Emotion word processing: effects of emotional valence and arousal on behavioural and electrophysiological measures

Abstract

Emotion is characterised by a two-dimensional structure: valence describes the extent to which an emotion is positive or negative, whereas arousal refers to the intensity of an emotion, how exciting or calming it is. It is known that the emotional content of verbal material influences cognitive processing during lexical decision, naming, emotional Stroop task and many others (see Citron et al., 2009). Converging findings showed that emotionally valenced words (positive or negative) are processed faster than neutral words, as shown by reaction time and ERP measures, suggesting a prioritisation of emotional stimuli (Scott et al., 2009). Other studies report slower recognition of negative words compared to positive words suggesting an additional effect of automatic vigilance (Algom et al., 2004). These latter studies, though, failed to control for important lexical and semantic features of single words (Larsen et al., 2006). Furthermore, few studies have considered the effects of emotional arousal on word recognition and the relationship between emotional valence and arous…