PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH COLLABORATORS:

• Enrique Meseguer Felip (Lecturer, Department of Cognitive, Social and Organisational Psychology

EXTERNAL COLLABORATORS:

• Christian von Scheve (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)
• Tobias Schröder (Fachhochschule Potsdam, Germany)
• Dr Margaret Gillon Dowens (University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China)

RESEARCH LINES:

This group focuses on studying the differences in affection and sociability between individuals with different linguistic and/or cultural backgrounds, or from distinct socio-economic environments. We study the emotional connotation of words from different languages in bilingual populations, or from two semantic categories, corresponding to basic dimensions of sociability, authorship, authority and community, assuming that the emotional content is the result of subjective experiences in social and trans-cultural interactions.

We use computer simulations based on the Affect Control to examine the link between emotional connotation and social interactions, with the aim of assessing emotional effects of prototypic social interaction sequences. In addition, we look at the neuronal and psychological correlates of emotion resulting from linguistic representation of social interactions or cultural experiences.

Another research interest of this group is the study of possible non-arbitrary relationships between sounds and meaning in language (sound symbolism).

FUNDED PROJECTS:

• National “Ramón y Cajal” programme. Postdoctoral contracts for Research and Development centres (RYC-2015-18955). PI: Markus Conrad. MINECO (Sub-programme Ramón y Cajal; 2017-2022, 268,600 € 5 year salary + 40,000 €, Research project).

PUBLICATIONS 2019:

• Schauenburg G, Conrad M, von Scheve C, Barber HA, Ambrasat J, Aryani A, Schröder T. Making sense of social interaction: Emotional coherence drives semantic integration as assessed by event-related potentials. Neuropsychologia. 2019 Mar;125:1-13. doi: 1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.01.002
• Rabovsky M, Conrad M, Álvarez CJ, Paschke-Goldt J, Sommer W. Attentional modulation of orthographic neighborhood effects during reading: Evidence from event-related brain potentials in a psychological refractory period paradigm. PLoS 2019 Jan 25;14(1):e0199084. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0199084

OTHER SELECTED PUBLICATIONS FROM THE LAST 10 YEARS:

• Hsu CT,Jacobs AM,Conrad M. Can Harry Potter still put a spell on us in a second language? An fMRI study on reading emotion-laden literature in late bilinguals. 2015 Feb;63:282-95. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2014.09.002
• Ambrasat J, von Scheve C, Conrad M, Schauenburg G, Schröder T. Consensus and stratification in the affective meaning of human sociality.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Jun 3;111(22):8001-6. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1313321111
• Conrad M, Recio G, Jacobs AM. The time course of emotion effects in first and second language processing: a cross cultural ERP study with German–Spanish bilinguals. Front Psychol. 2011 Dec 6;2:351. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00351
• Oganian Y, Conrad M, Aryani A, Spalek K, Heekeren HR. Activation patterns throughout the word processing network of l1-dominant bilinguals reflect language similarity and language decisions.J Cogn Neurosci. 2015 Nov;27(11):2197-214. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_00853
• Aryani A, Conrad M, Schmidtke D, Jacobs A. Why ‘piss’ is ruder than ‘pee’? The role of sound in affective meaning making. PLoS One. 2018 Jun 6;13(6):e0198430. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0198430