101
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Mixing positive and negative valence: Affective-semantic integration of bivalent words. Sci Rep 2016; 6:30718. [PMID: 27491491 PMCID: PMC4974501 DOI: 10.1038/srep30718] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/22/2015] [Accepted: 07/06/2016] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
Single words have affective and aesthetic properties that influence their processing. Here we investigated the processing of a special case of word stimuli that are extremely difficult to evaluate, bivalent noun-noun-compounds (NNCs), i.e. novel words that mix a positive and negative noun, e.g. ‘Bombensex’ (bomb-sex). In a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment we compared their processing with easier-to-evaluate non-bivalent NNCs in a valence decision task (VDT). Bivalent NNCs produced longer reaction times and elicited greater activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) than non-bivalent words, especially in contrast to words of negative valence. We attribute this effect to a LIFG-grounded process of semantic integration that requires greater effort for processing converse information, supporting the notion of a valence representation based on associations in semantic networks.
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102
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Imbir KK. Affective Norms for 4900 Polish Words Reload (ANPW_R): Assessments for Valence, Arousal, Dominance, Origin, Significance, Concreteness, Imageability and, Age of Acquisition. Front Psychol 2016; 7:1081. [PMID: 27486423 PMCID: PMC4947584 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01081] [Citation(s) in RCA: 56] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/30/2015] [Accepted: 07/01/2016] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
In studies that combine understanding of emotions and language, there is growing demand for good-quality experimental materials. To meet this expectation, a large number of 4905 Polish words was assessed by 400 participants in order to provide a well-established research method for everyone interested in emotional word processing. The Affective Norms for Polish Words Reloaded (ANPW_R) is designed as an extension to the previously introduced the ANPW dataset and provides assessments for eight different affective and psycholinguistic measures of Valence, Arousal, Dominance, Origin, Significance, Concreteness, Imageability, and subjective Age of Acquisition. The ANPW_R is now the largest available dataset of affective words for Polish, including affective scores that have not been measured in any other dataset (concreteness and age of acquisition scales). Additionally, the ANPW_R allows for testing hypotheses concerning dual-mind models of emotion and activation (origin and subjective significance scales). Participants in the current study assessed all 4905 words in the list within 1 week, at their own pace in home sessions, using eight different Self-assessment Manikin (SAM) scales. Each measured dimension was evaluated by 25 women and 25 men. The ANPW_R norms appeared to be reliable in split-half estimation and congruent with previous normative studies in Polish. The quadratic relation between valence and arousal was found to be in line with previous findings. In addition, nine other relations appeared to be better described by quadratic instead of linear function. The ANPW_R provides well-established research materials for use in psycholinguistic and affective studies in Polish-speaking samples.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kamil K Imbir
- Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw Warsaw, Poland
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103
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Yao Z, Yu D, Wang L, Zhu X, Guo J, Wang Z. Effects of valence and arousal on emotional word processing are modulated by concreteness: Behavioral and ERP evidence from a lexical decision task. Int J Psychophysiol 2016; 110:231-242. [PMID: 27432482 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2016.07.499] [Citation(s) in RCA: 45] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/19/2016] [Revised: 07/12/2016] [Accepted: 07/14/2016] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
We investigated whether the effects of valence and arousal on emotional word processing are modulated by concreteness using event-related potentials (ERPs). The stimuli included concrete words (Experiment 1) and abstract words (Experiment 2) that were organized in an orthogonal design, with valence (positive and negative) and arousal (low and high) as factors in a lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, the impact of emotion on the effects of concrete words mainly resulted from the contribution of valence. Positive concrete words were processed more quickly than negative words and elicited a reduction of N400 (300-410ms) and enhancement of late positive complex (LPC; 450-750ms), whereas no differences in response times or ERPs were found between high and low levels of arousal. In Experiment 2, the interaction between valence and arousal influenced the impact of emotion on the effects of abstract words. Low-arousal positive words were associated with shorter response times and a reduction of LPC amplitudes compared with high-arousal positive words. Low-arousal negative words were processed more slowly and elicited a reduction of N170 (140-200ms) compared with high-arousal negative words. The present study indicates that word concreteness modulates the contributions of valence and arousal to the effects of emotion, and this modulation occurs during the early perceptual processing stage (N170) and late elaborate processing stage (LPC) for emotional words and at the end of all cognitive processes (i.e., reflected by response times). These findings support an embodied theory of semantic representation and help clarify prior inconsistent findings regarding the ways in which valance and arousal influence different stages of word processing, at least in a lexical decision task.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhao Yao
- School of Humanities, Xidian University, Xi'an 710126, China.
| | - Deshui Yu
- School of Humanities, Xidian University, Xi'an 710126, China
| | - Lili Wang
- School of Educational Science, Huaiyin Normal University, Huaian 223300, China
| | - Xiangru Zhu
- Department of Psychology, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China
| | - Jingjing Guo
- School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an 710062, China
| | - Zhenhong Wang
- School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an 710062, China.
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104
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Grass A, Bayer M, Schacht A. Electrophysiological Correlates of Emotional Content and Volume Level in Spoken Word Processing. Front Hum Neurosci 2016; 10:326. [PMID: 27458359 PMCID: PMC4930929 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00326] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/26/2016] [Accepted: 06/13/2016] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
For visual stimuli of emotional content as pictures and written words, stimulus size has been shown to increase emotion effects in the early posterior negativity (EPN), a component of event-related potentials (ERPs) indexing attention allocation during visual sensory encoding. In the present study, we addressed the question whether this enhanced relevance of larger (visual) stimuli might generalize to the auditory domain and whether auditory emotion effects are modulated by volume. Therefore, subjects were listening to spoken words with emotional or neutral content, played at two different volume levels, while ERPs were recorded. Negative emotional content led to an increased frontal positivity and parieto-occipital negativity-a scalp distribution similar to the EPN-between ~370 and 530 ms. Importantly, this emotion-related ERP component was not modulated by differences in volume level, which impacted early auditory processing, as reflected in increased amplitudes of the N1 (80-130 ms) and P2 (130-265 ms) components as hypothesized. However, contrary to effects of stimulus size in the visual domain, volume level did not influence later ERP components. These findings indicate modality-specific and functionally independent processing triggered by emotional content of spoken words and volume level.
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Affiliation(s)
- Annika Grass
- Courant Research Centre Text Structures, University of GöttingenGöttingen, Germany; Leibniz-ScienceCampus Primate CognitionGöttingen, Germany
| | - Mareike Bayer
- Courant Research Centre Text Structures, University of Göttingen Göttingen, Germany
| | - Annekathrin Schacht
- Courant Research Centre Text Structures, University of GöttingenGöttingen, Germany; Leibniz-ScienceCampus Primate CognitionGöttingen, Germany
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105
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Schindler S, Kissler J. People matter: Perceived sender identity modulates cerebral processing of socio-emotional language feedback. Neuroimage 2016; 134:160-169. [PMID: 27039140 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.03.052] [Citation(s) in RCA: 32] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/23/2015] [Revised: 02/17/2016] [Accepted: 03/21/2016] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Sebastian Schindler
- Department of Psychology, University of Bielefeld, Germany; Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC), University of Bielefeld, Germany.
| | - Johanna Kissler
- Department of Psychology, University of Bielefeld, Germany; Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC), University of Bielefeld, Germany
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106
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Sylvester T, Braun M, Schmidtke D, Jacobs AM. The Berlin Affective Word List for Children (kidBAWL): Exploring Processing of Affective Lexical Semantics in the Visual and Auditory Modalities. Front Psychol 2016; 7:969. [PMID: 27445930 PMCID: PMC4928334 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00969] [Citation(s) in RCA: 29] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/09/2016] [Accepted: 06/10/2016] [Indexed: 01/09/2023] Open
Abstract
While research on affective word processing in adults witnesses increasing interest, the present paper looks at another group of participants that have been neglected so far: pupils (age range: 6-12 years). Introducing a variant of the Berlin Affective Wordlist (BAWL) especially adapted for children of that age group, the "kidBAWL," we examined to what extent pupils process affective lexical semantics similarly to adults. In three experiments using rating and valence decision tasks in both the visual and auditory modality, it was established that children show the two ubiquitous phenomena observed in adults with emotional word material: the asymmetric U-shaped function relating valence to arousal ratings, and the inversely U-shaped function relating response times to valence decision latencies. The results for both modalities show large structural similarities between pupil and adult data (taken from previous studies) indicating that in the present age range, the affective lexicon and the dynamic interplay between language and emotion is already well-developed. Differential effects show that younger children tend to choose less extreme ratings than older children and that rating latencies decrease with age. Overall, our study should help to develop more realistic models of word recognition and reading that include affective processes and offer a methodology for exploring the roots of pleasant literary experiences and ludic reading.
