Abstract
The present study investigates the influence of emotional information on language processing. To this aim, we measured behavioral responses and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during four Italian lexical decision experiments in which we used emotionally intense and neutral pseudowords—i.e., pseudowords derived from changing one letter in a word (e.g., cammelto, derived from cammello ‘camel’ vs. copezzolo, from capezzolo ‘nipple’)—as stimuli. In Experiment 1 and 2, half of the pseudowords were emotionally intense and half were neutral, and were mixed with neutral words. In Experiment 3, the list composition was manipulated, with ¼ of the pseudowords being derived from emotionally intense words and ¾ derived from neutral words. Experiment 4 was identical to Experiment 1, but ERPs were recorded. Emotionally intense pseudowords were categorized more slowly than neutral pseudowords, with the difference emerging both in the mean and at the leading edge of the response times distribution. Moreover, emotionally intense pseudowords elicited smaller N170 and N400 than neutral pseudowords. These results speak in favor of a fast and multi-level infiltration of the emotional information into the linguistic process of word recognition.
Highlights
All mammals share the ability to recognize and react to emotional content since it is crucial for survival
We focus on the issue from a different perspective: We investigate the extent to which the emotional content of words may modulate the early-orthographic and late-semantic stages of stimulus encoding occurring during lexical decision
An ancillary analysis was run on all stimuli to verify the presence of the lexicality effect that would guarantee a different processing of words and pseudowords
Summary
All mammals share the ability to recognize and react to emotional content since it is crucial for survival. We focus on the issue from a different perspective: We investigate the extent to which the emotional content of words may modulate the early-orthographic and late-semantic stages of stimulus encoding occurring during lexical decision To this aim, we ran a series of experiments collecting both behavioral and event-related potentials (ERPs) data using pseudowords. Coltheart et al, 1977; Forster & Shen, 1996) Following this logic, by using neutral and emotionally intense pseudowords we should be able to directly investigate whether the emotional content may affect the early-orthographic stage of stimulus encoding (for semantic effects on early orthographic processing in word recognition, see, e.g., Chen, Davis, Pulvermuller, & Hauk, 2015; Wang, Deng, & Booth, 2019). If emotions play a role only late during stimulus encoding, i.e., when semantic analysis occurs, ERP effects are expected only from the N400 onward, with smaller N400 for emotionally intense than neutral pseudowords
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