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Abstract
How do people interpret the same story? Do people’s different prior beliefs affect how they interpret the story? More specifically, do people who have the same prior beliefs also have the same neural responses to the same stimulus? In this study, the goal is to investigate these questions through having people listen to two different perspectives about the same event while recording their brain activations using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The event was narrated from two different perspectives - though both narratives describe the same event, the two perspectives were designed to evoke different reactions from the participants depending on their attitudes towards the mentally disabled. Participants’ degree of negative attitudes towards mentally disabled population was measured using the Symbolic Ableism Scale (SAS). Neural responses were compared to their ableism measurements. Intersubject correlation analysis shows significant correlations in activation in several channels across participants from both story 1 and story 2, which suggests that the stimuli used in the study evoke reliable brain activations. However, we did not find a significant relationship between the degree of negative attitudes towards the population with mental illness and neural synchrony. We discuss potential reasons for these null findings and include recommendations for future studies.