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Affiliation(s)
- Teresa Sylvester
- Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin Berlin, Germany
| | - Mario Braun
- Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Universität Salzburg Salzburg, Austria
| | - David Schmidtke
- Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin Berlin, Germany
| | - Arthur M Jacobs
- Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany; Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
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107
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Schindler S, Kissler J. Selective visual attention to emotional words: Early parallel frontal and visual activations followed by interactive effects in visual cortex. Hum Brain Mapp 2016; 37:3575-87. [PMID: 27218232 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.23261] [Citation(s) in RCA: 53] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/29/2016] [Revised: 04/30/2016] [Accepted: 05/04/2016] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
Human brains spontaneously differentiate between various emotional and neutral stimuli, including written words whose emotional quality is symbolic. In the electroencephalogram (EEG), emotional-neutral processing differences are typically reflected in the early posterior negativity (EPN, 200-300 ms) and the late positive potential (LPP, 400-700 ms). These components are also enlarged by task-driven visual attention, supporting the assumption that emotional content naturally drives attention. Still, the spatio-temporal dynamics of interactions between emotional stimulus content and task-driven attention remain to be specified. Here, we examine this issue in visual word processing. Participants attended to negative, neutral, or positive nouns while high-density EEG was recorded. Emotional content and top-down attention both amplified the EPN component in parallel. On the LPP, by contrast, emotion and attention interacted: Explicit attention to emotional words led to a substantially larger amplitude increase than did explicit attention to neutral words. Source analysis revealed early parallel effects of emotion and attention in bilateral visual cortex and a later interaction of both in right visual cortex. Distinct effects of attention were found in inferior, middle and superior frontal, paracentral, and parietal areas, as well as in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Results specify separate and shared mechanisms of emotion and attention at distinct processing stages. Hum Brain Mapp 37:3575-3587, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sebastian Schindler
- Department of Psychology, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany.,Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC), University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany
| | - Johanna Kissler
- Department of Psychology, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany.,Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC), University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany
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108
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Lai VT, Huettig F. When prediction is fulfilled: Insight from emotion processing. Neuropsychologia 2016; 85:110-7. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.03.014] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/23/2015] [Revised: 12/01/2015] [Accepted: 03/13/2016] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
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109
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No one way ticket from orthography to semantics in recognition memory: N400 and P200 effects of associations. Brain Res 2016; 1639:88-98. [DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2016.02.029] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/01/2015] [Revised: 01/10/2016] [Accepted: 02/17/2016] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
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110
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Abstract
We present a database of 858 German words from the semantic fields of authority and community, which represent core dimensions of human sociality. The words were selected on the basis of co-occurrence profiles of representative keywords for these semantic fields. All words were rated along five dimensions, each measured by a bipolar semantic-differential scale: Besides the classic dimensions of affective meaning (valence, arousal, and potency), we collected ratings of authority and community with newly developed scales. The results from cluster, correlational, and multiple regression analyses on the rating data suggest a robust negativity bias for authority valuation among German raters recruited via university mailing lists, whereas community ratings appear to be rather unrelated to the well-established affective dimensions. Furthermore, our data involve a strong overall negative correlation-rather than the classical U-shaped distribution-between valence and arousal for socially relevant concepts. Our database provides a valuable resource for research questions at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and social psychology. It can be downloaded as supplemental materials with this article.
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111
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Gibbons H, Schnuerch R, Stahl J. From Positivity to Negativity Bias: Ambiguity Affects the Neurophysiological Signatures of Feedback Processing. J Cogn Neurosci 2016; 28:542-57. [DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_00921] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/04/2022]
Abstract
Abstract
Previous studies on the neurophysiological underpinnings of feedback processing almost exclusively used low-ambiguity feedback, which does not fully address the diversity of situations in everyday life. We therefore used a pseudo trial-and-error learning task to investigate ERPs of low- versus high-ambiguity feedback. Twenty-eight participants tried to deduce the rule governing visual feedback to their button presses in response to visual stimuli. In the blocked condition, the same two feedback words were presented across several consecutive trials, whereas in the random condition feedback was randomly drawn on each trial from sets of five positive and five negative words. The feedback-related negativity (FRN-D), a frontocentral ERP difference between negative and positive feedback, was significantly larger in the blocked condition, whereas the centroparietal late positive complex indicating controlled attention was enhanced for negative feedback irrespective of condition. Moreover, FRN-D in the blocked condition was due to increased reward positivity (Rew-P) for positive feedback, rather than increased (raw) FRN for negative feedback. Our findings strongly support recent lines of evidence that the FRN-D, one of the most widely studied signatures of reinforcement learning in the human brain, critically depends on feedback discriminability and is primarily driven by the Rew-P. A novel finding concerned larger frontocentral P2 for negative feedback in the random but not the blocked condition. Although Rew-P points to a positivity bias in feedback processing under conditions of low feedback ambiguity, P2 suggests a specific adaptation of information processing in case of highly ambiguous feedback, involving an early negativity bias. Generalizability of the P2 findings was demonstrated in a second experiment using explicit valence categorization of highly emotional positive and negative adjectives.
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112
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Individual differences in emotion word processing: A diffusion model analysis. COGNITIVE AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE 2016; 16:489-501. [DOI: 10.3758/s13415-016-0408-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
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113
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Citron FMM, Abugaber D, Herbert C. Approach and Withdrawal Tendencies during Written Word Processing: Effects of Task, Emotional Valence, and Emotional Arousal. Front Psychol 2016; 6:1935. [PMID: 26779067 PMCID: PMC4701914 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01935] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/26/2015] [Accepted: 12/01/2015] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
The affective dimensions of emotional valence and emotional arousal affect processing of verbal and pictorial stimuli. Traditional emotional theories assume a linear relationship between these dimensions, with valence determining the direction of a behavior (approach vs. withdrawal) and arousal its intensity or strength. In contrast, according to the valence-arousal conflict theory, both dimensions are interactively related: positive valence and low arousal (PL) are associated with an implicit tendency to approach a stimulus, whereas negative valence and high arousal (NH) are associated with withdrawal. Hence, positive, high-arousal (PH) and negative, low-arousal (NL) stimuli elicit conflicting action tendencies. By extending previous research that used several tasks and methods, the present study investigated whether and how emotional valence and arousal affect subjective approach vs. withdrawal tendencies toward emotional words during two novel tasks. In Study 1, participants had to decide whether they would approach or withdraw from concepts expressed by written words. In Studies 2 and 3 participants had to respond to each word by pressing one of two keys labeled with an arrow pointing upward or downward. Across experiments, positive and negative words, high or low in arousal, were presented. In Study 1 (explicit task), in line with the valence-arousal conflict theory, PH and NL words were responded to more slowly than PL and NH words. In addition, participants decided to approach positive words more often than negative words. In Studies 2 and 3, participants responded faster to positive than negative words, irrespective of their level of arousal. Furthermore, positive words were significantly more often associated with "up" responses than negative words, thus supporting the existence of implicit associations between stimulus valence and response coding (positive is up and negative is down). Hence, in contexts in which participants' spontaneous responses are based on implicit associations between stimulus valence and response, there is no influence of arousal. In line with the valence-arousal conflict theory, arousal seems to affect participants' approach-withdrawal tendencies only when such tendencies are made explicit by the task, and a minimal degree of processing depth is required.
