The role of subjective significance, valence and arousal in the explicit processing of emotion-laden words

Abstract

Emotional categorisation (deciding whether a word is emotional or not) is a task that employs the explicit analysis of the emotional meaning of words. Therefore, it allows for assessing the role of emotional factors, i.e., valence, arousal, and subjective significance, in emotional word processing. The aim of the current experiment was to investigate the role of subjective significance, a reflective form of activation that is similar to arousal (the automatic form), in the processing of emotional meaning. We applied the orthogonal manipulation of three emotional factors. Thus, we were able to precisely differentiate the effects of each factor and search for interactions between them. We expected valence to shape the late positive complex LPC component, while subjective significance and arousal were expected to shape the P300 and N400 components. We observed the effects of subjective significance throughout the whole span of processing, while the arousal effect was present only in the LPC component. We also observed that amplitudes for N400 and LPC discriminated negative from positive valence. The results showed that all factors included in the analysis should be taken into account while explaining the processing of emotion-laden words; especially interesting is the subjective significance, which was shown to shape processing individually, as well as to come into interaction with valence and arousal.

More than just ambivalence: the perception of emotionally ambiguous words on the spaces of origin and activation indexed by behavioural and webcam-based eye-tracking correlates

“…In previous research, automatic versus reflective emotions had different consequences on human decision-making (Walkowiak & Imbir, 2018); furthermore, the words rated as automatic or reflective had different influences on assessing social stimuli (Imbir, 2017b;Imbir et al, 2022a;Imbir & Pastwa, 2021) and controlling cognition (Imbir, 2017a;Imbir et al, 2022b). After splitting the bipolar dimension of origin into two unipolar dimensions of automaticity and reflectiveness, they negatively and moderately correlated with one another (r = À.50; Wielgopolan & Imbir, 2022).…”