The Berlin Affective Word List Reloaded (BAWL-R)

Abstract

The study presented here provides researchers with a revised list of affective German words, the Berlin Affective Word List Reloaded (BAWL-R). This work is an extension of the previously published BAWL , which has enabled researchers to investigate affective word processing with highly controlled stimulus material. The lack of arousal ratings, however, necessitated a revised version of the BAWL. We therefore present the BAWL-R, which is the first list that not only contains a large set of psycholinguistic indexes known to influence word processing, but also features ratings regarding emotional arousal, in addition to emotional valence and imageability. The BAWL-R is intended to help researchers create stimulus material for a wide range of experiments dealing with the affective processing of German verbal material.

Affective processing within 1/10th of a second: High arousal is necessary for early facilitative processing of negative but not positive words

“…The authors, however, did not control for arousal. Nevertheless, it is likely that the highly negative words were also of high arousal (Bradley & Lang, 1999;Võ et al, 2009). Moreover, Thomas and LaBar (2005) showed that priming effects during lexical decision are enhanced for high-arousal taboo words as compared with neutral words, whereas low-arousal negative words showed no such enhancement of priming effects.…”

“…Estimates for emotional valence and imageability were taken from the Berlin Affective Word List in its revised form (BAWL-R; Võ et al, 2009). Emotional valence ratings ranged from 3 (very negative) to 3 (very positive), imageability ratings from 1 (low imageability) to 7 (high imageability), and arousal ratings from 1 (low arousal ) to 5 (high arousal ).…”

Individual differences in criterion-based dropout learning in old age: the role of processing speed and verbal knowledge

“…Learning and memory Paired associates For the paired associates task comprising 40 word pairs, 80 German words were selected from the Berlin Affective Word List Reloaded (BAWL-R; Võ et al 2009). Half of the words, which functioned as the cues in word pairs, were two-syllable words (e.g., ''Hafer'' [oat]).…”

Discrete emotion norms for nouns: Berlin affective word list (DENN–BAWL)

“…Prominent examples are the Spanish adaption of ANEW (Redondo, Fraga, Padrón, & Comesaña, 2007), the Finish and British English word list (Eilola & Havelka, 2010), and BAWL (see Võ et al, 2006), which was recently revised (BAWL-R, see Võ et al, 2009) and now contains norms on the dimensions valence and arousal for more than 2,900 German words, including nouns (2,107), verbs (504), and adjectives (291). Norms for discrete emotions, however, which would allow for a broader focus on emotional word processing in non-English-speaking populations, are not yet available in any other language.…”