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Affiliation(s)
- Francesca M. M. Citron
- Department of Psychology, Lancaster UniversityLancaster, UK
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion”, Free University of BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Psychology Department, Humanities Council, Princeton UniversityPrinceton, NJ, USA
| | - David Abugaber
- Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of CambridgeCambridge, UK
| | - Cornelia Herbert
- Applied Emotion and Motivation Research, Institute of Psychology and Education, Ulm UniversityUlm, Germany
- Department of Psychiatry, University of TübingenTübingen, Germany
- Department of Biomedical Magnetic Resonance Imaging, University of TübingenTübingen, Germany
- Department of Psychology, University of WürzburgWürzburg, Germany
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114
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Liu T, Liu X, Xiao T, Shi J. Human recognition memory and conflict control: An event-related potential study. Neuroscience 2016; 313:83-91. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2015.11.047] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/01/2015] [Revised: 11/19/2015] [Accepted: 11/20/2015] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
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115
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Trauer SM, Kotz SA, Müller MM. Emotional words facilitate lexical but not early visual processing. BMC Neurosci 2015; 16:89. [PMID: 26654384 PMCID: PMC4676879 DOI: 10.1186/s12868-015-0225-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/04/2015] [Accepted: 11/24/2015] [Indexed: 12/30/2022] Open
Abstract
Background Emotional scenes and faces have shown to capture and bind visual resources at early sensory processing stages, i.e. in early visual cortex. However, emotional words have led to mixed results. In the current study ERPs were assessed simultaneously with steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) to measure attention effects on early visual activity in emotional word processing. Neutral and negative words were flickered at 12.14 Hz whilst participants performed a Lexical Decision Task. Results Emotional word content did not modulate the 12.14 Hz SSVEP amplitude, neither did word lexicality. However, emotional words affected the ERP. Negative compared to neutral words as well as words compared to pseudowords lead to enhanced deflections in the P2 time range indicative of lexico-semantic access. The N400 was reduced for negative compared to neutral words and enhanced for pseudowords compared to words indicating facilitated semantic processing of emotional words. LPC amplitudes reflected word lexicality and thus the task-relevant response. Conclusion In line with previous ERP and imaging evidence, the present results indicate that written emotional words are facilitated in processing only subsequent to visual analysis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sophie M Trauer
- Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine Psychologie, Institut für Psychologie, Universität Leipzig, Neumarkt 9-19, 04109, Leipzig, Germany.
| | - Sonja A Kotz
- Department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands. .,Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
| | - Matthias M Müller
- Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine Psychologie, Institut für Psychologie, Universität Leipzig, Neumarkt 9-19, 04109, Leipzig, Germany.
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116
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Kuchinke L, Fritsch N, Müller CJ. Evaluative conditioning of positive and negative valence affects P1 and N1 in verbal processing. Brain Res 2015; 1624:405-413. [PMID: 26275918 DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2015.07.059] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/11/2015] [Revised: 06/16/2015] [Accepted: 07/22/2015] [Indexed: 10/23/2022]
Abstract
The present study examined the effect of contextual learning on the neural processing of previously meaningless pseudowords. During an evaluative conditioning session on 5 consecutive days, participants learned to associate 120 pseudowords with either positive, neutral or negative pictures. In a second session, participants were presented all conditioned pseudowords again together with 40 new pseudowords in a recognition memory task while their event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The behavioral data confirm successful learning of pseudoword valence. At the neural level, early modulations of the ERPs are visible at the P1 and the N1 components discriminating between positively and negatively conditioned pseudowords. Differences to new pseudowords were visible at later processing stages as indicated by modulations of the LPC. These results support a contextual learning hypothesis that is able to explain very early emotional ERP modulations in visual word recognition. Source localization indicates a role of medial-frontal brain regions as a likely origin of these early valence discrimination signals which are discussed to promote top-down signals to sensory processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lars Kuchinke
- Experimental Psychology & Methods, Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany.
| | - Nathalie Fritsch
- Experimental Psychology & Methods, Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany
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117
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Lüdtke J, Jacobs AM. The emotion potential of simple sentences: additive or interactive effects of nouns and adjectives? Front Psychol 2015; 6:1137. [PMID: 26321975 PMCID: PMC4531214 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01137] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/04/2014] [Accepted: 07/21/2015] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
The vast majority of studies on affective processes in reading focus on single words. The most robust finding is a processing advantage for positively valenced words, which has been replicated in the rare studies investigating effects of affective features of words during sentence or story comprehension. Here we were interested in how the different valences of words in a sentence influence its processing and supralexical affective evaluation. Using a sentence verification task we investigated how comprehension of simple declarative sentences containing a noun and an adjective depends on the valences of both words. The results are in line with the assumed general processing advantage for positive words. We also observed a clear interaction effect, as can be expected from the affective priming literature: sentences with emotionally congruent words (e.g., The grandpa is clever) were verified faster than sentences containing emotionally incongruent words (e.g., The grandpa is lonely). The priming effect was most prominent for sentences with positive words suggesting that both, early processing as well as later meaning integration and situation model construction, is modulated by affective processing. In a second rating task we investigated how the emotion potential of supralexical units depends on word valence. The simplest hypothesis predicts that the supralexical affective structure is a linear combination of the valences of the nouns and adjectives (Bestgen, 1994). Overall, our results do not support this: The observed clear interaction effect on ratings indicate that especially negative adjectives dominated supralexical evaluation, i.e., a sort of negativity bias in sentence evaluation. Future models of sentence processing thus should take interactive affective effects into account.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jana Lüdtke
- Department of Education and Psychology, Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin Berlin, Germany ; Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin Germany
| | - Arthur M Jacobs
- Department of Education and Psychology, Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin Berlin, Germany ; Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin Berlin, Germany ; Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion Berlin, Germany
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118
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Wei P, Wang D, Ji L. Reward expectation regulates brain responses to task-relevant and task-irrelevant emotional words: ERP evidence. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2015; 11:191-203. [PMID: 26245838 DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsv097] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2014] [Accepted: 07/30/2015] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
We investigated the effect of reward expectation on the processing of emotional words in two experiments using event-related potentials (ERPs). A cue indicating the reward condition of each trial (incentive vs non-incentive) was followed by the presentation of a negative or neutral word, the target. Participants were asked to discriminate the emotional content of the target word in Experiment 1 and to discriminate the color of the target word in Experiment 2, rendering the emotionality of the target word task-relevant in Experiment 1, but task-irrelevant in Experiment 2. The negative bias effect, in terms of the amplitude difference between ERPs for negative and neutral targets, was modulated by the task-set. In Experiment 1, P31 and early posterior negativity revealed a larger negative bias effect in the incentive condition than that in the non-incentive condition. However, in Experiment 2, P31 revealed a diminished negative bias effect in the incentive condition compared with that in the non-incentive condition. These results indicate that reward expectation improves top-down attentional concentration to task-relevant information, with enhanced sensitivity to the emotional content of target words when emotionality is task-relevant, but with reduced differential brain responses to emotional words when their content is task-irrelevant.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ping Wei
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition and Department of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, China,
| | - Di Wang
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition and Department of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, China, Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China, and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China
| | - Liyan Ji
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition and Department of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, China
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119
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Pop-Out Effect of Negative Words in a Word-Grid Task? JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS 2015. [DOI: 10.5334/jeps.cx] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
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120
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Ferré P, Ventura D, Comesaña M, Fraga I. The role of emotionality in the acquisition of new concrete and abstract words. Front Psychol 2015; 6:976. [PMID: 26217289 PMCID: PMC4497307 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00976] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/22/2014] [Accepted: 06/29/2015] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
A processing advantage for emotional words relative to neutral words has been widely demonstrated in the monolingual domain (e.g., Kuperman et al., 2014). It is also well-known that, in bilingual speakers who have a certain degree of proficiency in their second language, the effects of the affective content of words on cognition are not restricted to the native language (e.g., Ferré et al., 2010). The aim of the present study was to test whether this facilitatory effect can also be obtained during the very early stages of word acquisition. In the context of a novel word learning paradigm, participants were trained on a set of Basque words by associating them to their Spanish translations. Words' concreteness and affective valence were orthogonally manipulated. Immediately after the learning phase and 1 week later, participants were tested in a Basque go-no go lexical decision task as well as in a translation task in which they had to provide the Spanish translation of the Basque words. A similar pattern of results was found across tasks and sessions, revealing main effects of concreteness and emotional content as well as an interaction between both factors. Thus, the emotional content facilitated the acquisition of abstract, but not concrete words, in the new language, with a more reliable effect for negative words than for positive ones. The results are discussed in light of the embodied theoretical view of semantic representation proposed by Kousta et al. (2011).
