The Neurobiology of Taboo Language Processing: FMRI Evidence During Spoken Word Production

Overview

Journal Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci

Specialties Neurology
Social Sciences

Date 2019 Feb 5

PMID 30715549

Citations 6

Authors

Samuel J Hansen

Katie L McMahon

Greig I de Zubicaray

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Every language has words deemed to be socially inappropriate or 'taboo' to utter. Taboo word production appears prominently in language disorders following brain injury. Yet, we know little about the cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in processing taboo compared to neutral language. In the present study, we introduced taboo distractor words in the picture word interference paradigm during functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how these words influence spoken word production. Taboo distractor words significantly slowed picture-naming latencies compared to neutral words. This interference effect was associated with increased blood oxygen level dependent signal across a distributed thalamo-cortical network including bilateral anterior cingulate cortex and left inferior frontal gyrus, left posterior middle temporal gyrus and right thalamus. We interpret our findings as being consistent with an account integrating both domain-general attention-capture/distractor blocking and language-specific mechanisms in processing taboo words during spoken word production.

Citing Articles

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Power and vulnerability: managing sensitive language in organizational communication.

Healey P, Khare P, Castro I, Tyson G, Karan M, Shekhar R Front Psychol. 2024; 14:1266425.

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Predictive Coding and Internal Error Correction in Speech Production.

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Running away from phonological ambiguity, we stumble upon our words: Laboratory induced slips show differences between highly and lowly defensive people.

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