Emotional Word Recognition Research Articles

Study on the event-related potential in recognition of emotional words between typical “five-state personality”

Objective: To explore the event-related potential (ERP) differences of people with typical traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) “five-state personality” in the task of judging the emotional attributes (positive, neutral, and negative) of Chinese words. Methods: The “five-state personality test” was applied to screen the typical TCM “five-state personality”, and three groups were established including positive personality, negative personality, and atypical personality. The differences of electroencephalogram (EEG) components in the task of judging the emotional attributes of Chinese words were collected using ERPs. The 3 personality groups ×3 words with emotional attributes were analyzed by two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results: The N1 and P300 components were induced successfully. The analysis on the mean values of corresponding electrodes in left frontal lobe, right frontal lobe, frontal lobe and parietal lobe showed that in the typical negative personality group, the absolute value of N1 amplitude was smaller in the prefrontal and frontal lobes, and the latency was shorter in the left frontal lobe, while in the typical positive personality group, the absolute value of N1 amplitude was larger in the left frontal lobe. In the prefrontal and frontal lobes, the N1 peak absolute value of negative words was higher and the latency was longer, and the N1 latency of neutral words was shorter. The N1 latency of positive words was shorter in the parietal lobe. In the right frontal and frontal lobes, the P300 peak of negative words was higher and the latency was longer, while the latency of positive words was longer in the parietal lobe. In addition, there was some interaction between personality groups and emotional attributes of words. Conclusion: When people with typical “five-state personality” judge the emotional attributes of words, the absolute value of N1 amplitude in left prefrontal lobe of typical positive personality group is high, while that of typical negative personality group was small and the latency is short. The P300 latency of negative words is longer in the right frontal and frontal lobes, and that of positive words is longer in the parietal lobes, with more significant difference in the positive personality group.

The role of emotional prototypicality in Chinese emotion word recognition: evidence from implicit and explicit emotion tasks

Abstract Emotional prototypicality (EmoPro) quantifies the extent to which an emotion-label word represents emotion concepts. While previous research demonstrated faster recognition for high EmoPro words than low EmoPro words in Spanish, the modulation of EmoPro on emotion word recognition in other languages and its dependence on task demands remain unclear. This study employed both the lexical decision task (Experiment 1) and the valence judgment task (Experiment 2) to investigate the EmoPro effect among Chinese speakers. The results not only confirmed the role of EmoPro in Chinese emotion word recognition, supporting the prototype theory of emotion concepts, but also highlighted that the EmoPro effect was more pronounced in the valence judgment task (an explicit emotion task) than in the lexical decision task (an implicit emotion task). This suggests that EmoPro is associated with the ease of accessing emotion concepts and serves as an affective-semantic variable.

Event-related potentials and behavioral correlates of emotional recognition memory in late pregnancy.

Research on cognitive and emotional functions during pregnancy challenges the prevalent perception of cognitive decline in pregnant women. This study investigates the behavioral and neural dynamics of cognitive-affective processing in third-trimester pregnant women, comparing them with non-pregnant controls. Using a 64-channel EEG-ERP system, we recorded brain activity as participants engaged in an emotional word recognition task. This task involved initially viewing a sequence of emotional and neutral words, followed by a recognition test where participants identified each word as 'new' or 'previously seen'. Contrary to widespread beliefs about diminished recognition ability during late pregnancy, our results revealed no significant differences in error rates between groups. However, pregnant participants demonstrated slower reaction times. In terms of neural responses, pregnant women exhibited increased amplitudes in the N1, P2, and N400 ERP components, suggesting that they may require additional brain resources compared with non-pregnant individuals to process perceptual information. A significant interaction was observed between pregnancy status and the emotional valence of stimuli. Pregnant women showed heightened N1 and N400 responses to negative words, indicating increased sensitivity to stimuli potentially representing threat. This enhanced response was not observed for positive or neutral words. Furthermore, there was an amplified N1 response to 'new' words, but not to 'old' words. These findings suggest that late pregnancy is characterized by heightened responsiveness to new and particularly negative stimuli, potentially leading to a more cautious behavioral approach. Heightened vigilance and sensitivity could offer evolutionary advantages, optimizing fetal development and enhancing maternal well-being.

