Evelyn C Ferstl
Biographic Data
| ID | 3436010 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Evelyn C Ferstl |
| GIVEN NAMES | Evelyn C |
| FAMILY NAME | Ferstl |
| SIGNATURE | FERSTL E C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Freiburg |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8335-1276 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Comprehensibility of gender-fair language among foreign language learners of German
In public and academic debates, the gender star has been criticized for potentially hindering text comprehensibility and imposing an additional burden on learners of German by complicating an already complex language. We investigated in an experiment whether the use of the gender star (e.g., Student * innen) complicates text comprehensibility compared to masculine generics for learners of German. Participants were 80 Flemish students studying Ger…
Humor in ASD
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are often associated with humorlessness. The present study aimed to separate potential differences in humor appreciation from text comprehension difficulties. Twenty-three adults with ASD and 23 neurotypical adults (age: 18–72 years) read four types of texts: jokes, non-funny revision texts (requiring an incongruity resolution), straightforward and incoherent control texts. Funniness ratings, comprehension accuracy…
Neuroscience as a window into discourse processing
Neuroscientific methods have greatly enhanced our understanding of cognition and language processing. However, their results are not always in line with predictions from models of discourse comprehension. In this essay I reflect on the impact Walter Kintsch’s work has had on neuroscientific investigations and on how models of discourse comprehension need to accommodate the blurring of distinctions that were previously taken for granted, and addit…
Introduction
This special issue in Discourse Processes is in honor of the late Walter Kintsch. The interdisciplinary scope of his research had a tremendous impact across multiple fields, including discourse processes, psycholinguistics, cognitive science, and education, being cited tens of thousands of times. To honor his influence on the field and the numerous scientists who had been guided by his mentorship, this special issue includes 18 commentaries from …
Gendered Representations of Person Referents Activated by the Nonbinary Gender Star in German
The public debate on the use of the German nonbinary gender asterisk (Lehrer*in ‘teacher’) is emotionally charged. While it has been adopted by political and educational institutions, opponents argue that it is inappropriate for making persons identifying themselves beyond the male-female-dichotomy more visible. We investigated this claim by using a word-picture matching task directly assessing mental representations activated by the asterisk. St…
Cognitive and Affective Aspects of Verbal Humor
Many theories of verbal humour postulate that the funniness of jokes is caused by an incongruency in the punchline whose resolution yields a feeling of mirth. While there are studies testing the prediction that this situation model updating leads to increases in processing costs, there are few studies directly assessing the time course of when the alternative situation models are entertained. In a visual world paradigm, stories were presented aud…
Language comprehension across the life span
Neural Substrates of Counterfactual Emotions After Risky Decisions in Late Adolescents and Young Adults
Adolescents' neural substrates of emotional reactions to the consequences of risky decisions are poorly understood. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, 30 late adolescents and 30 young adults made risky and neutral decisions in social scenarios and received valenced outcomes. Negative outcomes in risky decisions eliciting regret, as compared with negative outcomes in neutral decisions eliciting disappointment, activated executive…
Association with explanation-conveying constructions predicts verbs’ implicit causality biases
Given a sentence such as Mary fascinated/admired Sue because she did great , the verb fascinated leads people to interpret she as referring to Mary , whereas admired leads people to interpret she as referring to Sue . This phenomenon is known as implicit causality (IC). Recent studies have shown that verbs’ causality biases closely correspond to the verbs’ semantic classes, as classified in VerbNet , a lexicon that groups verbs into classes on th…
Humor Facilitates Text Comprehension
One crucial property of verbal jokes is that the punchline usually contains an incongruency that has to be resolved by updating the situation model representation. In the standard pragmatic model, these processes are considered to require cognitive effort. However, only few studies compared jokes to texts requiring a situation model revision without being funny. In the present study participants' eye movements were recorded while they read short …
Gendered Representations of Person Referents Activated by the Nonbinary Gender Star in German
The public debate on the use of the German nonbinary gender asterisk (Lehrer*in ‘teacher’) is emotionally charged. While it has been adopted by political and educational institutions, opponents argue that it is inappropriate for making persons identifying themselves beyond the male-female-dichotomy more visible. We investigated this claim by using a word-picture matching task directly assessing mental representations activated by the asterisk. St…
Neural Substrates of Counterfactual Emotions After Risky Decisions in Late Adolescents and Young Adults
Adolescents' neural substrates of emotional reactions to the consequences of risky decisions are poorly understood. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, 30 late adolescents and 30 young adults made risky and neutral decisions in social scenarios and received valenced outcomes. Negative outcomes in risky decisions eliciting regret, as compared with negative outcomes in neutral decisions eliciting disappointment, activated executive…
Neuroscience as a window into discourse processing
