Cargando…

Embodied language of emotions: Predicting human intuitions with linguistic distributions in blind and sighted individuals

Recent constructionist theories have suggested that language and sensory experience play a crucial role not only in how individuals categorise emotions but also in how they experience and shape them, helping to acquire abstract concepts that are used to make sense of bodily perceptions associated wi...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Giraud, Michelle, Marelli, Marco, Nava, Elena
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10395297/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37539291
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e17864
_version_ 1785083551940608000
author Giraud, Michelle
Marelli, Marco
Nava, Elena
author_facet Giraud, Michelle
Marelli, Marco
Nava, Elena
author_sort Giraud, Michelle
collection PubMed
description Recent constructionist theories have suggested that language and sensory experience play a crucial role not only in how individuals categorise emotions but also in how they experience and shape them, helping to acquire abstract concepts that are used to make sense of bodily perceptions associated with specific emotions. Here, we aimed to investigate the role of sensory experience in conceptualising bodily felt emotions by asking 126 Italian blind participants to freely recall in which part of the body they commonly feel specific emotions (N = 15). Participants varied concerning visual experience in terms of blindness onset (i.e., congenital vs late) and degree of visual experience (i.e., total vs partial sensory loss). Using an Italian semantic model to estimate to what extent discrete emotions are associated with body parts in language experience, we found that all participants' reports correlated with the model predictions. Interestingly, blind – and especially congenitally blind - participants’ responses were more strongly correlated with the model, suggesting that language might be one of the possible compensative mechanisms for the lack of visual feedback in constructing bodily felt emotions. Our findings present theoretical implications for the study of emotions, as well as potential real-world applications for blind individuals, by revealing, on the one hand, that vision plays an essential role in the construction of felt emotions and the way we talk about our related bodily (emotional) experiences. On the other hand, evidence that blind individuals rely more strongly on linguistic cues suggests that vision is a strong cue to acquire emotional information from the surrounding world, influencing how we experience emotions. While our findings do not suggest that blind individuals experience emotions in an atypical and dysfunctional way, they nonetheless support the view that promoting the use of non-visual emotional signs and body language since early on might help the blind child to develop a good emotional awareness as well as good emotion regulation abilities.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-10395297
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2023
publisher Elsevier
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-103952972023-08-03 Embodied language of emotions: Predicting human intuitions with linguistic distributions in blind and sighted individuals Giraud, Michelle Marelli, Marco Nava, Elena Heliyon Research Article Recent constructionist theories have suggested that language and sensory experience play a crucial role not only in how individuals categorise emotions but also in how they experience and shape them, helping to acquire abstract concepts that are used to make sense of bodily perceptions associated with specific emotions. Here, we aimed to investigate the role of sensory experience in conceptualising bodily felt emotions by asking 126 Italian blind participants to freely recall in which part of the body they commonly feel specific emotions (N = 15). Participants varied concerning visual experience in terms of blindness onset (i.e., congenital vs late) and degree of visual experience (i.e., total vs partial sensory loss). Using an Italian semantic model to estimate to what extent discrete emotions are associated with body parts in language experience, we found that all participants' reports correlated with the model predictions. Interestingly, blind – and especially congenitally blind - participants’ responses were more strongly correlated with the model, suggesting that language might be one of the possible compensative mechanisms for the lack of visual feedback in constructing bodily felt emotions. Our findings present theoretical implications for the study of emotions, as well as potential real-world applications for blind individuals, by revealing, on the one hand, that vision plays an essential role in the construction of felt emotions and the way we talk about our related bodily (emotional) experiences. On the other hand, evidence that blind individuals rely more strongly on linguistic cues suggests that vision is a strong cue to acquire emotional information from the surrounding world, influencing how we experience emotions. While our findings do not suggest that blind individuals experience emotions in an atypical and dysfunctional way, they nonetheless support the view that promoting the use of non-visual emotional signs and body language since early on might help the blind child to develop a good emotional awareness as well as good emotion regulation abilities. Elsevier 2023-06-30 /pmc/articles/PMC10395297/ /pubmed/37539291 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e17864 Text en © 2023 The Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Research Article
Giraud, Michelle
Marelli, Marco
Nava, Elena
Embodied language of emotions: Predicting human intuitions with linguistic distributions in blind and sighted individuals
title Embodied language of emotions: Predicting human intuitions with linguistic distributions in blind and sighted individuals
title_full Embodied language of emotions: Predicting human intuitions with linguistic distributions in blind and sighted individuals
title_fullStr Embodied language of emotions: Predicting human intuitions with linguistic distributions in blind and sighted individuals
title_full_unstemmed Embodied language of emotions: Predicting human intuitions with linguistic distributions in blind and sighted individuals
title_short Embodied language of emotions: Predicting human intuitions with linguistic distributions in blind and sighted individuals
title_sort embodied language of emotions: predicting human intuitions with linguistic distributions in blind and sighted individuals
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10395297/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37539291
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e17864
work_keys_str_mv AT giraudmichelle embodiedlanguageofemotionspredictinghumanintuitionswithlinguisticdistributionsinblindandsightedindividuals
AT marellimarco embodiedlanguageofemotionspredictinghumanintuitionswithlinguisticdistributionsinblindandsightedindividuals
AT navaelena embodiedlanguageofemotionspredictinghumanintuitionswithlinguisticdistributionsinblindandsightedindividuals