Abstract
In line with the dimensional theory of emotional space, we developed affective norms for words rated in terms of valence, arousal and dominance in a group of older adults to complete the adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) for Italian and to aid research on aging. Here, as in the original Italian ANEW database, participants evaluated valence, arousal, and dominance by means of the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) in a paper-and-pencil procedure. We observed high split-half reliabilities within the older sample and high correlations with the affective ratings of previous research, especially for valence, suggesting that there is large agreement among older adults within and across-languages. More importantly, we found high correlations between younger and older adults, showing that our data are generalizable across different ages. However, despite this across-ages accord, we obtained age-related differences on three affective dimensions for a great number of words. In particular, older adults rated as more arousing and more unpleasant a number of words that younger adults rated as moderately unpleasant and arousing in our previous affective norms. Moreover, older participants rated negative stimuli as more arousing and positive stimuli as less arousing than younger participants, thus leading to a less-curved distribution of ratings in the valence by arousal space. We also found more extreme ratings for older adults for the relationship between dominance and arousal: older adults gave lower dominance and higher arousal ratings for words rated by younger adults with middle dominance and arousal values. Together, these results suggest that our affective norms are reliable and can be confidently used to select words matched for the affective dimensions of valence, arousal and dominance across younger and older participants for future research in aging.
Highlights
Laden words influence a number of cognitive processes, such as lexical decision [1,2,3,4], reading [5,6] and memory [7,8]
The affective norms for Italian words in older adults’ corpus, available as S1 Database, contains 1,121 Italian words with normative data on affective ratings of valence, arousal and dominance provided by 240 older adults
Despite the fact that the analysis revealed that the quadratic function explained the relationship between valence and arousal better than the linear function, the distribution of affective ratings in the valence by arousal space did not follow the classical boomerang- or U-shape found in previous affective norms in younger participants
Summary
Laden words influence a number of cognitive processes, such as lexical decision [1,2,3,4], reading [5,6] and memory [7,8]. As posited by the dimensional theory of emotion [37], the affective connotation of words can be described along a number of different dimensions This view is based on the seminal study of Osgood [37], who applied factor analyses to a wide variety of verbal differential judgments. This analysis showed that two main factors, valence and arousal, explained the major portion of variance in affective meaning, suggesting that individuals approach pleasant or positive stimuli and avoid unpleasant or negative ones with variable degrees of intensity. The term valence indicates the way an individual judges a stimulus (unpleasant vs. pleasant), the term arousal indicates the degree of activation an individual feels towards a stimulus (calm vs. exciting), whereas the term dominance/control indicates the degree of control an individual feels over a given stimulus (out of control vs. in control)
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