The project falls within the domain of Experimental Pragmatics, a research field emerged in the last 20 years with the aim of describing the processes that allow to infer the speaker’s meaning in communication and to offer an empirical support to theoretical models in pragmatics. In particular, the project investigates neurocognitive, clinical, and developmental aspects with a special focus on metaphor and humor. The project started in 2018 and is funded by IUSS.
The project, which starts from previous results of this group, aims at 1) contributing to the description of the neurocognitive mechanisms supporting pragmatic understanding, in particular of metaphors and humor, through EEG and behavioral methods; 2) clarifying differences in pragmatic profiles in clinical populations and in the lifespan; 3) developing training programs to promote pragmatic skills.
Valentina Bambini, Paolo Canal, Luca Bischetti, Chiara Barattieri di Sampietro, Federico Frau, Chiara Pompei, Biagio Scalingi, Veronica Mangiaterra