Seana Coulson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3823933 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Seana Coulson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Seana |
| FAMILY NAME | Coulson |
| SIGNATURE | COULSON S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California San Diego |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1246-9394 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 31 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 22 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The influence of co-speech gestures on speech envelope tracking
Here we investigate how co-speech gesture kinematics impact speech tracking - a neural index that captures the brain's sensitivity to acoustic parameters of continuous speech, especially low-frequency fluctuations in the amplitude of the speech envelope. To do this, we recorded EEG from 36 healthy adults as they watched a series of multimodal discourse clips, wherein the speaker's movements and gestures were either congruent or incongruent with t…
Words and Worlds Both
An important issue in the semantic memory literature concerns the relative importance of experience-based sensorimotor versus language corpus-based distributional information in conceptual representations. To explore how each contributes to behavioral and neural responses on a conceptual task, EEG and RTs were recorded as healthy young adults viewed terms for concepts (e.g., “APPLE”) followed by properties (e.g., “red”) and pressed a button to in…
Decoding Prosodic Information from Motion Capture Data
In part due to correspondence in time, seeing how a speaking body moves can impact how speech is apprehended. Despite this, little is known about whether and which specific kinematic features of co-speech movements are relevant for their integration with speech. The current study uses machine learning techniques to investigate how co-speech gestures can be quantified to model vocal acoustics within an individual speaker. Specifically, we address …
Turing Jest
Humor is an essential aspect of human experience, yet surprisingly, little is known about how we recognize and understand humorous utterances. Most theories of humor emphasize the role of incongruity detection and resolution (e.g., frame‐shifting), as well as cognitive capacities like Theory of Mind and pragmatic reasoning. In multiple preregistered experiments, we ask whether and to what extent exposure to purely linguistic input can account for…
The role of narcissism and motivated reasoning on misinformation propagation
Background Explanations for why social media users propagate misinformation include failure of classical reasoning (over-reliance on intuitive heuristics), motivated reasoning (conforming to group opinion), and personality traits (e.g., narcissism). However, there is a lack of consensus on which explanation is most predictive of misinformation spread. Previous work is also limited by not distinguishing between passive (i.e., “liking”) and active …
Brain responses to a lab-evolved artificial language with space-time metaphors
What is the connection between the cultural evolution of a language and the rapid processing response to that language in the brains of individual learners? In an iterated communication study that was conducted previously, participants were asked to communicate temporal concepts such as "tomorrow," "day after," "year," and "past" using vertical movements recorded on a touch screen. Over time, participants developed simple artificial 'languages' t…
Mimicry of partially occluded emotional faces
Facial electromyography (EMG) was used to investigate patterns of facial mimicry in response to partial facial expressions in two contexts that differ in how naturalistic and socially significant the faces are. Experiment 1 presented participants with either the upper- or lower-half of facial expressions and used a forced-choice emotion categorisation task. This task emphasises cognition at the expense of ecological and social validity. Experimen…
Visuospatial Working Memory and Understanding Co-Speech Iconic Gestures
Multi-modal discourse comprehension requires speakers to combine information from speech and gestures. To date, little research has addressed the cognitive resources that underlie these processes. Here we used a dual-task paradigm to test the relative importance of verbal and visuospatial working memory in speech-gesture comprehension. Healthy, college-aged participants encoded either a series of digits (verbal load) or a series of dot locations …
Event related spectral perturbations of gesture congruity
Adesão à alimentação escolar e fatores associados em adolescentes de escolas públicas na região Sul do Brasil
Objetivou-se analisar o índice de adesão à alimentação escolar e os fatores associados entre adolescentes matriculados em escolas públicas estaduais do município da Lapa, Paraná, sul do Brasil. De caráter transversal e analítico, incluiu 492 adolescentes de 10 a 19 anos de cinco escolas urbanas e cinco rurais do município. Foi aplicado um questionário sobre o consumo da alimentação escolar e de alimentos competitivos (aqueles comprados ou trazido…
Temporal sequences, synesthetic mappings, and cultural biases
Processing Deliberate Ambiguity in Newspaper Headlines
Two experiments investigated the processing and appreciation of double grounding, a form of intentional ambiguity often used in the construction of headlines. For example, in “Russia takes the froth off Carlsberg results,” the key element, “takes the froth off,” is significant both metaphorically, where it refers to the detrimental impact of Russia, and metonymically via a contextual link between the company Carlsberg and beer, its best-known pro…
Constructing Meaning
This article reviews cognitive neuroscience research on visual and language processing to suggest an analogy between the neural interpolation mechanisms in perceptual processing and the constructive processes that underlie meaning construction in language. Traditional models of language comprehension as a decoding process are argued to involve an overattribution of the import of linguistic information, and an overly narrow view of the role of bac…
