The temporal mechanism of contextual emotions’ effects on novel abstract and concrete word learning

Abstract

While previous studies have explored the neurocognitive mechanism of novel word learning under sentential contexts, few studies have probed the potential effects of contextual emotions. The current study used behavioral methods and electroencephalography to elucidate the dynamic influences of contextual emotions while encoding abstract or concrete novel words on subsequent retrieval of the learned meanings. Enhanced N400 and smaller late positive components (LPC) were elicited when encoding abstract words in the positive context. Furthermore, negative contexts were found to hinder both abstract and concrete word learning, while positive contexts had a greater inhibitory effect on learning abstract words than concrete words. Taken together, these findings suggest that the effects of contextual emotions on novel word learning depend on the concreteness of the learned word and occur during the early and late processing stages while mapping abstract and concrete semantic concepts to novel words.