Emotion in language: Emotion word type and valence interactively predicted Chinese emotional word processing in emotion categorization task

AbstractThe present study examined the predicted effects of emotion word type and valence on emotional word recognition and explored their influence on emotion effects through an emotion categorization task. The results showed the influence of emotion word type and valence on emotional words recognition. Emotion‐label words exhibited faster response and higher accuracy rates (ACC) than emotion‐laden words, and positive words evoked faster response and lower ACC than negative words. Positive emotion‐label words and negative emotion‐laden words evoked higher ACC than negative emotion‐label words and positive emotion‐laden words. Besides, the findings revealed the modulation of emotion word type and valence on the emotion effects. Emotion‐label words and positive words displayed larger emotion effects than emotion‐laden words and negative words in reaction time, and only emotion‐laden words and positive emotion‐label words showed emotion effects in ACC. These findings endorsed the mediated emotion concept account, density hypothesis, and automatic vigilance hypothesis. Based on the findings, we proposed a valence cognition account to explain the interactive results.

60 Recognition of Emotional Words: Relationship Between Rumination, Depression, Objective and Subjective Cognitive Impairment

Objective:Cognitive impairment in depression could present as subjective and objective, but the intensity of subjective impairment is higher and is not correlated with the deficits measured by neuropsychological tests. Subjective cognitive impairment lowers quality of life and is associated with the severity of depression. Among depressive patients, negative emotional bias is present. It is better memory for negative or positive information than for neutral information. We hypothesized that rumination is associated with subjective cognitive impairment.Participants and Methods:The study was performed through the online PsyToolkit platform. The study sample consisted of 168 healthy controls and 93 patients with depression were enrolled in the study. Participants completed questionnaires and performed a memory task that contained emotional words. The forty words were chosen from the Nencki Affective Word List. The list for memory test consists of 5 words from each Category: Happiness, Anger, Fear, Sad, Disgusting, and Neutral, and 10 words from category ‘Unclassified’ to balance the valence and arousal of the set. After 15 minutes, they recognized old words from the list of 80 words. Half of them were the same as in the first part, and other words were new, chosen with the same criteria. Depression symptoms were measured using the Beck Depression Inventory-II, subjective cognitive impairment with the Perceived Deficits Questionnaire-20, and intensity of rumination with the Polish Questionnaire of Rumination.Results:Subjective cognitive impairment and rumination were higher in patients with depression. They also had a higher error rate than healthy controls U = 6462.5; p = .021, especially in words from the neutral (U = 6292; p = .008) and happiness category (U = 6585; p = .031). However, there was no association between subjective cognitive impairment and performance in memory tasks. The regression analysis showed that depressive symptoms and intensity of rumination are better predictors of subjective cognitive deficits than objective performance on a memory task. The results of PDQ-20 were correlated with the error rate of words from categories: Happiness (r = -.162**), Sad (r = -.116*) and Neutral (r = -.145**). Words from categories Happiness, Disgust and Neutral were significantly better recognized than Unclassified, Fear or Sad group of words χ 2 F (6) = 132.685; p < .001. In MDD group recognition of Disgust words were statistically highest than Anger and Fear words χ 2 F (6) = 36.795; p < .001. The recognition of Happiness and Neutral word were not significantly different to other words.Conclusions:Cognitive problems are common in depression and affect quality of life. Subjective cognitive impairment is more closely related to rumination than objective cognitive impairment among healthy participants and patients with major depressive disorder. Emotional bias among depressive patients has been partially confirmed. Emotional impact is important for memory of words and subjective perception of cognition.

Beyond Valence and Arousal: The Role of Age of Acquisition in Emotion Word Recognition.

