Title: Bridging Language Use and Social Cognition: Cognitive Neuroscience Evidence from Pragmatic Inference, Vocal Communication and Individual Differences

Abstract: Successful social communication not only relies on understanding “what is said”, but is also about developing critical cognitive abilities to effectively decode “what is not said” and “how a speaker says”. Inferential ability and understanding what speaker intends in social contexts are vital for learning and adaptation.

In this talk, I will present my on-going studies and elaborate how EEGs/ERPs and other non-invasive cognitive neuroscience methods are used to understand language use and social cognition. I will highlight recent evidence showing how a speaker communicates a meaning (e.g. confidence, trustworthiness) and emotion in the vocal and verbal cues, and the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying how a listener decodes the speaker meaning. I will also demonstrate how social context (e.g. social status) facilitates the decoding of communicative intentions (such as over-/im-politeness).

I will show evidence on how social inference is shaped by culture and by listener’s sex and personal characteristics such as interpersonal sensitivity and trait anxiety. In particular, I will focus on how trait empathy plays a role in deriving pragmatic implicature and resolving the pragmatic failure/ambiguity. I’ll close my talk by proposing future directions of the cognitive neuroscience studies on language use in social communication.

Dr. Xiaoming (Jason) Jiang is currently working in the Neuropragmatics and Emotion lab: School of Communication Sciences and Disorders in the faculty of Medicine, McGill University.

Note: You are welcome to bring your lunch.