Arousal and emotional valence interact in written word recognition

Citron, Francesca; Weekes, Brendan S.; Ferstl, Evelyn C.

doi:10.1080/23273798.2014.897734

Cited by 74 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Some studies reported processing facilitation and enhanced brain activity in response to positive but not to negative words, once the level of arousal had been matched (Citron, Gray, Critchley, Weekes, & Ferstl, 2014;Herbert et al, 2009;Kuchinke et al, 2005;Recio, Conrad, Hansen, & Jacobs, 2014). In contrast, other studies reported no difference between positive and negative words (Citron et al, 2014a;Kousta et al, 2009;Larsen et al, 2006), unless a block design was used (Algom, Chajut, & Lev, 2004;Nasrallah, Carmel, & Lavie, 2009). (i) Emotional arousal describes the excitation potential of a stimulus, independently of whether it is positive or negative (Barrett & Russell, 1998).…”

Section: The Psycholinguistic Characteristics Of Idiomsmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Since normative studies on idiomatic expressions have not rated this variable (and arousal), we briefly review the literature on single words. Once a range of psycholinguistic variables have been controlled, emotionally valenced words have processing priority as compared to neutral words, leading to faster reaction times and higher accuracy in a variety of tasks (e.g., Citron, Weekes, & Ferstl, 2014a;Kousta, Vinson, & Vigliocco, 2009;Larsen, Mercer, & Balota, 2006). Furthermore, emotionally valenced words elicit a larger amplitude of ERP components associated with the processing of emotional stimuli (i.e., the early posterior negativity (EPN) and the late positive component (LPC)).…”

Section: The Psycholinguistic Characteristics Of Idiomsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

When emotions are expressed figuratively: Psycholinguistic and Affective Norms of 619 Idioms for German (PANIG)

et al. 2015

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Despite flourishing research on the relationship between emotion and literal language, and despite the pervasiveness of figurative expressions in communication, the role of figurative language in conveying affect has been underinvestigated. This study provides affective and psycholinguistic norms for 619 German idiomatic expressions and explores the relationships between affective and psycholinguistic idiom properties. German native speakers rated each idiom for emotional valence, arousal, familiarity, semantic transparency, figurativeness, and concreteness. They also described the figurative meaning of each idiom and rated how confident they were about the attributed meaning. The results showed that idioms rated high in valence were also rated high in arousal. Negative idioms were rated as more arousing than positive ones, in line with results from single words. Furthermore, arousal correlated positively with figurativeness (supporting the idea that figurative expressions are more emotionally engaging than literal expressions) and with concreteness and semantic transparency. This suggests that idioms may convey a more direct reference to sensory representations, mediated by the meanings of their constituting words. Arousal correlated positively with familiarity. In addition, positive idioms were rated as more familiar than negative idioms. Finally, idioms without a literal counterpart were rated as more emotionally valenced and arousing than idioms with a literal counterpart. Although the meanings of ambiguous idioms were less correctly defined than those of unambiguous idioms, ambiguous idioms were rated as more concrete than unambiguous ones. We also discuss the relationships between the various psycholinguistic variables characterizing idioms, with reference to the literature on idiom structure and processing.

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Section: The Psycholinguistic Characteristics Of Idiomsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: The Psycholinguistic Characteristics Of Idiomsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When emotions are expressed figuratively: Psycholinguistic and Affective Norms of 619 Idioms for German (PANIG)

et al. 2015

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“…The processing advantage for emotional words compared to neutral words has also been found using other cognitive tasks such as the Emotional Stroop task [14] [15]. This task provides an experimental measure of selective attention to emotional information.…”

Section: A Emotional Word Processing Versus Neutral Word Processingmentioning

confidence: 97%

Variations in Bilingual Processing of Positive and Negative Information

Ong¹,

Hussain²,

Chow³

et al. 2017

Annual International Conference on Cognitive and Behavioral Psychology

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Abstract-Past research suggests that the emotional content of words has greater impact when presented in a bilingual's first language (L1) compared to their second language (L2). This is predicted to be a consequence of automatic processing of emotional words in L1 compared to slower, semantic processing in L2. In the current study 58 Chinese-English bilinguals from Hong Kong rated the valence and arousal of positive, neutral, and negative words presented in Chinese (L1) and English (L2). In contrast to predictions, perceived emotionality of the words was higher in L2, with positive words rated more positively and negative words rated more negatively when presented in English compared to Chinese. The findings suggest that words presented in L2 did not have lower emotional impact than L1, the results indicate that emotional processing of words may be influenced by language proficiency and language complexity.

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“…A key feature of emotional words is that, whereas they are clearly 'meaningful', in as much as the information they provide is relevant for an individual, it seems that valence and arousal effects in word processing are relatively independent of lexicosemantic variables (Citron, Weekes, & Ferstl, 2014a). For instance, the words 'slug', 'cancer' and 'depression' are all negative (and highly arousing) but belong to completely different semantic categories.…”

Section: Emotional Words and The Two Dimensional Models Of Emotion: Bmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In particular, lexical decision studies with a tight control of other psycholinguistic variables have revealed a processing advantage of emotional over neutral words (see Citron et al, 2014a). It has also been observed that valence and arousal affect word recognition in an interactive manner: reaction times are faster for emotional words, independently of valence, whereas pleasant words in particular have been seen to be recognized more accurately than negative and neutral ones (Citron et al, 2014a). This supports the idea that an implicit approachewithdrawal mechanism underlies the processing of emotion stimuli, as proposed by Robinson, Storbeck, Meier, and Kirkeby (2004).…”

Section: Emotional Words and The Two Dimensional Models Of Emotion: Bmentioning

confidence: 99%