Human brain and ambiguity of cognitive information: A convergent approach

Abstract

The article analyses the implementation of the convergent approach on the example of studying mechanisms for selecting meanings in situations of ambiguity by the methods of cognitive psychology, linguistics, and neurophysiology. We describe the rationale of the problem statement for convergent research and the necessary prerequisites for implementing an interdisciplinary approach. We consider that in case of ambiguity resolution the special mechanism provides the choice: which meaning would enter consciousness (and he / she becomes aware of it), and which — is rejected. That being said, the unselected meaning is not simply ignored, but rather actively suppressed. Such suppression results in its negative after-effect; more precisely the difficulty of retrieving the previously suppressed information. In our research the fMRI method made it possible to study brain mechanisms involved in the selection of a word’s meaning while behavioral methods allowed for the study of the after-effects of this selection. Thanks to the mutual development of a design by representatives of cognitive psychology, linguistics, and neurophysiology, it is possible to overcome the considerable methodological incompatibility of those methods. The results discovered in behavioral psychological research demonstrated negative after-effects of the rejected meaning. However, without the neurophysiological approach the data would remain unclear due to two possible interpretations. As a result of the analysis of the brain functional activity, the decrease in the localized hippocampal activity during the selection of meaning for an ambiguous word was revealed. This supports the hypothesis that the involvement of suppression processes in ambiguity resolution exists. Our work once again illustrates how important forethought and a philosophical foundation of the question posed is for interdisciplinary research regarding the processes of brain mechanisms. Unification of the efforts of representatives of various sciences provides qualitative new knowledge, which would not be possible to achieve in a different experimental situation.