Influence of ability to manage interpersonal relationships on sensitivity to a Japanese sentence-final particle: An ERP study

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24652080
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology
• Principal Investigator: KIYAMA SACHIKO 独立行政法人国立長寿医療研究センター, 長寿医療工学研究部, 研究員 (10612509)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): TAMAOKA Katsuo 名古屋大学, 大学院国際言語文化研究科, 教授 (70227263)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 終助詞 / 事象関連電位 / 心の理論

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The present study examined a prediction that individual theory-of-mind (ToM) ability affacts flexibility to uncommon usages of a Japanese sentence-final particle "ne". Results of two event-related potential experiments consistently indicated that native Japanese speakers with lower ToM ability recruited stronger N170 ERP components while listening to uncommon usages of "ne". N170 is known to reflect social information processing, especially for patients with autism spectrum disorder. One plausible interpretation of the findings is that native Japanese speakers with low ToM ability perceive usages of "ne" in a restricted manner, which contribuutes to a stronger sense of strangeness to the uncommon "ne" usages.

Free Research Field

語用論