Emotional words facilitate lexical but not early visual processing.

Sophie M Trauer,Sonja A Kotz,Matthias M Müller

doi:10.1186/s12868-015-0225-8

Abstract

BackgroundEmotional scenes and faces have shown to capture and bind visual resources at early sensory processing stages, i.e. in early visual cortex. However, emotional words have led to mixed results. In the current study ERPs were assessed simultaneously with steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) to measure attention effects on early visual activity in emotional word processing. Neutral and negative words were flickered at 12.14 Hz whilst participants performed a Lexical Decision Task.ResultsEmotional word content did not modulate the 12.14 Hz SSVEP amplitude, neither did word lexicality. However, emotional words affected the ERP. Negative compared to neutral words as well as words compared to pseudowords lead to enhanced deflections in the P2 time range indicative of lexico-semantic access. The N400 was reduced for negative compared to neutral words and enhanced for pseudowords compared to words indicating facilitated semantic processing of emotional words. LPC amplitudes reflected word lexicality and thus the task-relevant response.ConclusionIn line with previous ERP and imaging evidence, the present results indicate that written emotional words are facilitated in processing only subsequent to visual analysis.

Highlights

Emotional scenes and faces have shown to capture and bind visual resources at early sensory processing stages, i.e. in early visual cortex
state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) amplitude was unaffected by emotional word content or Lexicality at all sampling points throughout the trial
In the present study we found an enhanced P2 amplitude for negative compared to neutral words and latency and topography of the effect seem to roughly overlap with the SSVEP effect reported by Keil et al [29]

Summary

Introduction

Emotional scenes and faces have shown to capture and bind visual resources at early sensory processing stages, i.e. in early visual cortex. A robust finding with emotional words is enhanced neural activity in the P2 time range [6, 7] denoting a processing stage where complex visual information, i.e. word forms are matched with semantic knowledge [6, 14]. At this latency, many studies report an enhanced early posterior negativity in response to emotional stimuli, e.g. In order to adress both lines of research, we chose an analysis approach

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Discussion

Conclusion