Paper

Non-literal Meaning Representation in the Brain during Naturalistic Listening

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Abstract

Naturalistic language comprehension often involves interpretations that go beyond literal meaning. In continuous narratives, literal and non-literal meanings are tightly intertwined, making them difficult to distinguish computationally. Here, we combined literal sentence representations and human-annotated non-literal interpretations for model-brain alignment. Using fMRI data recorded during passive listening to the Chinese version of The Little Prince, we annotated sentences containing non-literal meaning with human-written interpretations of their implied meaning. We then derived the literal and non-literal representations from LLaMA3.1-8B and evaluated their correspondence with neural activity using whole-brain encoding models. Literal representations aligned strongly with left-lateralized frontotemporal regions, whereas non-literal interpretations showed broader right-hemisphere involvement. Combining the two further improved encoding performance in the bilateral temporal and dorsal frontal cortices, suggesting that naturalistic comprehension engages complementary levels of meaning.

How to Cite:

Ma, Z., Huang, Y., Wang, C. & Li, J., (2026) “Non-literal Meaning Representation in the Brain during Naturalistic Listening”, Society for Computation in Linguistics 9(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.7275/scil.4069