Although the age of acquisition (AoA) effect has been established in numerous studies, how emotion word processing is modulated by AoA, along with affective factors, such as valence and arousal, is not well understood. Hence, the influence of age of acquisition (AoA), valence, and arousal on Chinese emotion word recognition was investigated through two experiments. Experiment 1 (N = 30) adopted a valence judgment task to explore the roles of valence and AoA in emotion word recognition, whereas Experiment 2 (N = 30) used a lexical decision task to examine AoA and arousal effects. A mixed linear effects model was used to examine the fixed effects of AoA, arousal, and valence and random effects of participants and items. The findings provided confirmation of the effects of AoA, valence, and arousal. Notably, AoA and valence had independent influences on emotion word recognition, as evidenced by longer reaction times for later-acquired words and negative words compared to early-acquired words and positive words (all ps < 0.05). On the other hand, AoA and arousal demonstrated interdependent effects on emotion word recognition. Specifically, a larger AoA effect was observed for low-arousing words (all ps < 0.05), whereas the influence of AoA on high-arousing words was insignificant. These results underscored the significance of AoA in processing emotion words and highlighted the interplay between AoA and arousal. Additionally, it is plausible to suggest that the AoA effect was primarily perceptual rather than semantic in nature.

Can adult learners sense L2 emotional words automatically? The role of L2 use on the emotional Stroop effect

The present study investigated whether adult learners of second language (L2) can automatically activate emotional connotation during emotional word recognition as compared native (L1) users and whether L2 use plays a significant role in it. The automaticity of activation was measured through the emotional Stroop task. In this task, emotional words and neutral words were displayed in two different colors, and the participants were asked to indicate the color by button press. Results showed a delay in L2 learners’ response to emotional words (the emotional Stroop effect) without significant differences from L1 users’ response, indicating comparable automaticity in activating emotional connotation in performing the task. Further analyses on the effect of L2 use revealed its significant role in increasing the emotional Stroop effect. Specifically, L2 learners with higher amount of L2 use in daily life produced a significant emotion Stroop effect comparable to L1 users, while L2 learners with lower L2 use did not. We discuss the importance of L2 use in actual context in automatic processing of L2 emotional words, especially among adult learners who began L2 learning in adulthood in a case of underrepresented languages as L2.

Can ambient odors influence the recognition of emotional words? A behavioral and event-related potentials study

Odor context can affect the recognition of facial expressions. However, there is no evidence to date that odor can regulate the processing of emotional words conveyed by visual words. An emotional word recognition task was combined with event-related potential technology. Briefly, 49 adults were randomly divided into three odor contexts (pleasant odor, unpleasant odor, and no odor) to judge the valence of emotional words (positive, negative, and neutral). Both behavioral and Electroencephalography (EEG) data were collected. Both the pleasant odor and unpleasant odor contexts shortened the response time of the subjects to emotional words. In addition, negative words induced greater amplitudes of early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) than the positive and neutral words. However, the neutral words induced a larger N400 amplitude than the positive and negative words. More importantly, the processing of emotional words was found to be modulated by external odor contexts. For example, during the earlier (P2) processing stages, pleasant and unpleasant odor contexts induced greater P2 amplitudes than the no odor context. In the unpleasant odor context, negative words with the same odor valence induced greater P2 amplitudes than the positive words. During the later (N400) stages, various regions of the brain regions exhibited different results. For example, in the left and right frontal areas of the brain, exposure to positive words in a pleasant odor context resulted in a smaller N400 amplitude than exposure to neutral words in the same context. Meanwhile, in the left and right central regions, emotional words with the same valence as pleasant or unpleasant odor contexts elicited the minimum N400 amplitude. Individuals are very sensitive to emotional information. With deeper processing, different cognitive processes are reflected and they can be modulated by external odors. In the early and late stages of word processing, both pleasant and unpleasant odor contexts exhibited an undifferentiated dominance effect and could specifically modulate affectively congruent words.

