Emotion words: Facing change

Abstract

We assessed the role that language plays in detecting a change in a transitioning emotional face. In two experiments, participants were presented with emotion or control words prior to seeing a transitioning face from one emotion to another (e.g., anger-disgust). In the first experiment, participants (n = 42) took less time to detect a change in a transitioning emotion face following a congruent emotion word (to the first face) compared to a control word. Participants also took more time to detect the same change following an incongruent emotion word (to the first face) compared to a control word. Our results suggest that depending on the relationship between the face and word, emotion words affect the point at which participants see the face as transitioning between emotional categories. In the second experiment (n = 39), we replicated the behavioral effects and calculated event-related potentials (ERPs), which were time-locked to the onset of the transitioning faces. We found that participants' N400 ERP responses appeared earlier following a congruent emotion word, providing additional neural evidence for emotion words impacting category distinctions of affective information. In a third experiment, we ruled out previous methodological concerns as well as showed that our effects are specific to emotion words and not more generalized emotion stimuli.