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Affiliation(s)
- Pilar Ferré
- Research Center for Behavior Assessment and Department of Psychology, Rovira i Virgili University, TarragonaSpain
| | - David Ventura
- Research Center for Behavior Assessment and Department of Psychology, Rovira i Virgili University, TarragonaSpain
| | - Montserrat Comesaña
- Human Cognition Lab, CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, BragaPortugal
| | - Isabel Fraga
- Cognitive Processes & Behavior Research Group, Department of Social Psychology, Basic Psychology and Methodology, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de CompostelaSpain
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121
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Lartseva A, Dijkstra T, Kan CC, Buitelaar JK. Processing of emotion words by patients with autism spectrum disorders: evidence from reaction times and EEG. J Autism Dev Disord 2015; 44:2882-94. [PMID: 24920285 DOI: 10.1007/s10803-014-2149-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
Abstract
This study investigated processing of emotion words in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) using reaction times and event-related potentials (ERP). Adults with (n = 21) and without (n = 20) ASD performed a lexical decision task on emotion and neutral words while their brain activity was recorded. Both groups showed faster responses to emotion words compared to neutral, suggesting intact early processing of emotion in ASD. In the ERPs, the control group showed a typical late positive component (LPC) at 400-600 ms for emotion words compared to neutral, while the ASD group showed no LPC. The between-group difference in LPC amplitude was significant, suggesting that emotion words were processed differently by individuals with ASD, although their behavioral performance was similar to that of typical individuals.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alina Lartseva
- Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Geert Grooteplein Noord 21, 6525 EZ, Nijmegen, The Netherlands,
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122
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Effects of negative content on the processing of gender information: an event-related potential study. COGNITIVE AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE 2015; 14:1286-99. [PMID: 24838172 DOI: 10.3758/s13415-014-0291-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Previous research on emotion in language has mainly concerned the impact of emotional information on several aspects of lexico-semantic analyses of single words. However, affective influences on morphosyntactic processing are less understood. In the present study, we focused on the impact of negative valence in the processing of gender agreement relations. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read three-word phrases and performed a syntactic judgment task. Negative and neutral adjectives could agree or disagree in gender with the preceding noun. At an electrophysiological level, the amplitude of a left anterior negativity (LAN) to gender agreement mismatches decreased in negative words, relative to neutral words. The behavioral data suggested that LAN amplitudes might be indexing the processing costs associated with the detection of gender agreement errors, since the detection of gender mismatches resulted in faster and more accurate responses than did the detection of correct gender agreement relations. According to this view, it seems that negative content facilitated the processes implicated in the early detection of gender agreement mismatches. However, gender agreement violations in negative words triggered processes involved in the reanalysis and repair of the syntactic structure, as reflected in larger P600 amplitudes to incorrect than to correct phrases, irrespective of their emotional valence.
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123
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Perceived communicative context and emotional content amplify visual word processing in the fusiform gyrus. J Neurosci 2015; 35:6010-9. [PMID: 25878274 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.3346-14.2015] [Citation(s) in RCA: 56] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
The personal significance of a language statement depends on its communicative context. However, this is rarely taken into account in neuroscience studies. Here, we investigate how the implied source of single word statements alters their cortical processing. Participants' brain event-related potentials were recorded in response to identical word streams consisting of positive, negative, and neutral trait adjectives stated to either represent personal trait feedback from a human or to be randomly generated by a computer. Results showed a strong impact of perceived sender. Regardless of content, the notion of receiving feedback from a human enhanced all components, starting with the P2 and encompassing early posterior negativity (EPN), P3, and the late positive potential (LPP). Moreover, negative feedback by the "human sender" elicited a larger EPN, whereas positive feedback generally induced a larger LPP. Source estimations revealed differences between "senders" in visual areas, particularly the bilateral fusiform gyri. Likewise, emotional content enhanced activity in these areas. These results specify how even implied sender identity changes the processing of single words in seemingly realistic communicative settings, amplifying their processing in the visual brain. This suggests that the concept of motivated attention extends from stimulus significance to simultaneous appraisal of contextual relevance. Finally, consistent with distinct stages of emotional processing, at least in contexts perceived as social, humans are initially alerted to negative content, but later process what is perceived as positive feedback more intensely.
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124
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Chen P, Lin J, Chen B, Lu C, Guo T. Processing emotional words in two languages with one brain: ERP and fMRI evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals. Cortex 2015; 71:34-48. [PMID: 26143622 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2015.06.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 39] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/28/2013] [Revised: 05/17/2014] [Accepted: 06/02/2015] [Indexed: 01/31/2023]
Abstract
Emotional words in a bilingual's second language (L2) seem to have less emotional impact compared to emotional words in the first language (L1). The present study examined the neural mechanisms of emotional word processing in Chinese-English bilinguals' two languages by using both event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Behavioral results show a robust positive word processing advantage in L1 such that responses to positive words were faster and more accurate compared to responses to neutral words and negative words. In L2, emotional words only received higher accuracies than neutral words. In ERPs, positive words elicited a larger early posterior negativity and a smaller late positive component than neutral words in L1, while a trend of reduced N400 component was found for positive words compared to neutral words in L2. In fMRI, reduced activation was found for L1 emotional words in both the left middle occipital gyrus and the left cerebellum whereas increased activation in the left cerebellum was found for L2 emotional words. Altogether, these results suggest that emotional word processing advantage in L1 relies on rapid and automatic attention capture while facilitated semantic retrieval might help processing emotional words in L2.
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Affiliation(s)
- Peiyao Chen
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning& IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, China; Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, USA
| | - Jie Lin
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning& IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, China
| | - Bingle Chen
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning& IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, China
| | - Chunming Lu
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning& IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, China; Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, China
| | - Taomei Guo
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning& IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, China; Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, China.
