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.
Highlights
The aim of this paper is to discuss the contribution of a lexical data-base, the Berlin Affective Word List (BAWL), to the study of affective and aesthetic processes in reading
BAWLing into affective and aesthetic processes in reading discussed: one uses a special version of the BAWL to look at affective lexical semantics in children, one uses a novel class of stimuli that have a clear bivalent affective semantic structure, and the last one looks at what makes words beautiful or ugly
Since evolution had no time to invent a proper affective system for art reception, even less so for reading, the emotional and aesthetic processes we experience when reading must be somehow linked to the ancient neuronal affect circuits we share with all mammals
Summary
The aim of this paper is to discuss the contribution of a lexical data-base, the BAWL, to the study of affective and aesthetic processes in reading. Popular models of visual word recognition, text processing, or reading remained completely silent with regard to potential affective or aesthetic effects of words (Jacobs, 2011). This might come as a surprise considering that early theoreticians of language, such as Freud (1891) or Bühler (1934), already argued that both spoken and written words are embodied stimuli with the potential to elicit overt and covert sensory-motor and affective responses. Bühler introduced the notion of “Sphärengeruch” (spheric fragrance of words), according to which words have a substance, and the actions they serve speaking, reading, thinking, feeling – are themselves substancecontrolled. As a concise name for the latter assumption about the emotion-language link we have coined the term ‘Panksepp-Jakobson hypothesis’ (Jacobs and Schrott, 2013; Jacobs, 2015b), which finds indirect or direct support in many papers from our lab and others (e.g., Cupchik, 1994; Kneepkens and Zwaan, 1994; Miall and Kuiken, 1994; Oatley, 1994; Kuchinke et al, 2005; Kissler et al, 2007; Hofmann et al, 2009; Schacht and Sommer, 2009; Briesemeister et al, 2011a,b; Altmann et al, 2012, 2014; Bohrn et al, 2012a,b, 2013; Briesemeister et al, 2012, 2014a,b; Ponz et al, 2013; Hofmann and Jacobs, 2014; Hsu et al, 2014; Jacobs, 2014a,b; Hsu et al, 2015a,b,c)
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