Abstract
Previous research has examined the effects of emotional experience (i.e., the ease with which words evoke emotion information) in semantic categorization (SCT), word naming, and Stroop tasks (Newcombe et al., 2012; Siakaluk et al., 2014; Moffat et al., 2015). However, to date there are no published reports on whether emotional experience influences performance in the lexical decision task (LDT). In the present study, we examined the influence of emotional experience in LDT using three different stimulus sets. In Experiment 1 we used a stimulus set used by both Kousta et al. (2009; Experiment 1) and Yap and Seow (2014) that is comprised of 40 negative, 40 positive, and 40 neutral words; in Experiment 2 we used a stimulus set comprised of 150 abstract nouns; and in Experiment 3 we used a stimulus set comprised of 373 verbs. We observed facilitatory effects of emotional experience in each of the three experiments, such that words with higher emotional experience ratings were associated with faster response latencies. These results are important because the influence of emotional experience: (a) is observed in stimulus sets comprised of different types of words, demonstrating the generalizability of the effect in LDT; (b) accounts for LDT response latency variability above and beyond the influences of valence and arousal, and is thus a robust dimension of conceptual knowledge; (c) suggests that a richer representation of emotional experience provides more reliable evidence that a stimulus is a word, which facilitates responding in LDT; and (d) is consistent with grounded cognition frameworks that propose that emotion information may be grounded in bodily experience with the world (Barsalou, 2003, 2009; Vigliocco et al., 2009).
Highlights
Grounded cognition is the theoretical perspective that much of conceptual knowledge is derived through bodily experience with the world
The contributions to the second edition of the Meaning in mind: Semantic richness effects in language processing Research Topic examine the influence of different forms of semantic richness on various aspects of language processing
To date there are no published reports examining the influence of emotional experience in LDT, yet LDT is the most often used task to examine semantic richness effects in the visual word recognition literature (Pexman, 2012)
Summary
Grounded cognition is the theoretical perspective that much of conceptual knowledge is derived through bodily experience with the world. The theoretical and empirical focus of cognitive scientists using grounded cognition frameworks was to examine how sensorimotor interactions with the world influence the acquisition and retrieval of conceptual knowledge (Meteyard and Vigliocco, 2008). According to Barsalou’s (1999) perceptual symbol systems framework, conceptual knowledge is inherently multimodal, in that its different facets are stored and retrieved from neural systems dedicated to processing specific kinds of sensorimotor information. Knowledge of the concept “peach” would be stored in neural systems dedicated to processing visual, Emotional Experience in Lexical Decision olfactory, gustatory, and tactile information of peaches, as well as neural systems dedicated to processing motor information, such as how one’s body can interact with peaches (e.g., reaching for and picking up a peach from a bowl and bringing it to one’s mouth to bite it). For the example of “peach,” conceptual understanding of what peaches taste like arises from simulation of previous gustatory experiences involving peaches, whereas conceptual understanding of what one can physically do with peaches arises from simulation of previous motor experiences involving peaches
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