The representation of emotion vs. emotion-laden words in English and Spanish in the Affective Simon Task

Abstract

An Affective Simon Task was administered to English-speaking monolinguals and Spanish—English bilinguals, in order to assess the extent to which valence and emotionality are automatically processed when reading a word. Participants classified words in white on the basis of valence (positive or negative), or classified them on the basis of color (blue or green) via a key press. Words were either emotion words (e.g., happy; anxious) or emotion-laden words (e.g., dream; shark). Bilinguals viewed words in both English and Spanish. While only negative emotion words produced the typical congruency effects, both negative and positive emotion-laden words produced significant Simon effects, in monolinguals. Similar effects emerged for bilinguals, in both languages. Results indicate that emotion word type moderates the Affective Simon Task and also provide a demonstration of these effects in bilinguals. Overall, the data also provide further evidence that affective coding in both a dominant and a subordinate language can influence subsequent responses in seemingly irrelevant tasks. Results are discussed within a framework focused on the representation of emotion in both monolingual and bilingual speakers.

Emotion effects during reading: Influence of an emotion target word on eye movements and processing

“…Emotion-laden words do not refer to an emotion but rather to a concept that is associated with an emotional state (e.g., death or marriage). Previous research has indicated that emotion and emotion-laden words are processed differently by participants in cognitive paradigms (Altarriba & Basnight-Brown, 2011;Knickerbocker & Altarriba, 2011, 2013. These studies have presented evidence that supports a position that the direct connection between emotion words and emotion concepts and the indirect connection between emotion-laden words and emotion concepts led to observable differences in participant performance.…”

“…The embodied account of semantic representation (Vigliocco, Meteyard, Andrews, & Kousta, 2009) may provide support for the interpretation of the differing emotion and emotion-laden effects detailed by Knickerbocker and Altarriba (2013) and Altarriba and Basnight-Brown (2011). Kousta, Vigliocco, Vinson, Andrews, and Del Campo (2011) described semantic representations as including experiential and linguistic information.…”

“…These studies have presented evidence that supports a position that the direct connection between emotion words and emotion concepts and the indirect connection between emotion-laden words and emotion concepts led to observable differences in participant performance. Altarriba and Basnight-Brown (2011) utilised an Affective Simon Task to explore for differences between emotion and emotion-laden words. Participants viewed individual words and indicated whether the words were nouns or adjectives.…”

Affective norms for 380 Spanish words belonging to three different semantic categories

“…kiss) have a processing advantage over neutral words (e.g., table, Kousta, Vinson, & Vigliocco, 2009;Schacht & Sommer, 2009;Scott, O'Donnell, Leuthold, & Sereno, 2009). Affectively valenced words also seem to capture more attention than their neutral counterparts, as suggested by studies that have used either the emotional Stroop task (Eilola, Havelka, & Sharma, 2007;MacKay & Ahmetzanov, 2005;Sutton & Altarriba, 2008;Sutton, Altarriba, Gianico, & Basnight Brown, 2007), the attentional blink paradigm (Huang, Baddeley, & Young, 2008;Mathewson, Arnell, & Mansfield, 2008), or the Affective Simon task (Altarriba & Basnight-Brown, 2011;De Houwer, 2003;De Houwer, Crombez, Baeyens, & Hermans, 2001). Furthermore, it has consistently been shown that emotional words are better remembered than neutral ones (Altarriba & Bauer, 2004;Brierley, Medford, Shaw, & David, 2007;Buchanan, Etzel, Adolphs, & Tranel, 2006;Ferré, 2003;Ferré, García, Fraga, Sánchez-Casas, & Molero, 2010;Herbert, Junghofer, & Kissler, 2008;Herbert & Kissler, 2010;Kensinger, 2008;Kensinger & Corkin, 2003;Kissler, Herbert, Peyk, & Junghofer, 2007).…”

Glimpses of semantic restructuring of English emotion-laden words of American English L1 users residing outside the USA

“…Pavlenko (2008) argued firstly that emotion words are a separate class of words in the mental lexicon, which are "represented and processed differently from abstract and concrete words" (p. 147). This is also the point made by Altarriba and colleagues who have demonstrated that emotion and emotion-laden words are distinctive both from concrete and abstract words, in terms of representation, processing, and recall (Altarriba 2006;Altarriba & Basnight-Brown 2011;Altarriba & Bauer 2004;Kazanas & Altarriba 2015). Even emotion and emotion-laden words seem to be processed differently, with the former being processed faster, especially in bilinguals' dominant language (Kazanas & Altarriba 2016).…”