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125
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Jacobs AM, Võ MLH, Briesemeister BB, Conrad M, Hofmann MJ, Kuchinke L, Lüdtke J, Braun M. 10 years of BAWLing into affective and aesthetic processes in reading: what are the echoes? Front Psychol 2015; 6:714. [PMID: 26089808 PMCID: PMC4452804 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00714] [Citation(s) in RCA: 55] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/20/2014] [Accepted: 05/13/2015] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Reading is not only "cold" information processing, but involves affective and aesthetic processes that go far beyond what current models of word recognition, sentence processing, or text comprehension can explain. To investigate such "hot" reading processes, standardized instruments that quantify both psycholinguistic and emotional variables at the sublexical, lexical, inter-, and supralexical levels (e.g., phonological iconicity, word valence, arousal-span, or passage suspense) are necessary. One such instrument, the Berlin Affective Word List (BAWL) has been used in over 50 published studies demonstrating effects of lexical emotional variables on all relevant processing levels (experiential, behavioral, neuronal). In this paper, we first present new data from several BAWL studies. Together, these studies examine various views on affective effects in reading arising from dimensional (e.g., valence) and discrete emotion features (e.g., happiness), or embodied cognition features like smelling. Second, we extend our investigation of the complex issue of affective word processing to words characterized by a mixture of affects. These words entail positive and negative valence, and/or features making them beautiful or ugly. Finally, we discuss tentative neurocognitive models of affective word processing in the light of the present results, raising new issues for future studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arthur M. Jacobs
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion”, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of EmotionBerlin, Germany
| | - Melissa L.-H. Võ
- Scene Grammar Lab, Department of Cognitive Psychology, Goethe University FrankfurtFrankfurt, Germany
| | - Benny B. Briesemeister
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
| | - Markus Conrad
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion”, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Department of Cognitive, Social and Organizational Psychology, Universidad de La LagunaSan Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain
| | - Markus J. Hofmann
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Department of Psychology, General and Biological Psychology, University of WuppertalWuppertal, Germany
| | - Lars Kuchinke
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion”, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Experimental Psychology and Methods, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr Universität BochumBochum, Germany
| | - Jana Lüdtke
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion”, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
| | - Mario Braun
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Universität SalzburgSalzburg, Austria
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126
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Imbir KK, Jarymowicz MT, Spustek T, Kuś R, Żygierewicz J. Origin of Emotion Effects on ERP Correlates of Emotional Word Processing: The Emotion Duality Approach. PLoS One 2015; 10:e0126129. [PMID: 25955719 PMCID: PMC4425658 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0126129] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/17/2014] [Accepted: 03/29/2015] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
We distinguish two evaluative systems which evoke automatic and reflective emotions. Automatic emotions are direct reactions to stimuli whereas reflective emotions are always based on verbalized (and often abstract) criteria of evaluation. We conducted an electroencephalography (EEG) study in which 25 women were required to read and respond to emotional words which engaged either the automatic or reflective system. Stimulus words were emotional (positive or negative) and neutral. We found an effect of valence on an early response with dipolar fronto-occipital topography; positive words evoked a higher amplitude response than negative words. We also found that topographically specific differences in the amplitude of the late positive complex were related to the system involved in processing. Emotional stimuli engaging the automatic system were associated with significantly higher amplitudes in the left-parietal region; the response to neutral words was similar regardless of the system engaged. A different pattern of effects was observed in the central region, neutral stimuli engaging the reflective system evoked a higher amplitudes response whereas there was no system effect for emotional stimuli. These differences could not be reduced to effects of differences between the arousing properties and concreteness of the words used as stimuli.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kamil Konrad Imbir
- Faculty of Applied Social Sciences, The Maria Grzegorzewska University, Warsaw, Poland
| | | | - Tomasz Spustek
- Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
| | - Rafał Kuś
- Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
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127
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Conrad M. On the role of language from basic to cultural modulation of affect: Comment on "The quartet theory of human emotions: An integrative and neurofunctional model" by S. Koelsch et al. Phys Life Rev 2015; 13:40-2. [PMID: 25933481 DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2015.04.020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/14/2015] [Accepted: 04/15/2015] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Markus Conrad
- Department for Cognitive Organizational and Social Psychology, Universidad de La Laguna, San Cristobal de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
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128
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Braun M. Emotion and language - When and how comes emotion into words?: Comment on "The quartet theory of human emotions: An integrative and neurofunctional model" by S. Koelsch et al. Phys Life Rev 2015; 13:36-7. [PMID: 25900188 DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2015.04.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/10/2015] [Accepted: 04/10/2015] [Indexed: 10/23/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Mario Braun
- Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Universität Salzburg, Austria.
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129
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Hsu CT, Jacobs AM, Citron FMM, Conrad M. The emotion potential of words and passages in reading Harry Potter--an fMRI study. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2015; 142:96-114. [PMID: 25681681 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2015.01.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 48] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/29/2014] [Revised: 01/12/2015] [Accepted: 01/14/2015] [Indexed: 06/04/2023]
Abstract
Previous studies suggested that the emotional connotation of single words automatically recruits attention. We investigated the potential of words to induce emotional engagement when reading texts. In an fMRI experiment, we presented 120 text passages from the Harry Potter book series. Results showed significant correlations between affective word (lexical) ratings and passage ratings. Furthermore, affective lexical ratings correlated with activity in regions associated with emotion, situation model building, multi-modal semantic integration, and Theory of Mind. We distinguished differential influences of affective lexical, inter-lexical, and supra-lexical variables: differential effects of lexical valence were significant in the left amygdala, while effects of arousal-span (the dynamic range of arousal across a passage) were significant in the left amygdala and insula. However, we found no differential effect of passage ratings in emotion-associated regions. Our results support the hypothesis that the emotion potential of short texts can be predicted by lexical and inter-lexical affective variables.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chun-Ting Hsu
- Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany; Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany.
| | - Arthur M Jacobs
- Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany; Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany; Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion (D.I.N.E.), Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany.
| | - Francesca M M Citron
- Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany; Humanities Council, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
| | - Markus Conrad
- Languages of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, D-14195 Berlin, Germany; Department of Cognitive, Social and Organizational Psychology, Universidad de La Laguna, San Cristóbal de La Laguna, 38205, Spain.
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130
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Conflict monitoring and adjustment in the task-switching paradigm under different memory load conditions. Neuroreport 2015; 26:124-30. [DOI: 10.1097/wnr.0000000000000310] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
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131
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Hinojosa JA, Mercado F, Albert J, Barjola P, Peláez I, Villalba-García C, Carretié L. Neural correlates of an early attentional capture by positive distractor words. Front Psychol 2015; 6:24. [PMID: 25674070 PMCID: PMC4306316 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00024] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/25/2014] [Accepted: 01/07/2015] [Indexed: 01/12/2023] Open
Abstract
Exogenous or automatic attention to emotional distractors has been observed for emotional scenes and faces. In the language domain, however, automatic attention capture by emotional words has been scarcely investigated. In the current event-related potentials study we explored distractor effects elicited by positive, negative and neutral words in a concurrent but distinct target distractor paradigm. Specifically, participants performed a digit categorization task in which task-irrelevant words were flanked by numbers. The results of both temporo-spatial principal component and source location analyses revealed the existence of early distractor effects that were specifically triggered by positive words. At the scalp level, task-irrelevant positive compared to neutral and negative words elicited larger amplitudes in an anterior negative component that peaked around 120 ms. Also, at the voxel level, positive distractor words increased activity in orbitofrontal regions compared to negative words. These results suggest that positive distractor words quickly and automatically capture attentional resources diverting them from the task where attention was voluntarily directed.
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Affiliation(s)
- José A Hinojosa
- Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Madrid, Spain ; Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Madrid, Spain
| | - Francisco Mercado
- Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Madrid, Spain
| | - Jacobo Albert
- Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Madrid, Spain ; Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Madrid, Spain
| | - Paloma Barjola
- Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Madrid, Spain
| | - Irene Peláez
- Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Madrid, Spain
| | | | - Luis Carretié
- Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Madrid, Spain
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132
