All Outputs (9)

Ambiguity Resolution in Passivized Idioms: Is There a Shift in the Most Likely Interpretation? (2022)
Journal Article
Kyriacou, M., Conklin, K., & Thompson, D. (2023). Ambiguity Resolution in Passivized Idioms: Is There a Shift in the Most Likely Interpretation?. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 77(3), 212–226. https://doi.org/10.1037/cep0000300

Ambiguous but canonical idioms (kick the bucket) are processed fast in both their figurative (“die”) and literal (“boot the pail”) senses, although processing costs associated with meaning integration may emerge in postidiom regions. Modified version... Read More about Ambiguity Resolution in Passivized Idioms: Is There a Shift in the Most Likely Interpretation?.

When the Idiom Advantage Comes Up Short: Eye-Tracking Canonical and Modified Idioms (2021)
Journal Article
Kyriacou, M., Conklin, K., & Thompson, D. (2021). When the Idiom Advantage Comes Up Short: Eye-Tracking Canonical and Modified Idioms. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 675046. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.675046

The literature on idioms often talks about an ‘idiom advantage’, such that familiar idioms (spill the beans) are generally processed faster than comparable literal phrases (burn the beans). More recently, researchers have explored the processing of i... Read More about When the Idiom Advantage Comes Up Short: Eye-Tracking Canonical and Modified Idioms.

Examining the influence of perspective and prosody on expected emotional responses to irony: Evidence from event-related brain potentials (2021)
Journal Article
Thompson, D., Leuthold, H., & Filik, R. (2021). Examining the influence of perspective and prosody on expected emotional responses to irony: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 75(2), 107-113. https://doi.org/10.1037/cep0000249

Ironic language is typically more difficult to process and interpret than a literal equivalent, hence is assumed to serve several social and emotional functions not achieved by literal communication (such as politeness or introducing humour). Several... Read More about Examining the influence of perspective and prosody on expected emotional responses to irony: Evidence from event-related brain potentials.

Passivizability of Idioms: Has the Wrong Tree Been Barked Up? (2019)
Journal Article
Kyriacou, M., Conklin, K., & Thompson, D. (2020). Passivizability of Idioms: Has the Wrong Tree Been Barked Up?. Language and Speech, 63(2), 404-435. https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830919847691

A growing number of studies support the partial compositionality of idiomatic phrases, while idioms are thought to vary in their syntactic flexibility. Some idioms, like kick the bucket, have been classified as inflexible and incapable of being passi... Read More about Passivizability of Idioms: Has the Wrong Tree Been Barked Up?.

Examining the emotional impact of sarcasm using a virtual environment (2018)
Journal Article
Pickering, B., Thompson, D., & Filik, R. (2018). Examining the emotional impact of sarcasm using a virtual environment. Metaphor and Symbol, 33(3), 185-197. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2018.1481261

This study aimed to investigate the emotional impact of sarcasm. Previous research in this area has mainly required participants to answer questions based on written materials, and results have been mixed. With the aim of instead examining the emotio... Read More about Examining the emotional impact of sarcasm using a virtual environment.

One step at a time: representational overlap between active voice, be-passive, and get-passive forms in English (2018)
Journal Article
Thompson, D., Ferreira, F., & Scheepers, C. (2018). One step at a time: representational overlap between active voice, be-passive, and get-passive forms in English. Journal of Cognition, 1(1), Article 35. https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.36

The active voice and passive voice are complementary sentence forms that are available when describing a transitive event. In English, the latter has two variants: be-passive and get-passive. Numerous attempts have been made in the literature to repr... Read More about One step at a time: representational overlap between active voice, be-passive, and get-passive forms in English.

Emotional responses to irony and emoticons in written language: evidence from EDA and facial EMG (2016)
Journal Article
Thompson, D., Mackenzie, I. G., Leuthold, H., & Filik, R. (2016). Emotional responses to irony and emoticons in written language: evidence from EDA and facial EMG. Psychophysiology, 53(7), 1054-1062. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.12642

While the basic nature of irony is saying one thing and communicating the opposite, it may also serve additional social and emotional functions, such as projecting humour or anger. Emoticons often accompany irony in computer-mediated communication, a... Read More about Emotional responses to irony and emoticons in written language: evidence from EDA and facial EMG.

Sarcasm in written communication: emoticons are efficient markers of intention (2016)
Journal Article
Thompson, D., & Filik, R. (2016). Sarcasm in written communication: emoticons are efficient markers of intention. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 21(2), 105-120. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12156

Here we present two studies that investigate the use of emoticons in clarifying message intent. We look at sarcasm in particular, which can be especially hard to interpret correctly in written communication. In both studies, participants were require... Read More about Sarcasm in written communication: emoticons are efficient markers of intention.

Sarcasm and emoticons: comprehension and emotional impact (2015)
Journal Article
Filik, R., Turcan, A., Thompson, D., Harvey, N., Davies, H., & Turner, A. (2015). Sarcasm and emoticons: comprehension and emotional impact. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69(11), https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2015.1106566

Most theorists agree that sarcasm serves some communicative function that would not be achieved by speaking directly, such as eliciting a particular emotional response in the recipient. One debate concerns whether this kind of language serves to enha... Read More about Sarcasm and emoticons: comprehension and emotional impact.