Neuroscientific methods have greatly enhanced our understanding of cognition and language processing. However, their results are not always in line with predictions from models of discourse comprehension. In this essay I reflect on the impact Walter Kintsch’s work has had on neuroscientific investigations and on how models of discourse comprehension need to accommodate the blurring of distinctions that were previously taken for granted, and addit…
Introduction
This special issue in Discourse Processes is in honor of the late Walter Kintsch. The interdisciplinary scope of his research had a tremendous impact across multiple fields, including discourse processes, psycholinguistics, cognitive science, and education, being cited tens of thousands of times. To honor his influence on the field and the numerous scientists who had been guided by his mentorship, this special issue includes 18 commentaries from …
Association with explanation-conveying constructions predicts verbs’ implicit causality biases
Given a sentence such as Mary fascinated/admired Sue because she did great , the verb fascinated leads people to interpret she as referring to Mary , whereas admired leads people to interpret she as referring to Sue . This phenomenon is known as implicit causality (IC). Recent studies have shown that verbs’ causality biases closely correspond to the verbs’ semantic classes, as classified in VerbNet , a lexicon that groups verbs into classes on th…
Association with explanation-conveying constructions predicts verbs’ implicit causality biases
Given a sentence such as Mary fascinated/admired Sue because she did great , the verb fascinated leads people to interpret she as referring to Mary , whereas admired leads people to interpret she as referring to Sue . This phenomenon is known as implicit causality (IC). Recent studies have shown that verbs’ causality biases closely correspond to the verbs’ semantic classes, as classified in VerbNet , a lexicon that groups verbs into classes on th…
Humor Facilitates Text Comprehension
One crucial property of verbal jokes is that the punchline usually contains an incongruency that has to be resolved by updating the situation model representation. In the standard pragmatic model, these processes are considered to require cognitive effort. However, only few studies compared jokes to texts requiring a situation model revision without being funny. In the present study participants' eye movements were recorded while they read short …
Neural Substrates of Counterfactual Emotions After Risky Decisions in Late Adolescents and Young Adults
Adolescents' neural substrates of emotional reactions to the consequences of risky decisions are poorly understood. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, 30 late adolescents and 30 young adults made risky and neutral decisions in social scenarios and received valenced outcomes. Negative outcomes in risky decisions eliciting regret, as compared with negative outcomes in neutral decisions eliciting disappointment, activated executive…
Language comprehension across the life span
Cognitive and Affective Aspects of Verbal Humor
Many theories of verbal humour postulate that the funniness of jokes is caused by an incongruency in the punchline whose resolution yields a feeling of mirth. While there are studies testing the prediction that this situation model updating leads to increases in processing costs, there are few studies directly assessing the time course of when the alternative situation models are entertained. In a visual world paradigm, stories were presented aud…
Gendered Representations of Person Referents Activated by the Nonbinary Gender Star in German
The public debate on the use of the German nonbinary gender asterisk (Lehrer*in ‘teacher’) is emotionally charged. While it has been adopted by political and educational institutions, opponents argue that it is inappropriate for making persons identifying themselves beyond the male-female-dichotomy more visible. We investigated this claim by using a word-picture matching task directly assessing mental representations activated by the asterisk. St…
Neuroscience as a window into discourse processing
Neuroscientific methods have greatly enhanced our understanding of cognition and language processing. However, their results are not always in line with predictions from models of discourse comprehension. In this essay I reflect on the impact Walter Kintsch’s work has had on neuroscientific investigations and on how models of discourse comprehension need to accommodate the blurring of distinctions that were previously taken for granted, and addit…
Introduction
This special issue in Discourse Processes is in honor of the late Walter Kintsch. The interdisciplinary scope of his research had a tremendous impact across multiple fields, including discourse processes, psycholinguistics, cognitive science, and education, being cited tens of thousands of times. To honor his influence on the field and the numerous scientists who had been guided by his mentorship, this special issue includes 18 commentaries from …
Humor in ASD
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are often associated with humorlessness. The present study aimed to separate potential differences in humor appreciation from text comprehension difficulties. Twenty-three adults with ASD and 23 neurotypical adults (age: 18–72 years) read four types of texts: jokes, non-funny revision texts (requiring an incongruity resolution), straightforward and incoherent control texts. Funniness ratings, comprehension accuracy…
Comprehensibility of gender-fair language among foreign language learners of German
In public and academic debates, the gender star has been criticized for potentially hindering text comprehensibility and imposing an additional burden on learners of German by complicating an already complex language. We investigated in an experiment whether the use of the gender star (e.g., Student * innen) complicates text comprehensibility compared to masculine generics for learners of German. Participants were 80 Flemish students studying Ger…
Psychology (9 works) · Linguistics (8 works) · Cognitive psychology (6 works) · Comprehension (6 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Cognition (5 works) · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism (5 works) · Artificial Intelligence (4 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (4 works) · Reading and Literacy Development (4 works)