This study presents the adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW; Bradley & Lang, 1999a) for European Portuguese (EP). The EP adaptation of the ANEW was based on the affective ratings made by 958 college students who were EP native speakers. Subjects assessed about 60 words by considering the affective dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance, using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) in either a paper-and-pencil or a Web survey procedure. Results of the adaptation of the ANEW for EP are presented. Furthermore, the differences between EP, American (Bradley & Lang, 1999a), and Spanish (Redondo, Fraga, Padrón, & Comesaña, Behavior Research Methods, 39, 600-605, 2007) standardizations were explored. Results showed that the ANEW words were understood in a similar way by EP, American, and Spanish subjects, although some sex and cross-cultural differences were observed. The EP adaptation of the ANEW is shown to be a valid and useful tool that will allow researchers to control and/or manipulate the affective properties of stimuli, as well as to develop cross-linguistic studies. The normative values of EP adaptation of the ANEW can be downloaded at http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

This study examined the role of phonological and orthographic overlap in the recognition of cognate words by recording electrophysiological and behavioral data. One hundred and ninety-two words were selected: 96 cognate words listed according to their phonological and orthographic overlap vs. 96 noncognate words. Twenty-four proficient European Portuguese-English bilinguals performed a silent reading task with a masked priming paradigm. The results showed that phonology interacts with semantic activation at N400 modulations. Phonological priming effects were dependent on the orthographic overlap of cognate words. Thus, the distinctive processing of cognate words seems to be due to their cross-linguistic similarity, which is consistent with a localist connectionist account on cognate representation and processing.

This study presents the results of the adaptation of the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) for European Portuguese (EP). Following the original procedure of Lang et al., 2000 native speakers of EP rated the 1,182 pictures of the last version of the IAPS set on the three affective dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance, using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM). Results showed that the normative values of the IAPS for EP are properly distributed in the affective space of valence and arousal, showing the typical boomerang-shaped distribution observed in previous studies. Results also point to important differences in the way Portuguese females and males react to affective pictures that should be taken into consideration when planning and conducting research with Portuguese samples. Furthermore, the results from the cross-cultural comparisons between the EP ratings and the ratings from the American, Spanish, Brazilian, Belgian, Chilean, Indian, and BosnianHerzegovinian standardizations, showed that in spite of the fact that IAPS stimuli elicited affective responses that are similar across countries and cultures (at least in Western cultures), there are differences in the way Portuguese individuals react to IAPS pictures that strongly recommend the use of the normative values presented in this work. They can be downloaded as a supplemental archive at

In this study, we present the normative values of the adaptation of the International Affective Digitized Sounds (IADS-2;Bradley & Lang, 2007a) for European Portuguese (EP). The IADS-2 is a standardized database of 167 naturally occurring sounds that is widely used in the study of emotions. The sounds were rated by 300 college students who were native speakers of EP, in the three affective dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance, by using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM). The aims of this adaptation were threefold: (1)to provide researchers with standardized and normatively rated affective sounds to be used with an EP population; (2)to investigate sex and cultural differences in the ratings of affective dimensions of auditory stimuli between EP and the American

The ability to recognize the emotions of others is a crucial skill. In the visual modality, sensorimotor mechanisms provide an important route for emotion recognition.Perceiving facial expressions often evokes activity in facial muscles and in motor and somatosensory systems, and this activity relates to performance in emotion tasks. It remains unclear whether and how similar mechanisms extend to audition. Here we examined facial electromyographic and electrodermal responses to nonverbal vocalizations that varied in emotional authenticity. Participants (N = 100) passively listened to laughs and cries that could reflect an authentic or a posed emotion. Bayesian mixed models indicated that listening to laughter evoked stronger facial responses than listening to crying. These responses were sensitive to emotional authenticity. Authentic laughs evoked more activity than posed laughs in the zygomaticus and orbicularis, muscles typically associated with positive affect. We also found that activity in the orbicularis and corrugator related to subjective evaluations in a subsequent authenticity perception task. Stronger responses in the orbicularis predicted higher perceived laughter authenticity. Stronger responses in the corrugator, a muscle associated with negative affect, predicted lower perceived laughter authenticity. Moreover, authentic laughs elicited stronger skin conductance responses than posed laughs. This arousal effect did not predict task performance, however. For crying, physiological responses were not associated with authenticity judgments. Altogether, these findings indicate that emotional authenticity affects peripheral nervous system responses to vocalizations. They also point to a role of sensorimotor mechanisms in the evaluation of authenticity in the auditory modality.

