Ali Ghanaei chamanabad; Mohammad Reza Golmakani; Imanollah Bigdeli; Majid Ghoshuni
Abstract
Introduction: The term concreteness and emotionality effects refers to the reality that concrete and emotion words are processed faster and more accurately than abstract and neutral words. This effect has been observed in various cognitive tasks and several models have been proposed to account it. The ...
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Introduction: The term concreteness and emotionality effects refers to the reality that concrete and emotion words are processed faster and more accurately than abstract and neutral words. This effect has been observed in various cognitive tasks and several models have been proposed to account it. The aim of present study is investigating concreteness and emotionality effects on semantic processing in the Persian language using Event-related potentials. Method: A quasi-experimental design, repeated measures is employed to examine concreteness as well as emotionality effects on visual word processing. 24 male students were taken by convenience sampling and set in the experimental condition that included a lexical decision task. The activation of neural networks was recorded while participants responded to concrete, abstract and emotional words. Findings: Comparison of related-potentials showed that emotional words elicited an early and more pronounced P300 than both concrete and abstract words. Nonetheless, concrete and abstract words evoked late and larger N400 and P600 In the second and third time windows respectively. Conclusion: The pattern of results suggest that concreteness effect in Persian is not entirely consistent with existing theories provided in this paper, so there may be an increased chance for other explanations to clarify the concreteness and emotionality effect on visual word processing in the Persian language.
Emad Azar; Imanollah Bigdeli; Masoud Fazilat-Pour; Saeedeh Khosravi
Abstract
Aim: Thinking as one of the cognitive functions has always been of interest to researchers. With a distinction between divergent and convergent cognitive processes, Guilford has made a huge impact on experimental research on creative thinking. Alpha frequency band in the range of 12-8 Hz is associated ...
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Aim: Thinking as one of the cognitive functions has always been of interest to researchers. With a distinction between divergent and convergent cognitive processes, Guilford has made a huge impact on experimental research on creative thinking. Alpha frequency band in the range of 12-8 Hz is associated with cognitive functions such as creativity. The purpose of this study was to investigate the increase and decrease of alpha power changes (event-related synchronization and de-synchronization) in two different types of divergent and convergent thinking. Method: The sample of this study consists of 38 postgraduate students of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (19 males, 19 females) who were selected by available and voluntary sampling method. The brain waves were recorded using a 19-channel instrument while performing divergent and convergent thinking tasks, and alpha power changes were analyzed using MATLAB software. Results: activity of alpha waves is in the position of divergent thinking from the anterior regions to the posterior regions with synchronization, while in the convergent thinking position we have seen the reduction in the power of the alpha band in the posterior regions compared to the anterior regions of the brain. Conclusion: The activity of alpha waves is significantly associated with divergent thinking tasks, which increased activity in the posterior regions of the brain with increased activity, in contrast to tasks related to convergent thinking, indicated decreased activity from the anterior regions to the posterior regions.
