Abstract
This study examined emotional modulation of word processing, showing that the recognition potential (RP), an ERP index of word recognition, could be modulated by different emotional states. In the experiment, participants were instructed to compete with pseudo-competitors, and via manipulation of the outcome of this competition, they were situated in neutral, highly positive, slightly positive, highly negative or slightly negative emotional states. They were subsequently asked to judge whether the referent of a word following a series of meaningless character segmentations was an animal or not. The emotional induction task and the word recognition task were alternated. Results showed that 1) compared with the neutral emotion condition, the peak latency of the RP under different emotional states was earlier and its mean amplitude was smaller, 2) there was no significant difference between RPs elicited under positive and negative emotional states in either the mean amplitude or latency, and 3) the RP was not affected by different degrees of positive emotional states. However, compared to slightly negative emotional states, the mean amplitude of the RP was smaller and its latency was shorter in highly negative emotional states over the left hemisphere but not over the right hemisphere. The results suggest that emotional states influence word processing.
Highlights
Emotion plays an important role in our everyday lives and interacts with our cognition [1]
An enhanced early posterior negativity (EPN) may reflect a benefit from early automatic allocation of attention to the processing of emotional words, while an enhanced late positive complex (LPC) may indicate more the allocation of more attentional resources for conscious level processing of words influenced by emotional information [6]
To investigate if and how word processing is modulated by emotional states, the present study first induced emotional states by making participants compete with a pseudo-participant, and required them to complete a word recognition task
Summary
Emotion plays an important role in our everyday lives and interacts with our cognition [1]. Others have examined the issue by using emotional stimuli such as pictures or music to induce different types of emotional states in participants These studies are reviewed below, with a particular focus on those using event related potentials (ERPs), as in the present study. Recent ERP studies have shed light on the influence of emotional information on different stages of word processing. Emotional words with both positive and negative valences were found to elicit a larger early posterior negativity (EPN) than neutral words approximately 250 ms after stimulus onset [3,4,5,6,7]. An enhanced EPN may reflect a benefit from early automatic allocation of attention to the processing of emotional words, while an enhanced LPC may indicate more the allocation of more attentional resources for conscious level processing of words influenced by emotional information [6]
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