{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,14]],"date-time":"2026-07-14T05:04:21Z","timestamp":1784005461009,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":63,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"7","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,10]],"date-time":"2026-07-10T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1783641600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Jiangsu Provincial Social Science Fund","award":["22YYC005"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["22YYC005"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Behavioral Sciences"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Counterfactual thoughts about \u201cwhat might have been\u201d typically evoke emotions such as regret and relief, yet little is known about how such emotions are processed during real-time language comprehension. This eye-tracking study examined how native Chinese readers infer counterfactual emotions in narratives and whether pragmatic competence modulates this process. Participants read stories in which a character made a decision and subsequently experienced a positive or negative outcome; the final sentence was either consistent or inconsistent with the character\u2019s feeling of regret or relief. Emotion words that mismatched the counterfactual context elicited longer reading times than matching words, indicating rapid online inference and monitoring of the protagonist\u2019s emotions. Crucially, this emotional-consistency effect emerged earlier for relief than for regret (in first-pass reading times for relief but only in later eye-movement measures for regret), revealing an early processing advantage for relief. Moreover, individual differences in pragmatic competence selectively modulated inconsistency detection for regret but not relief: higher pragmatic competence was associated with greater early sensitivity to regret-related mismatches. These findings suggest that inferring regret places greater demands on higher-order pragmatic processing than relief and point to an optimism bias in counterfactual thinking among Chinese readers.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/bs16071164","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,10]],"date-time":"2026-07-10T14:14:25Z","timestamp":1783692865000},"page":"1164","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Pragmatic Competence Modulates Counterfactual Emotion Processing: Eye-Tracking Evidence from Mandarin Chinese"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"16","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8721-9149","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Haoyun","family":"Dai","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yanhao","family":"Xu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jing","family":"Bian","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,10]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"5","DOI":"10.1023\/A:1005653411471","article-title":"The autism-spectrum quotient (AQ): Evidence from Asperger syndrome\/high-functioning autism, males and females, scientists and mathematicians","volume":"31","author":"Wheelwright","year":"2001","journal-title":"Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"255","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jml.2012.11.001","article-title":"Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal","volume":"68","author":"Barr","year":"2013","journal-title":"Journal of Memory and Language"},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.18637\/jss.v067.i01","article-title":"Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4","volume":"67","author":"Bates","year":"2015","journal-title":"Journal of Statistical Software"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"301","DOI":"10.1177\/1362361312468798","article-title":"Understanding of emotions based on counterfactual reasoning in children with autism spectrum disorders","volume":"18","author":"Begeer","year":"2014","journal-title":"Autism"},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"422","DOI":"10.1002\/aur.2056","article-title":"Intact counterfactual emotion processing in autism spectrum disorder: Evidence from eye-tracking","volume":"12","author":"Black","year":"2019","journal-title":"Autism Research"},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Broadbent, J., Galic, I., and Stokes, M. 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