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Schindler S, Wegrzyn M, Steppacher I, Kissler J. It's all in your head - how anticipating evaluation affects the processing of emotional trait adjectives. Front Psychol 2014; 5:1292. [PMID: 25426095 PMCID: PMC4227471 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01292] [Citation(s) in RCA: 26] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/28/2014] [Accepted: 10/24/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Language has an intrinsically evaluative and communicative function. Words can serve to describe emotional traits and states in others and communicate evaluations. Using electroencephalography (EEG), we investigate how the cerebral processing of emotional trait adjectives is modulated by their perceived communicative sender in anticipation of an evaluation. 16 students were videotaped while they described themselves. They were told that a stranger would evaluate their personality based on this recording by endorsing trait adjectives. In a control condition a computer program supposedly randomly selected the adjectives. Actually, both conditions were random. A larger parietal N1 was found for adjectives in the supposedly human-generated condition. This indicates that more visual attention is allocated to the presented adjectives when putatively interacting with a human. Between 400 and 700 ms a fronto-central main effect of emotion was found. Positive, and in tendency also negative adjectives, led to a larger late positive potential (LPP) compared to neutral adjectives. A centro-parietal interaction in the LPP-window was due to larger LPP amplitudes for negative compared to neutral adjectives within the ‘human sender’ condition. Larger LPP amplitudes are related to stimulus elaboration and memory consolidation. Participants responded more to emotional content particularly when presented in a meaningful ‘human’ context. This was first observed in the early posterior negativity window (210–260 ms). But the significant interaction between sender and emotion reached only trend-level on post hoc tests. Our results specify differential effects of even implied communicative partners on emotional language processing. They show that anticipating evaluation by a communicative partner alone is sufficient to increase the relevance of particularly emotional adjectives, given a seemingly realistic interactive setting.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sebastian Schindler
- Department of Psychology, Affective Neuropsychology, University of Bielefeld Bielefeld, Germany ; Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology, University of Bielefeld Bielefeld, Germany
| | - Martin Wegrzyn
- Department of Psychology, Affective Neuropsychology, University of Bielefeld Bielefeld, Germany ; Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology, University of Bielefeld Bielefeld, Germany
| | - Inga Steppacher
- Department of Psychology, Affective Neuropsychology, University of Bielefeld Bielefeld, Germany
| | - Johanna Kissler
- Department of Psychology, Affective Neuropsychology, University of Bielefeld Bielefeld, Germany ; Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology, University of Bielefeld Bielefeld, Germany
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133
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Jończyk R. Hemispheric asymmetry of emotion words in a non-native mind: a divided visual field study. Laterality 2014; 20:326-47. [PMID: 25300323 DOI: 10.1080/1357650x.2014.966108] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
Abstract
This study investigates hemispheric specialization for emotional words among proficient non-native speakers of English by means of the divided visual field paradigm. The motivation behind the study is to extend the monolingual hemifield research to the non-native context and see how emotion words are processed in a non-native mind. Sixty eight females participated in the study, all highly proficient in English. The stimuli comprised 12 positive nouns, 12 negative nouns, 12 non-emotional nouns and 36 pseudo-words. To examine the lateralization of emotion, stimuli were presented unilaterally in a random fashion for 180 ms in a go/no-go lexical decision task. The perceptual data showed a right hemispheric advantage for processing speed of negative words and a complementary role of the two hemispheres in the recognition accuracy of experimental stimuli. The data indicate that processing of emotion words in non-native language may require greater interhemispheric communication, but at the same time demonstrates a specific role of the right hemisphere in the processing of negative relative to positive valence. The results of the study are discussed in light of the methodological inconsistencies in the hemifield research as well as the non-native context in which the study was conducted.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rafał Jończyk
- a Faculty of English , Adam Mickiewicz University , Poznań , Poland
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134
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Hofmann MJ, Jacobs AM. Interactive activation and competition models and semantic context: From behavioral to brain data. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2014; 46 Pt 1:85-104. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.06.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 59] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/30/2013] [Revised: 04/14/2014] [Accepted: 06/23/2014] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
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135
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Kuchinke L, Krause B, Fritsch N, Briesemeister BB. A familiar font drives early emotional effects in word recognition. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2014; 137:142-147. [PMID: 25226214 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2014.08.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/20/2014] [Revised: 07/16/2014] [Accepted: 08/17/2014] [Indexed: 06/03/2023]
Abstract
The emotional connotation of a word is known to shift the process of word recognition. Using the electroencephalographic event-related potentials (ERPs) approach it has been documented that early attentional processing of high-arousing negative words is shifted at a stage of processing where a presented word cannot have been fully identified. Contextual learning has been discussed to contribute to these effects. The present study shows that a manipulation of the familiarity with a word's shape interferes with these earliest emotional ERP effects. Presenting high-arousing negative and neutral words in a familiar or an unfamiliar font results in very early emotion differences only in case of familiar shapes, whereas later processing stages reveal similar emotional effects in both font conditions. Because these early emotion-related differences predict later behavioral differences, it is suggested that contextual learning of emotional valence comprises more visual features than previously expected to guide early visual-sensory processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lars Kuchinke
- Experimental Psychology & Methods, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany.
| | - Beatrix Krause
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Nathalie Fritsch
- Experimental Psychology & Methods, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany
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136
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Palazova M. Where are emotions in words? Functional localization of valence effects in visual word recognition. Front Psychol 2014; 5:1105. [PMID: 25324810 PMCID: PMC4179731 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01105] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/01/2014] [Accepted: 09/12/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Marina Palazova
- General Psychology and Neurocognitive Psychology, International Psychoanalytic University Berlin Berlin, Germany
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137
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Wagenbreth C, Rieger J, Heinze HJ, Zaehle T. Seeing emotions in the eyes - inverse priming effects induced by eyes expressing mental states. Front Psychol 2014; 5:1039. [PMID: 25278925 PMCID: PMC4166113 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01039] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/03/2014] [Accepted: 08/30/2014] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Objective: Automatic emotional processing of faces and facial expressions gain more and more of relevance in terms of social communication. Among a variety of different primes, targets and tasks, whole face images and facial expressions have been used to affectively prime emotional responses. This study investigates whether emotional information provided solely in eye regions that display mental states can also trigger affective priming. Methods: Sixteen subjects answered a lexical decision task (LDT) coupled with an affective priming paradigm. Emotion-associated eye regions were extracted from photographs of faces and acted as primes, whereas targets were either words or pseudo-words. Participants had to decide whether the targets were real German words or generated pseudo-words. Primes and targets belonged to the emotional categories “fear,” “disgust,” “happiness,” and “neutral.” Results: A general valence effect for positive words was observed: responses in the LDT were faster for target words of the emotional category happiness when compared to other categories. Importantly, pictures of emotional eye regions preceding the target words affected their subsequent classification. While we show a classical priming effect for neutral target words – with shorter RT for congruent compared to incongruent prime-target pairs- , we observed an inverse priming effect for fearful and happy target words – with shorter RT for incongruent compared to congruent prime-target pairs. These inverse priming effects were driven exclusively by specific prime-target pairs. Conclusion: Reduced facial emotional information is sufficient to induce automatic implicit emotional processing. The emotional-associated eye regions were processed with respect to their emotional valence and affected the performance on the LDT.
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Affiliation(s)
- Caroline Wagenbreth
- Department of Neurology, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg Magdeburg, Germany
| | - Julia Rieger
- Department of Neurology, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg Magdeburg, Germany
| | - Hans-Jochen Heinze
- Department of Neurology, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg Magdeburg, Germany
| | - Tino Zaehle
- Department of Neurology, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg Magdeburg, Germany
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138
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The dynamic influence of emotional words on sentence processing. COGNITIVE AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE 2014; 15:55-68. [PMID: 25112206 DOI: 10.3758/s13415-014-0315-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
In the present study, we aimed to examine how the emotionality of words influences online sentence processing-specifically, the influence of emotional words on the processing of following words in sentences. We manipulated the emotionality of verbs as well as the orthographic correctness of their following (neutral) object nouns, so that the orthographic violation of the (neutral) nouns occurred in either emotional or neutral sentences. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to both the nouns and the verbs. We found that the orthographic violation of the nouns elicited a P2 and an N400 effect in the emotionally neutral sentences, but an LPC effect in the emotionally charged sentences. We also found that the emotional verbs elicited a larger N1, a larger P2, and a larger N400 than did the neutral verbs. The ERP results suggest that emotional words capture more attention than neutral words, which further affects early orthographic analysis of the following words. Our findings demonstrate a dynamic influence of emotional words on sentence processing.
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139
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Recio G, Conrad M, Hansen LB, Jacobs AM. On pleasure and thrill: the interplay between arousal and valence during visual word recognition. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2014; 134:34-43. [PMID: 24815948 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2014.03.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 51] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/15/2013] [Revised: 03/15/2014] [Accepted: 03/22/2014] [Indexed: 06/03/2023]
Abstract
We investigated the interplay between arousal and valence in the early processing of affective words. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read words organized in an orthogonal design with the factors valence (positive, negative, neutral) and arousal (low, medium, high) in a lexical decision task. We observed faster reaction times for words of positive valence and for those of high arousal. Data from ERPs showed increased early posterior negativity (EPN) suggesting improved visual processing of these conditions. Valence effects appeared for medium and low arousal and were absent for high arousal. Arousal effects were obtained for neutral and negative words but were absent for positive words. These results suggest independent contributions of arousal and valence at early attentional stages of processing. Arousal effects preceded valence effects in the ERP data suggesting that arousal serves as an early alert system preparing a subsequent evaluation in terms of valence.
