about this fundamental domain of experience.
• Lai, V. T., & Curran, T. (2013). ERP evidence for conceptual mappings and comparison processes during the comprehension of conventional and novel metaphors. Brain and Language, 127(3), 484-96.
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  Cognitive linguists suggest that understanding metaphors requires activation of conceptual mappings between the involved concepts. We tested whether mappings are indeed in use during metaphor comprehension, and what mapping means as a cognitive process with Event-Related Potentials. Participants read literal, conventional metaphorical, novel metaphorical, and anomalous target sentences preceded by primes with related or unrelated mappings. Experiment 1 used sentence-primes to activate related mappings, and Experiment 2 used simile-primes to induce comparison thinking. In the unprimed conditions of both experiments, metaphors elicited N400s more negative than the literals. In Experiment 1, related sentence-primes reduced the metaphor-literal N400 difference in conventional, but not in novel metaphors. In Experiment 2, related simile-primes reduced the metaphor-literal N400 difference in novel, but not clearly in conventional metaphors. We suggest that mapping as a process occurs in metaphors, and the ways in which it can be facilitated by comparison differ between conventional and novel metaphors.
• Kim, A., & Lai, V. (2012). Rapid Interactions between Lexical Semantic and Word Form Analysis during Word Recognition in Context: Evidence from ERPs. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 24(5), 1104-1112.
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  We used ERPs to investigate the time course of interactions between lexical semantic and sublexical visual word form processing during word recognition. Participants read sentence-embedded pseudowords that orthographically resembled a contextually supported real word (e.g., “She measured the flour so she could bake a ceke...”) or did not (e.g., “She measured the flour so she could bake a tont...”) along with nonword consonant strings (e.g., “She measured the flour so she could bake a srdt...”). Pseudowords that resembled a contextually supported real word (“ceke”) elicited an enhanced positivity at 130 msec (P130), relative to real words (e.g., “She measured the flour so she could bake a cake...”). Pseudowords that did not resemble a plausible real word (“tont”) enhanced the N170 component, as did nonword consonant strings (“srdt”). The effect pattern shows that the visual word recognition system is, perhaps, counterintuitively, more rapidly sensitive to minor than to flagrant deviations from contextually predicted inputs. The findings are consistent with rapid interactions between lexical and sublexical representations during word recognition, in which rapid lexical access of a contextually supported word (CAKE) provides top–down excitation of form features (“cake”), highlighting the anomaly of an unexpected word “ceke.”
• Lai, V. T., Hagoort, P., & Casasanto, D. (2012). Affective Primacy vs. Cognitive Primacy: Dissolving the Debate. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 243.
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  When people see a snake, they are likely to activate both affective information (e.g., dangerous) and non-affective information about its ontological category (e.g., animal). According to the Affective Primacy Hypothesis, the affective information has priority, and its activation can precede identification of the ontological category of a stimulus. Alternatively, according to the Cognitive Primacy Hypothesis, perceivers must know what they are looking at before they can make an affective judgment about it. We propose that neither hypothesis holds at all times. Here we show that the relative speed with which affective and non-affective information gets activated by pictures and words depends upon the contexts in which stimuli are processed. Results illustrate that the question of whether affective information has processing priority over ontological information (or vice versa) is ill-posed. Rather than seeking to resolve the debate over Cognitive vs. Affective Primacy in favor of one hypothesis or the other, a more productive goal may be to determine the factors that cause affective information to have processing priority in some circumstances and ontological information in others. Our findings support a view of the mind according to which words and pictures activate different neurocognitive representations every time they are processed, the specifics of which are co-determined by the stimuli themselves and the contexts in which they occur.
• Lai, V. T., Curran, T., & Menn, L. (2009). Comprehending conventional and novel metaphors: an ERP study. Brain Research, 1284, 145-55.
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  The neural mechanisms underlying the processing of conventional and novel conceptual metaphorical sentences were examined with event-related potentials (ERPs). Conventional metaphors were created based on the Contemporary Theory of Metaphor and were operationally defined as familiar and readily interpretable. Novel metaphors were unfamiliar and harder to interpret. Using a sensicality judgment task, we compared ERPs elicited by the same target word when it was used to end anomalous, novel metaphorical, conventional metaphorical and literal sentences. Amplitudes of the N400 ERP component (320-440 ms) were more negative for anomalous sentences, novel metaphors, and conventional metaphors compared with literal sentences. Within a later window (440-560 ms), ERPs associated with conventional metaphors converged to the same level as literal sentences while the novel metaphors stayed anomalous throughout. The reported results were compatible with models assuming an initial stage for metaphor mappings from one concept to another and that these mappings are cognitively taxing.

Proceedings Publications

• Lai, V. T., Peter, H., & Daniel, C. (2011, July). Affective and Non-Affective Meaning in Words and Pictures. In the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 390-395.
• Monro, R., Bethard, S., Kuperman, V., Lai, V. T., Melnick, R., Potts, C., Schnoebelen, T., & Tily, H. (2010, June). Crowdsourcing and Language Studies: The New Generation of Linguistic Data. In Workshop on Creating Speech and Language Data With Amazon's Mechanical Turk, North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL).
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  We present a compendium of recent and currentprojects that utilize crowdsourcing technologiesfor language studies, finding that thequality is comparable to controlled laboratoryexperiments, and in some cases superior.While crowdsourcing has primarily been usedfor annotation in recent language studies, theresults here demonstrate that far richer datamay be generated in a range of linguistic disciplinesfrom semantics to psycholinguistics.For these, we report a number of successfulmethods for evaluating data quality in the absenceof a ‘correct’ response for any givendata point.

Presentations

• Lai, T. Y. (2020, February). Thinking and feeling with metaphors. Departmental ColloquiumSpeech Language Hearing Sciences, University of Arizona.
• Lai, T. Y. (2019, June). How the brain finds meaning in metaphors of language. Spirit of the Senses Salon: Social Experience of Art, Science, and Cultural. Phoenix.
• Lai, V. T., Mehl, M. R., Bulkes, N., Kumar, A., & Ku, L. (2019, November). The expressive and regulatory roles of metaphor for emotion. The 60th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society. Montreal, Canada: Psychonomic Society.
• Lai, V. T., Bulkes, N., Trocoso, C., Morez, T., Kumar, A., & Armstrong, E. (2018, March). Changes in the neural representations of abstract science concepts after metaphoric reasoning. The 26th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. San Francisco: Cognitive Neuroscience Society.
• Lai, T. Y. (2017, March). Language and emotion. Departmental ColloquiumDepartment of Psychology, University of Arizona.