Looking back
We describe the space structuring model, a model of language comprehension inspired by ideas in cognitive linguistics, focusing on its capacity to explain the sorts of inferences needed to understand one-line jokes. One process posited in the model is frame-shifting, the semantic and pragmatic reanalysis in which elements of the existing message-level representation are mapped into a new frame retrieved from long-term memory. To test this model, …
Blending and coded meaning
Conceptual integration and metaphor
Figurative language and figurative thought
Semantic Leaps
Semantic Leaps explores how people combine knowledge from different domains in order to understand and express new ideas. Concentrating on dynamic aspects of on-line meaning construction, Coulson identifies two related sets of processes: frame-shifting and conceptual blending. Frame-shifting is semantic reanalysis in which existing elements in the contextual representation are reorganized into a new frame. Conceptual blending is a set of cognitiv…
Metaphor and the Space Structuring Model
Metaphor and the Space Structuring Model
We propose an account of metaphor comprehension based on conceptual blending theory. We review data from on-line processing measures that support predictions of conceptual blending theory and report results of an off-line feature listing study that assessed how different sorts of contexts alter the information activated by a given word. Participants generated features for words used in the null context, sentences that promoted a literal reading o…
Blending basics
Blending and metaphor
A more recent framework, proposed by Fauconnier and Turner (1994; 1998) seeks to explain much of the same linguistic data, and also to unify the analysis of metaphor with the analysis of a variety of other linguistic and conceptual phenomena. This framework—referred to variously as the theory of 'blending', 'conceptual blending', and 'conceptual integration'—shares many aspects of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT). For instance, both approaches tr…
Expect the Unexpected
Arguments about the existence of language-specific neural systems and particularly arguments about the independence of syntactic and semantic processing have recently focused on differences between the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by violations of syntactic structure (e.g. the P600) and those elicited by violations of semantic expectancy (e.g. the N400). However, the scalp distribution of the P600 component elicited by syntactic viola…
Blending and coded meaning
Looking back
We describe the space structuring model, a model of language comprehension inspired by ideas in cognitive linguistics, focusing on its capacity to explain the sorts of inferences needed to understand one-line jokes. One process posited in the model is frame-shifting, the semantic and pragmatic reanalysis in which elements of the existing message-level representation are mapped into a new frame retrieved from long-term memory. To test this model, …
Processing Deliberate Ambiguity in Newspaper Headlines
Two experiments investigated the processing and appreciation of double grounding, a form of intentional ambiguity often used in the construction of headlines. For example, in “Russia takes the froth off Carlsberg results,” the key element, “takes the froth off,” is significant both metaphorically, where it refers to the detrimental impact of Russia, and metonymically via a contextual link between the company Carlsberg and beer, its best-known pro…
Expect the Unexpected
Arguments about the existence of language-specific neural systems and particularly arguments about the independence of syntactic and semantic processing have recently focused on differences between the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by violations of syntactic structure (e.g. the P600) and those elicited by violations of semantic expectancy (e.g. the N400). However, the scalp distribution of the P600 component elicited by syntactic viola…
Blending and metaphor
A more recent framework, proposed by Fauconnier and Turner (1994; 1998) seeks to explain much of the same linguistic data, and also to unify the analysis of metaphor with the analysis of a variety of other linguistic and conceptual phenomena. This framework—referred to variously as the theory of 'blending', 'conceptual blending', and 'conceptual integration'—shares many aspects of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT). For instance, both approaches tr…
Semantic Leaps
Semantic Leaps explores how people combine knowledge from different domains in order to understand and express new ideas. Concentrating on dynamic aspects of on-line meaning construction, Coulson identifies two related sets of processes: frame-shifting and conceptual blending. Frame-shifting is semantic reanalysis in which existing elements in the contextual representation are reorganized into a new frame. Conceptual blending is a set of cognitiv…
Metaphor and the Space Structuring Model
Metaphor and the Space Structuring Model
We propose an account of metaphor comprehension based on conceptual blending theory. We review data from on-line processing measures that support predictions of conceptual blending theory and report results of an off-line feature listing study that assessed how different sorts of contexts alter the information activated by a given word. Participants generated features for words used in the null context, sentences that promoted a literal reading o…
Blending basics
Conceptual integration and metaphor
Figurative language and figurative thought
Blending and coded meaning
Constructing Meaning
This article reviews cognitive neuroscience research on visual and language processing to suggest an analogy between the neural interpolation mechanisms in perceptual processing and the constructive processes that underlie meaning construction in language. Traditional models of language comprehension as a decoding process are argued to involve an overattribution of the import of linguistic information, and an overly narrow view of the role of bac…