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Affiliation(s)
- Guillermo Recio
- Universität Hamburg, Department of Psychology, Von-Melle-Park 5, Room 4004, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany.
| | - Markus Conrad
- Freie Universität Berlin, Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, D-14195 Berlin, Germany; Universidad de La Laguna, Cognitive Neuroscience & Psycholinguistics Lab, Campus de Guajara, E-38205 La Laguna, S.C. de Tenerife, Spain
| | - Laura B Hansen
- Universidad de Granada, Department of Experimental Psychology, Campus de Cartuja s/n, E-18071 Granada, Spain
| | - Arthur M Jacobs
- Freie Universität Berlin, Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, D-14195 Berlin, Germany; Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion (DINE), Habelschwerdter Allee 45, D-14195 Berlin, Germany
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140
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Temporospatial analysis of explicit and implicit processing of negative content during word comprehension. Brain Cogn 2014; 87:109-21. [DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2014.03.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/24/2013] [Revised: 02/21/2014] [Accepted: 03/17/2014] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
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141
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Briesemeister BB, Kuchinke L, Jacobs AM. Emotion word recognition: Discrete information effects first, continuous later? Brain Res 2014; 1564:62-71. [DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2014.03.045] [Citation(s) in RCA: 62] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/09/2014] [Revised: 03/24/2014] [Accepted: 03/29/2014] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
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142
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Rampone G, Makin ADJ, Bertamini M. Electrophysiological analysis of the affective congruence between pattern regularity and word valence. Neuropsychologia 2014; 58:107-17. [PMID: 24746947 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.04.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/31/2013] [Revised: 04/04/2014] [Accepted: 04/07/2014] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
Abstract
Reflection symmetry is an important property of human designs and biological organisms, and it is often judged to be beautiful. Previous reaction-time based studies have shown a congruency effect, where reflection symmetry facilitates processing of positive words, and random patterns facilitate negative words. But what is the neural basis of affective responses to symmetry? In Experiment 1 we recorded ERPs from posterior electrode clusters while participants viewed reflection or random patterns with either a positive or negative word superimposed. In the Discriminate Regularity task, participants categorized the patterns (reflection or random). In the Discriminate Word task, they categorized the words as positive or negative. In Experiment 2, participants classified words and patterns on each trial. We found a difference between ERP waves from congruent (reflection with positive word, random with negative word) and incongruent trials (reflection with negative, random with positive). This congruency effect began around 200 ms, and persisted up to 1,000 ms post stimulus, and was only present in the Discriminate Word task. We suggest that when evaluating words, participants automatically evaluate the background pattern as well, and this alters early visual processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Giulia Rampone
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Eleanor Rathbone Building, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 7 ZA, United Kingdom.
| | - Alexis D J Makin
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Eleanor Rathbone Building, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 7 ZA, United Kingdom
| | - Marco Bertamini
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Eleanor Rathbone Building, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 7 ZA, United Kingdom
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143
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Zhang D, He W, Wang T, Luo W, Zhu X, Gu R, Li H, Luo YJ. Three stages of emotional word processing: an ERP study with rapid serial visual presentation. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2014; 9:1897-903. [PMID: 24526185 DOI: 10.1093/scan/nst188] [Citation(s) in RCA: 93] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Rapid responses to emotional words play a crucial role in social communication. This study employed event-related potentials to examine the time course of neural dynamics involved in emotional word processing. Participants performed a dual-target task in which positive, negative and neutral adjectives were rapidly presented. The early occipital P1 was found larger when elicited by negative words, indicating that the first stage of emotional word processing mainly differentiates between non-threatening and potentially threatening information. The N170 and the early posterior negativity were larger for positive and negative words, reflecting the emotional/non-emotional discrimination stage of word processing. The late positive component not only distinguished emotional words from neutral words, but also differentiated between positive and negative words. This represents the third stage of emotional word processing, the emotion separation. Present results indicated that, similar with the three-stage model of facial expression processing; the neural processing of emotional words can also be divided into three stages. These findings prompt us to believe that the nature of emotion can be analyzed by the brain independent of stimulus type, and that the three-stage scheme may be a common model for emotional information processing in the context of limited attentional resources.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dandan Zhang
- Institute of Affective and Social Neuroscience, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, Laboratory of Cognition and Mental Health, Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences, Chongqing 402168, Department of Psychology, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, and Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, People's Republic of China
| | - Weiqi He
- Institute of Affective and Social Neuroscience, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, Laboratory of Cognition and Mental Health, Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences, Chongqing 402168, Department of Psychology, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, and Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, People's Republic of China
| | - Ting Wang
- Institute of Affective and Social Neuroscience, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, Laboratory of Cognition and Mental Health, Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences, Chongqing 402168, Department of Psychology, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, and Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, People's Republic of China
| | - Wenbo Luo
- Institute of Affective and Social Neuroscience, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, Laboratory of Cognition and Mental Health, Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences, Chongqing 402168, Department of Psychology, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, and Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, People's Republic of China Institute of Affective and Social Neuroscience, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, Laboratory of Cognition and Mental Health, Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences, Chongqing 402168, Department of Psychology, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, and Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, People's Republic of China
| | - Xiangru Zhu
- Institute of Affective and Social Neuroscience, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, Laboratory of Cognition and Mental Health, Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences, Chongqing 402168, Department of Psychology, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, and Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, People's Republic of China
| | - Ruolei Gu
- Institute of Affective and Social Neuroscience, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, Laboratory of Cognition and Mental Health, Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences, Chongqing 402168, Department of Psychology, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, and Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, People's Republic of China
| | - Hong Li
- Institute of Affective and Social Neuroscience, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, Laboratory of Cognition and Mental Health, Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences, Chongqing 402168, Department of Psychology, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, and Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, People's Republic of China
| | - Yue-Jia Luo
- Institute of Affective and Social Neuroscience, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, Laboratory of Cognition and Mental Health, Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences, Chongqing 402168, Department of Psychology, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, and Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, People's Republic of China
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144
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Citron FMM, Gray MA, Critchley HD, Weekes BS, Ferstl EC. Emotional valence and arousal affect reading in an interactive way: neuroimaging evidence for an approach-withdrawal framework. Neuropsychologia 2014; 56:79-89. [PMID: 24440410 PMCID: PMC4098114 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.01.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 84] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/02/2013] [Revised: 11/29/2013] [Accepted: 01/03/2014] [Indexed: 12/03/2022]
Abstract
A growing body of literature shows that the emotional content of verbal material affects reading, wherein emotional words are given processing priority compared to neutral words. Human emotions can be conceptualised within a two-dimensional model comprised of emotional valence and arousal (intensity). These variables are at least in part distinct, but recent studies report interactive effects during implicit emotion processing and relate these to stimulus-evoked approach-withdrawal tendencies. The aim of the present study was to explore how valence and arousal interact at the neural level, during implicit emotion word processing. The emotional attributes of written word stimuli were orthogonally manipulated based on behavioural ratings from a corpus of emotion words. Stimuli were presented during an fMRI experiment while 16 participants performed a lexical decision task, which did not require explicit evaluation of a word′s emotional content. Results showed greater neural activation within right insular cortex in response to stimuli evoking conflicting approach-withdrawal tendencies (i.e., positive high-arousal and negative low-arousal words) compared to stimuli evoking congruent approach vs. withdrawal tendencies (i.e., positive low-arousal and negative high-arousal words). Further, a significant cluster of activation in the left extra-striate cortex was found in response to emotional than neutral words, suggesting enhanced perceptual processing of emotionally salient stimuli. These findings support an interactive two-dimensional approach to the study of emotion word recognition and suggest that the integration of valence and arousal dimensions recruits a brain region associated with interoception, emotional awareness and sympathetic functions. Emotional valence and arousal affect reading interactively. Positive high-arousal and negative low-arousal words evoke conflicting reactions. Enhanced right insula activation was found in response to conflicting stimuli. Insula integrates viscero-sensory and cognitive/evaluative information. Enhanced extra-striate cortex activation was found for emotional than neutral words.
