The study of emotion is hindered by the lack of tests for affect perception or comprehension. One solution is to develop affective versions of well-known tests. Using an index of word norms (Toglia & Battig, 1978), positively and negatively valenced word lists were developed as alternate forms of the affectively neutral Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVL; Rey, 1964). Participants (N=102) received either the original RAVL list, the positively valenced list, or the negatively valenced list. Results are depicted across acquisition trials and location within the list for comparison of primacy and recency effects. Each word list yielded comparable patterns of acquisition. Participants receiving the negative list evidenced an enhanced primacy effect, while participants receiving the positive list evidenced an enhanced recency effect. The positive and negative lists may prove useful in the evaluation of individuals with affective disorders and may provide an alternative for affect induction through an active learning paradigm.

The present study assessed the usefulness of the affective list alternatives to the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVL) in the induction of physiological arousal. It was anticipated that affective verbal learning would lead to arousal patterns characteristic of different emotions (Izard, 1977), with significant increases in blood pressure following negative list learning and significant decreases following positive list learning. Since diastolic blood pressure increased significantly following the learning of negatively valanced words and decreased significantly following the learning of positively valanced words, this was supported. Given the abundance of research on lateral asymmetries in emotional and verbal processing, the affective list alternatives to the RAVL may provide an objective means for evaluating individual differences in affective verbal learning as well as the induction of emotion. The Affective Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AAVL) may potentially provide a tool for assessment of cerebral dysfunction in the clinic or in the assessment of affective disorders.

The study of emotion is hindered by the lack of tests for affect perception or comprehension. One solution is to develop affective versions of well-known tests. Using an index of word norms (Toglia & Battig, 1978), positively and negatively valenced word lists were developed as alternate forms of the affectively neutral Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVL; Rey, 1964). Participants (N=102) received either the original RAVL list, the positively valenced list, or the negatively valenced list. Results are depicted across acquisition trials and location within the list for comparison of primacy and recency effects. Each word list yielded comparable patterns of acquisition. Participants receiving the negative list evidenced an enhanced primacy effect, while participants receiving the positive list evidenced an enhanced recency effect. The positive and negative lists may prove useful in the evaluation of individuals with affective disorders and may provide an alternative for affect induction through an active learning paradigm.

This study evaluated cerebral asymmetry for affect perception as a function of fluency classification. After being assigned to a fluency category using scores on the FAS test (Borkowski, Benton, & Spreen, 1967), forty-five right-handed subjects with normal auditory acuity listened to the Bryden and MacCrae (1989) Dichotic Emotional Words Tape. Subjects higher in fluency exhibited significantly greater right and left ear advantages than subjects lower in fluency. Conversely, REA scores for words were significantly greater than REA scores for affect, while LEA scores for affect were significantly greater than LEA scores for words.

A verbal transformation (VT) is any perceptible change that subjects hear when the same word is repeated several times. Habituation was studied by investigating whether more VTs would occur during the second 3 min of word repetition. We also attempted to replicate the finding of Snyder, Calef, Choban, and Geller (1992) that a familiar word presentation style (a word spoken relatively "normally") resulted in more VTs than did an unfamiliar word presentation style (a word spoken slowly). Thirty-two psychology students listened to six neutral words repeated for 6 min with approximately 3 sec between words. Subjects reported significantly more VTs during the second as opposed to the first 3 min of word repetition only during normal presentation, supporting a habituation explanation that an increase in VTs following the continuous repetition of a word could be an example of habituation. We replicated the findings of Snyder et al, (1992) only during the second 3 min.