Weighting Assessment of the Effect of Chinese State-Changing Words on Emotions.

Past studies of sentiment analysis have mainly applied algorithms based on vocabulary categories and emotional characteristics to detect the emotionality of text. However, the collocation of state-changing words and emotional vocabulary affects emotions. For example, adverbs of degree strengthen emotions, and negative adverbs reverse emotions. This study investigated the weighted effect of state-changing words on emotion. The research material comprised 73 state-changing words that were collocated with four emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, and anger. A total of 84 participants participated in the vocabulary assessment. The results revealed that state-changing words could be classified into four types: intensifying, weakening, neutralizing, and reversing. In a comparison of the weighting factors among emotions, the weighting effect of the same state-changing word in the positive emotion category was particularly evident. The results could serve as a reference for follow-up studies on detecting emotions in text.

Verification of the Four-Stage Model of Humor Processing: Evidence from an fMRI Study by Three-Element Verbal Jokes.

The four-stage model comprises the expectation, incongruity, resolution, and elaboration stages of humor processing. In previous studies, most researchers used two-element jokes (setup and punch line) as stimuli, based on experimental methods, to explore the humor process. By contrast, the present study used a humor corpus with the novelty of three-element verbal jokes to perform direct separation from the material and clarify the humor processes. In this study, we used three-element verbal jokes and nonjokes, and we conducted a repeated-measures analysis of variance with a 3 × 2 two-way within-subject design. In humor processing, the posterior insula and middle frontal gyrus were mainly activated in the expectation; the middle temporal gyrus and the medial frontal gyrus in the incongruity; the inferior frontal gyri, superior frontal gyrus, and inferior parietal lobule in the resolution; and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, anterior insula, nucleus accumbens, and midbrain in the elaboration. The contributions of this study lie in its use of a humor corpus with the novelty of self-compiled three-element jokes, which not only successfully verified the models established in previous studies but added the expectation to the model; thus, this study separated the expectation and incongruity processes, making humor processing more complete.