Recognition and Analysis of Emotional Words in Ancient Chinese Poetry under Different Themes

AbstractThe emotional connotation in ancient poetry is a valuable human spiritual culture, adopting the key semantic technique to parse the emotional word in poetry under different themes is beneficial to discover the relationship between poetry theme and emotion. In a “cold environment” (without learning corpus) of Tang poetry, this work presents, for the first time, the automatic recognition and analysis of large‐scale humanistic emotional words within ancient Chinese poetry from different themes. A “cold start” automatic citation method for character sequences is proposed to obtain the learning corpus. The best F1 and F1_distinct of trained BERT‐BiLSTM‐CRFs model respectively reach 96.27% and 86.04%. Deep learning expanded imagery words that convey emotion to realize knowledge discovery. The relationships between theme and emotion word show that Chinese poetry is good at using natural objects to express various sentiments to people, with each theme of poetry owns distinguished emotion feature.

Emotion and Word Recognition for Unprocessed and Vocoded Speech Stimuli.

Individuals with cochlear implants (CIs) show reduced word and auditory emotion recognition abilities relative to their peers with normal hearing. Modern CI processing strategies are designed to preserve acoustic cues requisite for word recognition rather than those cues required for accessing other signal information (e.g., talker gender or emotional state). While word recognition is undoubtedly important for communication, the inaccessibility of this additional signal information in speech may lead to negative social experiences and outcomes for individuals with hearing loss. This study aimed to evaluate whether the emphasis on word recognition preservation in CI processing has unintended consequences on the perception of other talker information, such as emotional state. Twenty-four young adult listeners with normal hearing listened to sentences and either reported a target word in each sentence (word recognition task) or selected the emotion of the talker (emotion recognition task) from a list of options (Angry, Calm, Happy, and Sad). Sentences were blocked by task type (emotion recognition versus word recognition) and processing condition (unprocessed versus 8-channel noise vocoder) and presented randomly within the block at three signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) in a background of speech-shaped noise. Confusion matrices showed the number of errors in emotion recognition by listeners. Listeners demonstrated better emotion recognition performance than word recognition performance at the same SNR. Unprocessed speech resulted in higher recognition rates than vocoded stimuli. Recognition performance (for both words and emotions) decreased with worsening SNR. Vocoding speech resulted in a greater negative impact on emotion recognition than it did for word recognition. These data confirm prior work that suggests that in background noise, emotional prosodic information in speech is easier to recognize than word information, even after simulated CI processing. However, emotion recognition may be more negatively impacted by background noise and CI processing than word recognition. Future work could explore CI processing strategies that better encode prosodic information and investigate this effect in individuals with CIs as opposed to vocoded simulation. This study emphasized the need for clinicians to consider not only word recognition but also other aspects of speech that are critical to successful social communication.

Exploring Affective Priming Effect of Emotion-Label Words and Emotion-Laden Words: An Event-Related Potential Study.

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.

Comparing Emotion Recognition and Word Recognition in Background Noise.

Purpose Word recognition in quiet and in background noise has been thoroughly investigated in previous research to establish segmental speech recognition performance as a function of stimulus characteristics (e.g., audibility). Similar methods to investigate recognition performance for suprasegmental information (e.g., acoustic cues used to make judgments of talker age, sex, or emotional state) have not been performed. In this work, we directly compared emotion and word recognition performance in different levels of background noise to identify psychoacoustic properties of emotion recognition (globally and for specific emotion categories) relative to word recognition. Method Twenty young adult listeners with normal hearing listened to sentences and either reported a target word in each sentence or selected the emotion of the talker from a list of options (angry, calm, happy, and sad) at four signal-to-noise ratios in a background of white noise. Psychometric functions were fit to the recognition data and used to estimate thresholds (midway points on the function) and slopes for word and emotion recognition. Results Thresholds for emotion recognition were approximately 10 dB better than word recognition thresholds, and slopes for emotion recognition were half of those measured for word recognition. Low-arousal emotions had poorer thresholds and shallower slopes than high-arousal emotions, suggesting greater confusion when distinguishing low-arousal emotional speech content. Conclusions Communication of a talker's emotional state continues to be perceptible to listeners in competitive listening environments, even after words are rendered inaudible. The arousal of emotional speech affects listeners' ability to discriminate between emotion categories.