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Affiliation(s)
- Francesca M M Citron
- Cluster of Excellence "Languages of Emotion", Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, D-14195 Berlin, Germany.
| | - Marcus A Gray
- Centre for Advanced Imaging, The University of Queensland, Australia; Psychiatry, Brighton & Sussex Medical School, Universities of Brighton and Sussex, UK
| | - Hugo D Critchley
- Psychiatry, Brighton & Sussex Medical School, Universities of Brighton and Sussex, UK; Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Brighton, UK; Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, UK
| | - Brendan S Weekes
- Laboratory for Communication Science, The University of Hong Kong, China
| | - Evelyn C Ferstl
- Center for Cognitive Science, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany
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145
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ANGST: Affective norms for German sentiment terms, derived from the affective norms for English words. Behav Res Methods 2014; 46:1108-18. [DOI: 10.3758/s13428-013-0426-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 88] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
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146
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ERP evidence on the interaction between information structure and emotional salience of words. COGNITIVE AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE 2013; 13:297-310. [PMID: 23292996 DOI: 10.3758/s13415-012-0146-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/13/2023]
Abstract
Both emotional words and words focused by information structure can capture attention. This study examined the interplay between emotional salience and information structure in modulating attentional resources in the service of integrating emotional words into sentence context. Event-related potentials (ERPs) to affectively negative, neutral, and positive words, which were either focused or nonfocused in question-answer pairs, were evaluated during sentence comprehension. The results revealed an early negative effect (90-200 ms), a P2 effect, as well as an effect in the N400 time window, for both emotional salience and information structure. Moreover, an interaction between emotional salience and information structure occurred within the N400 time window over right posterior electrodes, showing that information structure influences the semantic integration only for neutral words, but not for emotional words. This might reflect the fact that the linguistic salience of emotional words can override the effect of information structure on the integration of words into context. The interaction provides evidence for attention-emotion interactions at a later stage of processing. In addition, the absence of interaction in the early time window suggests that the processing of emotional information is highly automatic and independent of context. The results suggest independent attention capture systems of emotional salience and information structure at the early stage but an interaction between them at a later stage, during the semantic integration of words.
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147
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Aryani A, Jacobs AM, Conrad M. Extracting salient sublexical units from written texts: "Emophon," a corpus-based approach to phonological iconicity. Front Psychol 2013; 4:654. [PMID: 24101907 PMCID: PMC3787248 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00654] [Citation(s) in RCA: 32] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/26/2013] [Accepted: 09/03/2013] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
A GROWING BODY OF LITERATURE IN PSYCHOLOGY, LINGUISTICS, AND THE NEUROSCIENCES HAS PAID INCREASING ATTENTION TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PHONOLOGICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF WORDS AND THEIR MEANING: a phenomenon also known as phonological iconicity. In this article, we investigate how a text's intended emotional meaning, particularly in literature and poetry, may be reflected at the level of sublexical phonological salience and the use of foregrounded elements. To extract such elements from a given text, we developed a probabilistic model to predict the exceeding of a confidence interval for specific sublexical units concerning their frequency of occurrence within a given text contrasted with a reference linguistic corpus for the German language. Implementing this model in a computational application, we provide a text analysis tool which automatically delivers information about sublexical phonological salience allowing researchers, inter alia, to investigate effects of the sublexical emotional tone of texts based on current findings on phonological iconicity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arash Aryani
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion,” Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
| | - Arthur M. Jacobs
- Department of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion,” Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion (DINE)Berlin, Germany
| | - Markus Conrad
- Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion,” Freie Universität BerlinBerlin, Germany
- Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psycholinguistics, University of La LagunaLa Laguna, Spain
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148
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Kopf J, Dresler T, Reicherts P, Herrmann MJ, Reif A. The effect of emotional content on brain activation and the late positive potential in a word n-back task. PLoS One 2013; 8:e75598. [PMID: 24086584 PMCID: PMC3784459 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0075598] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/07/2013] [Accepted: 08/17/2013] [Indexed: 02/06/2023] Open
Abstract
INTRODUCTION There is mounting evidence for the influence of emotional content on working memory performance. This is particularly important in light of the emotion processing that needs to take place when emotional content interferes with executive functions. In this study, we used emotional words of different valence but with similar arousal levels in an n-back task. METHODS We examined the effects on activation in the prefrontal cortex by means of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and on the late positive potential (LPP). FNIRS and LPP data were examined in 30 healthy subjects. RESULTS BEHAVIORAL RESULTS SHOW AN INFLUENCE OF VALENCE ON THE ERROR RATE DEPENDING ON THE DIFFICULTY OF THE TASK: more errors were made when the valence was negative and the task difficult. Brain activation was dependent both on the difficulty of the task and on the valence: negative valence of a word diminished the increase in activation, whereas positive valence did not influence the increase in activation, while difficulty levels increased. The LPP also differentiated between the different valences, and in addition was influenced by the task difficulty, the more difficult the task, the less differentiation could be observed. CONCLUSIONS Summarized, this study shows the influence of valence on a verbal working memory task. When a word contained a negative valence, the emotional content seemed to take precedence in contrast to words containing a positive valence. Working memory and emotion processing sites seemed to overlap and compete for resources even when words are carriers of the emotional content.
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Affiliation(s)
- Juliane Kopf
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University of Würzburg, Würzburg Germany
| | - Thomas Dresler
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University of Würzburg, Würzburg Germany
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
| | - Philipp Reicherts
- Department of Psychology, Biological Psychology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
| | - Martin J. Herrmann
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University of Würzburg, Würzburg Germany
| | - Andreas Reif
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University of Würzburg, Würzburg Germany
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149
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Keuper K, Zwitserlood P, Rehbein MA, Eden AS, Laeger I, Junghöfer M, Zwanzger P, Dobel C. Early prefrontal brain responses to the Hedonic quality of emotional words--a simultaneous EEG and MEG study. PLoS One 2013; 8:e70788. [PMID: 23940642 PMCID: PMC3733636 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0070788] [Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/14/2013] [Accepted: 06/24/2013] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
The hedonic meaning of words affects word recognition, as shown by behavioral, functional imaging, and event-related potential (ERP) studies. However, the spatiotemporal dynamics and cognitive functions behind are elusive, partly due to methodological limitations of previous studies. Here, we account for these difficulties by computing combined electro-magnetoencephalographic (EEG/MEG) source localization techniques. Participants covertly read emotionally high-arousing positive and negative nouns, while EEG and MEG were recorded simultaneously. Combined EEG/MEG current-density reconstructions for the P1 (80–120 ms), P2 (150–190 ms) and EPN component (200–300 ms) were computed using realistic individual head models, with a cortical constraint. Relative to negative words, the P1 to positive words predominantly involved language-related structures (left middle temporal and inferior frontal regions), and posterior structures related to directed attention (occipital and parietal regions). Effects shifted to the right hemisphere in the P2 component. By contrast, negative words received more activation in the P1 time-range only, recruiting prefrontal regions, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Effects in the EPN were not statistically significant. These findings show that different neuronal networks are active when positive versus negative words are processed. We account for these effects in terms of an “emotional tagging” of word forms during language acquisition. These tags then give rise to different processing strategies, including enhanced lexical processing of positive words and a very fast language-independent alert response to negative words. The valence-specific recruitment of different networks might underlie fast adaptive responses to both approach- and withdrawal-related stimuli, be they acquired or biological.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kati Keuper
- Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.
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150
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Paulmann S, Bleichner M, Kotz SA. Valence, arousal, and task effects in emotional prosody processing. Front Psychol 2013; 4:345. [PMID: 23801973 PMCID: PMC3689289 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00345] [Citation(s) in RCA: 67] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/08/2013] [Accepted: 05/28/2013] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Previous research suggests that emotional prosody processing is a highly rapid and complex process. In particular, it has been shown that different basic emotions can be differentiated in an early event-related brain potential (ERP) component, the P200. Often, the P200 is followed by later long lasting ERPs such as the late positive complex. The current experiment set out to explore in how far emotionality and arousal can modulate these previously reported ERP components. In addition, we also investigated the influence of task demands (implicit vs. explicit evaluation of stimuli). Participants listened to pseudo-sentences (sentences with no lexical content) spoken in six different emotions or in a neutral tone of voice while they either rated the arousal level of the speaker or their own arousal level. Results confirm that different emotional intonations can first be differentiated in the P200 component, reflecting a first emotional encoding of the stimulus possibly including a valence tagging process. A marginal significant arousal effect was also found in this time-window with high arousing stimuli eliciting a stronger P200 than low arousing stimuli. The P200 component was followed by a long lasting positive ERP between 400 and 750 ms. In this late time-window, both emotion and arousal effects were found. No effects of task were observed in either time-window. Taken together, results suggest that emotion relevant details are robustly decoded during early processing and late processing stages while arousal information is only reliably taken into consideration at a later stage of processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Silke Paulmann
- Department of Psychology and Centre for Brain Science, University of Essex Colchester, UK
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