Modulation of ongoing cognitive processes by emotionally intense words

Abstract

Contrary to what occurs with negative pictures, negative words are, in general, not capable of interfering with performance in ongoing cognitive tasks in normal subjects. A probable explanation is the limited arousing power of linguistic material. Especially intense words (insults and compliments), neutral personal adjectives, and pseudowords were presented to 28 participants while they executed a lexical decision task. Insults were associated with the poorest performance in the task and compliments with the best. Amplitude of the late positive component of the event-related potentials, originating at parietal areas, was maximal in response to compliments and insults, but latencies were delayed in response to the latter. Results suggest that intense emotional words modulate ongoing cognitive processes through both bottom-up (attentional capture by insults) and top-down (facilitation of cognitive processing by arousing words) mechanisms.

Electrophysiological differences in the processing of affective information in words and pictures

“…By contrast, attentional engagement was emotionally driven in the case of pictures, facilitating the processing of those stimuli that are more relevant from a biological perspective (see the Discussion section of Experiment 2). These results now provide direct evidence supporting the view that emotional images are capable of inducing a higher amount of physiological arousal than are affective words, as has previously been suggested (Carretié et al, 2008;Keil, 2006).…”

“…Some studies have reported facilitation effects, whereas others have shown inhibition for emotional words (Carretié et al, 2008;Fazio, 2001;Kanske & Kotz, 2007;Keil & Ihssen, 2004;Rossell & Nobre, 2004;Williamson, Harpur, & Hare, 1991), using a variety of tasks, including Stroop, lexical decision, priming, and speed of pronunciation. Also, the results of some studies resemble our findings, since they have reported no effects at all (Klinger, Burton, & Pitts, 2000;Spruyt, Hermans, Pandelaere, De Houwer, & Eelen, 2004).…”

“…One of the most consistent findings has been the enhancement of late positivities at centro-parietal locations (the P300, or late positive component [LPC]), by positive and negative stimuli, as compared with neutral ones, by either images (e.g., Cuthbert, Schupp, Bradley, Birbaumer, & Lang, 2000;Delplanque, Silvert, Hot, Rigoulot, & Sequeira, 2006;Keil et al, 2002;Olofsson & Polich, 2007;see Olofsson, Nordin, Sequeira, & Polich, 2008, for a review) or words (e.g., Carretié et al, 2008;Dillon, Cooper, Grent-'t-Jong, Woldorff, & LaBar, 2006;Herbert, Kissler, Junghöfer, Peyk, & Rockstroh, 2006;Kanske & Kotz, 2007;Naumann, Bartussek, Diedrich, & Laufer, 1992). However, this modulation seems to be not unequivocal in the case of words, since several studies failed to report amplitude differences (Naumann, Maier, Diedrich, Becker, & Bartussek, 1997;Schapkin, Gusev, & Kuhl, 2000).…”

The adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) for European Portuguese

“…Despite the fact that emotional properties of verbal stimuli (especially arousal) seem to be less pronounced when compared with pictorial stimuli (e.g., Carretié et al, 2008;Gibbons, 2009;Kensinger & Schacter, 2006), there is evidence for emotional effects in word processing as well. Emotional words seem to more readily attract attention and cause more interference during ongoing tasks, as compared with neutral ones (e.g., Anderson, 2005;Dresler, Mériau, Heekeren, & van der Meer, 2009;Pratto & John, 1991).…”

The dynamic influence of emotional words on sentence comprehension: An ERP study

“…In addition to the early ERP effects that reflect automatic attention captured by emotionality, some other emotional ERP effects have also been reported. For instance, as compared to neutral words, emotional words elicit a larger P2 (Herbert, Kissler, Junghöfer, Peyk, & Rockstroh, 2006;Wang & Bastiaansen, 2014), early posterior negativity (EPN; Herbert, Junghöfer, & Kissler, 2008;Kissler, Herbert, Winkler, & Junghöfer, 2009;Schacht & Sommer, 2009), and late positive complex (LPC; Carretié et al, 2008;Fischler & Bradley, 2006;Hinojosa, Méndez-Bértolo, & Pozo, 2010;Kanske & Kotz, 2007), probably reflecting greater evaluation of the emotional significance carried by emotional words.…”