Emotion words and categories: evidence from lexical decision

Abstract

We examined the categorical nature of emotion word recognition. Positive, negative, and neutral words were presented in lexical decision tasks. Word frequency was additionally manipulated. In Experiment 1, "positive" and "negative" categories of words were implicitly indicated by the blocked design employed. A significant emotion-frequency interaction was obtained, replicating past research. While positive words consistently elicited faster responses than neutral words, only low frequency negative words demonstrated a similar advantage. In Experiments 2a and 2b, explicit categories ("positive," "negative," and "household" items) were specified to participants. Positive words again elicited faster responses than did neutral words. Responses to negative words, however, were no different than those to neutral words, regardless of their frequency. The overall pattern of effects indicates that positive words are always facilitated, frequency plays a greater role in the recognition of negative words, and a "negative" category represents a somewhat disparate set of emotions. These results support the notion that emotion word processing may be moderated by distinct systems. Barsalou, 1983) and whether a category is established implicitly or explicitly, for example, via the context afforded by a list of related items or by an encompassing label (e.g., Bazzanella & Bouquet, 2011;Becker, 1980;Schacter & Badgaiyan, 2001), has implications for the amount of benefit conferred on its members.To investigate the categorical nature of emotion word processing, we designed a series of lexical decision experiments that all additionally manipulated word frequency, in particular, because of its differential effect on responses to negative words. In the prior emotion × frequency lexical decision studies, positive and negative words were intermixed with neutral words within a single block. In our first study (Experiment 1), we examined whether the same pattern of effects would be obtained under conditions of implicit Emotion words and categories 5 categorical priming -when positive and negative words were presented in separate blocks.In the subsequent two studies, we examined the effect of explicit category priming, comparing responses to words belonging to the neutral category of "household" items to those within the category of either "positive" (Experiment 2a) or "negative" (Experiment 2b) items. In the Kuchinke et al. (2007) and Scott et al. (2009) Taken together, the results of these experiments should begin to address the role that categorical priming plays in experimental research into emotion word processing. Experiment 1 MethodParticipants. Twenty-four members of the University of Glasgow community (16 female; mean age 25) received compensation for their participation. All were native English speakers, were right-handed, had normal or corrected-to-normal vision, and were naïve as to the purpose of the experiment.Apparatus. The experiment was run on a Mac G4 using PsyScope 1.2.5 PPC software. Stimuli were presented ...

Affective norms of 875 Spanish words for five discrete emotional categories and two emotional dimensions

“…Again, the results of several studies underline the importance of controlling word frequency effects in studies dealing with the processing of emotional words. Along these lines, interactions between word frequency and valence have been observed, especially during the processing of lowfrequency negative words (Méndez-Bértolo et al, 2011b;Scott, O'Donnell, Leuthold, & Sereno, 2009;Scott, O'Donnell, & Sereno, 2014).…”

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“…A significant number of studies have revealed that these effects are pervasive. Indeed, modulations of the processing of words by their emotional content have been documented not only in tasks involving affective decisions (Estes & Verges, 2008;González-Villar, Triñanes, Zurrón, & Carrillo-de-la-Peña, 2014;Herbert, Kissler, Junghöfer, Peyk, & Rockstroh, 2006), but also in experimental situations in which the emotional content was irrelevant to the task (González-Villar et al, 2014;Hinojosa, Méndez-Bértolo, & Pozo, 2010;Kousta, Vinson, & Vigliocco 2009;Schacht & Sommer, 2009;Scott, O'Donnell, & Sereno 2014).…”

The Glasgow Norms: Ratings of 5,500 words on 9 scales

“…In the psycholinguistic literature, emotion is generally represented within a two-dimensional framework (e.g., Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957;Russell, 1980), with greater emotionality associated with higher arousal and extreme valence. In behavioral terms, positive and negative emotion words tend to be recognized faster than comparable neutral words (e.g., Scott et al, 2009Scott et al, , 2012Scott et al, , 2014Sereno et al, 2015;Yao et al, 2017).…”