For decades concept typicality has been recognized as critical to structuring conceptual knowledge, but only recently has typicality been applied in better understanding the processes engaged by the neurological network underlying semantic memory. This previous work has focused on one region within the network - the Anterior Temporal Lobe (ATL). The ATL responds negatively to concept typicality (i.e., the more atypical the item, the greater the activation in the ATL). To better understand the role of typicality in the entire network, we ran an fMRI study using a category verification task in which concept typicality was manipulated parametrically. We argue that typicality is relevant to both amodal feature integration centers as well as category-specific regions. Both the Inferior Frontal Gyrus (IFG) and ATL demonstrated a negative correlation with typicality, whereas inferior parietal regions showed positive effects. We interpret this in light of functional theories of these regions. Interactions between category and typicality were not observed in regions classically recognized as category-specific, thus, providing an argument against category specific regions, at least with fMRI.

In the present study, we present normative ratings of free association for 139 European Portuguese (EP) words among 7- to 8-, 9- to 10-, and 11- to 12-year-old children attending the 3rd, 5th, and 7th grades of elementary and middle school in Portugal. For each word, five indices are presented: (a) the percentage of associates, (b) the strength of the first associate, (c) the strength of the second associate, (d) the distance between the first and second associates, and (e) the percentage of idiosyncratic responses. Additionally, grade-level frequency values for each word from the ESCOLEX database (Soares et al., in press) are also provided. As expected, the results revealed developmental changes in the knowledge organization of the children, which occurred at the ages of 9-10 (5th grade) and remained stable in the 11- to 12-year-old children (7th grade). Specifically, we observed a decrease in the percentages of associates and idiosyncratic responses, as well as an increase in the strengths of the first and second associates from the 3rd to the 5th grade. Moreover, a comparative analysis with the previous work of Carneiro, Albuquerque, Fernandez, and Esteves (2004) on EP and Macizo, Gómez-Ariza, and Bajo (2000) on Spanish, for the subsets of common words (16 and 58, respectively), showed that the present norms fit well with previous EP data, but differ from the Spanish data.

The ability to recognize the emotions of others is a crucial skill. In the visual modality, sensorimotor mechanisms provide an important route for emotion recognition. Perceiving facial expressions often evokes activity in facial muscles and in motor and somatosensory systems, and this activity relates to performance in emotion tasks. It remains unclear, however, whether and how similar mechanisms extend to audition. To address this issue, we examined facial electromyographic and electrodermal responses to nonverbal vocalizations that varied in emotional authenticity. Participants (N = 100) passively listened to laughs and cries that could reflect a genuine or a posed emotion. Bayesian mixed models indicated that listening to laughter evoked stronger facial responses than listening to crying. These responses were sensitive to emotional authenticity. Genuine laughs evoked more activity than posed laughs in the zygomaticus and orbicularis, muscles typically associated with positive affect. We also found that activity in the orbicularis and corrugator related to performance in a subsequent authenticity detection task. Stronger responses in the orbicularis predicted improved recognition of genuine laughs. Stronger responses in the corrugator, a muscle associated with negative affect, predicted improved recognition of posed laughs. Moreover, genuine laughs elicited stronger skin conductance responses than posed laughs. This arousal effect did not predict task performance, though. For crying, physiological responses were not associated with authenticity judgments. Altogether, these findings indicate that emotional authenticity affects peripheral nervous system responses to vocalizations. They point to a role of sensorimotor mechanisms in the evaluation of authenticity in the auditory modality.