Electrophysiological and Behavioral Correlates of Valence, Arousal and Subjective Significance in the Lexical Decision Task

Abstract

The emotional properties of words, such as valence and arousal, influence the way we perceive and process verbal stimuli. Recently, subjective significance was found to be an additional factor describing the activational aspect of emotional reactions, which is vital for the cognitive consequences of emotional stimuli processing. Subjective significance represents the form of mental activation specific to reflective mind processing. The Lexical Decision Task (LDT) is a paradigm allowing the investigation of the involuntary processing of meaning and differentiating this processing from the formal processing of the perceptual features of words. In this study, we wanted to search for the consequences of valence, arousal, and subjective significance for the involuntary processing of verbal stimuli meaning indexed by both behavioral measures (reaction latencies) and electrophysiological measures (Event-Related Potentials: ERPs). We expected subjective significance, as the reflective form of activation, to shorten response latencies in LDT. We also expected subjective significance to modulate the amplitude of the ERP FN400 component, reducing the negative-going deflection of the potential. We expected valence to shape the LPC component amplitude, differentiating between negative and positive valences, since the LPC indexes the meaning processing. Indeed, the results confirmed our expectations and showed that subjective significance is a factor independent from the arousal and valence that shapes the involuntary processing of verbal stimuli, especially the detection of a link between stimulus and meaning indexed by the FN400. Moreover, we found that the LPC amplitude was differentiated by valence level.

The Role of the Valence, Arousing Properties and Subjective Significance of Subliminally Presented Words in Affective Priming

“…A rather small group of participants constituting the final sample could be responsible for the lack of interaction effects, which had small effect sizes in the previous studies. We also did not observe effects regarding reaction times, which were common in previous studies exploring emotional factors manipulated in this experiment, both in decision and cognitive tasks (Imbir et al, 2017a(Imbir et al, , 2017b(Imbir et al, , 2018a(Imbir et al, , 2018b(Imbir et al, , 2019(Imbir et al, , 2020. The sample in the present study also had a large discrepancy between men and women, which not only could have affected the results, but also reduces the external validity of the study.…”

“…A high load of subjective significance also increases accuracy in a Lexical Decision Task (Imbir et al, 2020). High subjective significance also prolongs reaction times in tasks requiring decisions (Imbir et al, 2018a;Imbir, 2017a), while in purely cognitive tasks, high subjective significance shortens the reaction time (Imbir et al, 2017a(Imbir et al, , 2020. Subjective significance also influences neural correlates of processing in both decision and cognitive tasks (Imbir et al, 2017a(Imbir et al, , 2018a(Imbir et al, , 2020.…”

“…In another study, words with a high load of subjective significance were assessed as more emotional than the ones with low subjective significance (Imbir et al, 2018a). A high load of subjective significance also increases accuracy in a Lexical Decision Task (Imbir et al, 2020). High subjective significance also prolongs reaction times in tasks requiring decisions (Imbir et al, 2018a;Imbir, 2017a), while in purely cognitive tasks, high subjective significance shortens the reaction time (Imbir et al, 2017a(Imbir et al, , 2020.…”

“…High subjective significance also prolongs reaction times in tasks requiring decisions (Imbir et al, 2018a;Imbir, 2017a), while in purely cognitive tasks, high subjective significance shortens the reaction time (Imbir et al, 2017a(Imbir et al, , 2020. Subjective significance also influences neural correlates of processing in both decision and cognitive tasks (Imbir et al, 2017a(Imbir et al, , 2018a(Imbir et al, , 2020. Both arousal and subjective significance also tend to come into interaction when influencing reaction times in cognitive tasks, with a high load of subjective significance reducing the disturbance caused by high arousal (Imbir, 2017a).…”

The effects of emotionality and lexical category on L2 word processing in different tasks: Evidence from late Chinese–English bilinguals

“…In L1 studies, mixed findings can be partially attributed to various methodological factors. First, some empirical work failed to fully control lexico-semantics variables possibly affecting word processing, such as word length, frequency, and concreteness (e.g., Bayer et al, 2010; Herbert et al, 2008; Imbir et al, 2020; Kanske & Kotz, 2007; Larsen et al, 2006, for review; Soares et al, 2019; Wu et al, 2020; Yao et al, 2019; Zhang et al, 2017). Second, arousal was not well-matched across conditions in some studies, such as the arousal between negative words and positive words (e.g., Palazova et al, 2011).…”