Something (important) is out there! Effects of prime arousal and location on evaluative priming

How Emotion Relates to Language and Cognition, Seen Through the Lens of Evaluative Priming Paradigms

Affect and emotion are essential aspects of human life. These states or feelings signal personally relevant things or situations and color our memories and thoughts. Within the area of affective or emotion processing, evaluation-the assessment of the valence associated with a stimulus or event (i.e., its positivity or negativity)-is considered a fundamental process, representing an early and crucial stage in constructivist emotion theories. Valence evaluation is assumed to occur automatically when encountering a stimulus. But does this really apply always, even if we simply see a word? And if so, what exactly is processed or activated in memory? One approach to investigating this evaluative process uses behavioral priming paradigms and, first and foremost, the evaluative priming paradigm and its variants. In the present review, we delineate the insights gained from this paradigm about the relation of affect and emotion to cognition and language. Specifically, we reviewed the empirical evidence base with regard to this issue as well as the proposed theoretical models of valence evaluation, specifically with regard to the nature of the representations activated via such paradigms. It will become clear that affect and emotion are foremost (and, perhaps, even exclusively) triggered by evaluative priming paradigms in the sense that semantic affective knowledge is activated. This knowledge should be modeled as being active in working memory rather than in long-term memory as was assumed in former models. The emerging evidence concerning the processing of more specific emotion aspects gives rise to the assumption that the activation of these semantic aspects is related to their social importance. In that sense, the fast and (conditionally) automatic activation of valence and other emotion aspects in evaluative priming paradigms reveals something about affect and emotion: Valence and specific emotion aspects are so important for our daily life that encountering almost any stimulus entails the automatic activation of the associated valence and other emotion aspects in memory, when the context requires it.

Valence makes a stronger contribution than arousal to affective priming

BACKGROUND

Recent data suggest that both word valence and arousal modulate subsequent cognitive processing. However, whether valence or arousal makes a stronger contribution to cognitive processing is less understood.

METHODS

The present study performed three experiments that varied the valence (positive or negative) and arousal (high or low) of prime-target word pairs in a lexical decision-priming task. Affective priming was derived from pure valence (Experiment 1), pure arousal (Experiment 2), or a combination of valence and arousal (Experiment 3).

RESULTS

By comparing three types of priming effects, we found an effect of valence on affective priming was obvious regardless of whether the relationship of the prime-target varied with valence, arousal, or the combination of valence and arousal. In contrast, an effect of arousal on affective priming only appeared in the condition that based on the arousal relationship of the prime-target pair. Moreover, the valence-driven priming effect, arousal-driven priming effect, and emotional-driven priming effect were modulated by valence type but not by arousal level of word stimuli.

CONCLUSION

The present results revealed a pattern of valence and arousal in semantic networks, indicating that the valence information of emotional words tends to be more stable than arousal information within the semantic system, at least in the present lexical decision-priming task.

On ignoring words-exploring the neural signature of inhibition of affective words using ERPs

In the present study event-related potentials were used to shed further light on the neural signatures of active inhibition of the (affective) content of written words. Intentional inhibition was implemented by simply asking participants (N = 32) to ignore single words that served as primes in an affective priming (AP) task. In AP, evaluations about a priori neutral targets typically tend to shift towards the valence of preceding primes, denoting an AP effect (APE). To create a plausible cover-context emphasizing the usefulness of word inhibition, participants were asked to avoid this shift, that is, to make unbiased target evaluations. Ignoring the prime words was suggested as the most efficient strategy to achieve this aim. Effective inhibition of the words' (affective) content, as suggested by a significant APE present for words processed without any further instruction, but not for ignored ones, affected multiple stages of processing. On the neuronal level, word inhibition was characterized by reduced early perceptual (left-lateralized word-specific N170), later attentional (parietal P300), and affective-semantic processing (reduced posterior semantic asymmetry). Furthermore, an additional recruitment of top-down inhibitory control processes, which was mirrored in increased amplitudes of medial-frontal negativity, showed to be critically involved in intentional word inhibition.