Abstract
In order to explore the affective priming effect of emotion-label words and emotion-laden words, the current study used unmasked (Experiment 1) and masked (Experiment 2) priming paradigm by including emotion-label words (e.g., sadness, anger) and emotion-laden words (e.g., death, gift) as primes and examined how the two kinds of words acted upon the processing of the target words (all emotion-laden words). Participants were instructed to decide the valence of target words, and their electroencephalogram was recorded at the same time. The behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) results showed that positive words produced a priming effect whereas negative words inhibited target word processing (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, the inhibition effect of negative emotion-label words on emotion word recognition was found in both behavioral and ERP results, suggesting that modulation of emotion word type on emotion word processing could be observed even in the masked priming paradigm. The two experiments further supported the necessity of defining emotion words under an emotion word type perspective. The implications of the findings are proffered. Specifically, a clear understanding of emotion-label words and emotion-laden words can improve the effectiveness of emotional communications in clinical settings. Theoretically, the emotion word type perspective awaits further explorations and is still at its infancy.
Highlights
Further comparisons showed that positive target words preceded by negative emotion-label words had a lower accuracy rate than those preceded by negative emotion-laden words, t (30) = 2.449, p < 0.05, while no differences between emotion-label words and emotion-laden words were found for other comparisons, ps > 0.1
Post hoc comparison confirmed that only positive emotion-laden words that were primed by negative emotion-label words (−3.482 μV) elicited larger early posterior negativity (EPN) than positive emotion-laden words primed by negative emotion-laden words (−2.340 μV), t (30) = 2.315, p < 0.05 at PO7
event-related potential (ERP) results further showed that negative emotion-label words inhibited positive word recognition that elicited increased EPN than that was provoked by positive words preceded by negative emotion-laden words
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.Emotion words have been widely investigated in emotion research for decades [1,2,3].Mounting evidence has confirmed the priority of processing emotion words against neutral words [4,5,6,7,8,9]; these studies were cast into doubt when defining emotion words precisely [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25].1.1. Mounting evidence has confirmed the priority of processing emotion words against neutral words [4,5,6,7,8,9]; these studies were cast into doubt when defining emotion words precisely [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25]. Defining Emotion Words under a Distinctive Perspective. Researchers in psycholinguistics and linguistics distinguished two kinds of emotion words, namely, “emotion words” and “emotion-laden words” [10,26]. Altarriba [10] and Pavlenko [26] provided an insightful distinction between the two kinds of words, it was ambiguous to name “emotion words”
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