Looking back
We describe the space structuring model, a model of language comprehension inspired by ideas in cognitive linguistics, focusing on its capacity to explain the sorts of inferences needed to understand one-line jokes. One process posited in the model is frame-shifting, the semantic and pragmatic reanalysis in which elements of the existing message-level representation are mapped into a new frame retrieved from long-term memory. To test this model, …
Temporal sequences, synesthetic mappings, and cultural biases
Processing Deliberate Ambiguity in Newspaper Headlines
Two experiments investigated the processing and appreciation of double grounding, a form of intentional ambiguity often used in the construction of headlines. For example, in “Russia takes the froth off Carlsberg results,” the key element, “takes the froth off,” is significant both metaphorically, where it refers to the detrimental impact of Russia, and metonymically via a contextual link between the company Carlsberg and beer, its best-known pro…
Adesão à alimentação escolar e fatores associados em adolescentes de escolas públicas na região Sul do Brasil
Objetivou-se analisar o índice de adesão à alimentação escolar e os fatores associados entre adolescentes matriculados em escolas públicas estaduais do município da Lapa, Paraná, sul do Brasil. De caráter transversal e analítico, incluiu 492 adolescentes de 10 a 19 anos de cinco escolas urbanas e cinco rurais do município. Foi aplicado um questionário sobre o consumo da alimentação escolar e de alimentos competitivos (aqueles comprados ou trazido…
Event related spectral perturbations of gesture congruity
Mimicry of partially occluded emotional faces
Facial electromyography (EMG) was used to investigate patterns of facial mimicry in response to partial facial expressions in two contexts that differ in how naturalistic and socially significant the faces are. Experiment 1 presented participants with either the upper- or lower-half of facial expressions and used a forced-choice emotion categorisation task. This task emphasises cognition at the expense of ecological and social validity. Experimen…
Visuospatial Working Memory and Understanding Co-Speech Iconic Gestures
Multi-modal discourse comprehension requires speakers to combine information from speech and gestures. To date, little research has addressed the cognitive resources that underlie these processes. Here we used a dual-task paradigm to test the relative importance of verbal and visuospatial working memory in speech-gesture comprehension. Healthy, college-aged participants encoded either a series of digits (verbal load) or a series of dot locations …
The role of narcissism and motivated reasoning on misinformation propagation
Background Explanations for why social media users propagate misinformation include failure of classical reasoning (over-reliance on intuitive heuristics), motivated reasoning (conforming to group opinion), and personality traits (e.g., narcissism). However, there is a lack of consensus on which explanation is most predictive of misinformation spread. Previous work is also limited by not distinguishing between passive (i.e., “liking”) and active …
Brain responses to a lab-evolved artificial language with space-time metaphors
What is the connection between the cultural evolution of a language and the rapid processing response to that language in the brains of individual learners? In an iterated communication study that was conducted previously, participants were asked to communicate temporal concepts such as "tomorrow," "day after," "year," and "past" using vertical movements recorded on a touch screen. Over time, participants developed simple artificial 'languages' t…
Words and Worlds Both
An important issue in the semantic memory literature concerns the relative importance of experience-based sensorimotor versus language corpus-based distributional information in conceptual representations. To explore how each contributes to behavioral and neural responses on a conceptual task, EEG and RTs were recorded as healthy young adults viewed terms for concepts (e.g., “APPLE”) followed by properties (e.g., “red”) and pressed a button to in…
Decoding Prosodic Information from Motion Capture Data
In part due to correspondence in time, seeing how a speaking body moves can impact how speech is apprehended. Despite this, little is known about whether and which specific kinematic features of co-speech movements are relevant for their integration with speech. The current study uses machine learning techniques to investigate how co-speech gestures can be quantified to model vocal acoustics within an individual speaker. Specifically, we address …
Turing Jest
Humor is an essential aspect of human experience, yet surprisingly, little is known about how we recognize and understand humorous utterances. Most theories of humor emphasize the role of incongruity detection and resolution (e.g., frame‐shifting), as well as cognitive capacities like Theory of Mind and pragmatic reasoning. In multiple preregistered experiments, we ask whether and to what extent exposure to purely linguistic input can account for…
The influence of co-speech gestures on speech envelope tracking
Here we investigate how co-speech gesture kinematics impact speech tracking - a neural index that captures the brain's sensitivity to acoustic parameters of continuous speech, especially low-frequency fluctuations in the amplitude of the speech envelope. To do this, we recorded EEG from 36 healthy adults as they watched a series of multimodal discourse clips, wherein the speaker's movements and gestures were either congruent or incongruent with t…
Psychology (19 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (15 works) · Linguistics (15 works) · Cognitive psychology (11 works) · Cognition (9 works) · Action Observation and Synchronization (7 works) · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism (7 works) · Artificial Intelligence (6 works) · Categorization, perception, and language (6 works)