WITHDRAWN: Emotion recognition simulation of Japanese text based on FPGA and neural network

Abstract Text emotion recognition is an important task to identify the human reaction, with several solutions in various areas such as data mining, online learning, information filtering systems, Human-Computer Interaction, and psychology. Specific text emotional perception is the most solved problem in the literature. Hidden emotion recognition is to solve this problem, as it is the most difficult problem hidden in ordinary text. Therefore, the solution needs to understand the text in faster action, so the Neural Network (NN) is implemented in this system. The text recognition of Japanese language is difficult in existing methods like processing time is low, accuracy is high and power consumption is low in (Field Programmable Gate Array) FPGA based neural network classifier. This type of Neural Network (NN) analysis is beneficial to Japanese emotions as it implements the classification result so the accuracy is improved. To test this theory, an automatic emotional word recognition system uses the learning and text features and is based on classification. To analyze the performance of the proposed Neural Network (NN) like a flip-flop, power, latency, precision, recall, and F-measure. It turns out that recognition based on classification can significantly increase the result. Performance highlights of these methods and the impact of simple neural network tasks such as reduce the issues this also works for the best performance.

Personality Traits and Emotional Word Recognition: An ERP Study.

Recent research has investigated how personality trait differences influence the processing of emotion conveyed by pictures, but limited research has examined the emotion conveyed by words. The present study investigated whether extraversion (extroverts vs. introverts) and neuroticism (high neurotics vs. low neurotics) influence the processing of positive, neutral, and negative words that were matched for arousal. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded from healthy participants while they performed a lexical decision task. We found that personality traits influenced emotional word recognition at N400 (300-450 ms) and LPC (450-800 ms). At the earlier (N400) stage, the more extraverted and neurotic a participant was, the more reduced the N400s for the positive words relative to neutral words were. This suggests that the extroverts and high neurotics (i.e., high impulsivity) identified positive content in words during lexical feature retrieval, which facilitated such retrieval. At the later (LPC) stage, both the introverts and high neurotics (i.e., high anxiety) showed greater LPCs to negative than neutral words, indicating their sustained attention and elaborative processing of negative information. These results suggest that extraversion and neuroticism collectively influence different stages of emotional word recognition in a way that is consistent with Gray's biopsychological theory of personality.

Association of trait mindfulness with the false recognition of emotional words in bilinguals

Association of trait mindfulness with the false recognition of emotional words in bilinguals

Self-reported hearing quality of life measures in pediatric cochlear implant recipients with bilateral input

Objective: Self-reported hearing quality of life (QoL) for pediatric cochlear implant (CI) recipients was examined, asking whether 1) children with CIs have similar QoL as those with less severe hearing loss (HL); 2) children with different bilateral CI (BCI) device configurations report different QoL; and 3) do audiological, demographic and spoken language factors affect hearing QoL?Design: One hundred four children (ages 7–11 years) using bimodal devices or BCIs participated. The Hearing Environments and Reflection of Quality of Life (HEAR-QL) questionnaire, receptive language and speech perception tests were administered. HEAR-QL scores of CI recipients were compared to scores of age-mates with normal hearing and mild to profound HL.Results: HEAR-QL scores for CI participants were similar to those of children with less severe HL and did not differ with device configuration. Emotion identification and word recognition in noise correlated significantly with HEAR-QL scores.Discussion: CI recipients reported that HL hinders social participation. Better understanding of speech in noise and emotional content was associated with fewer hearing-related difficulties on the HEAR-QL.Conclusions: Noisy situations encountered in educational settings should be addressed for children with HL. The link between perception of emotion and hearing-related QoL for CI recipients should be further examined.

The effect of cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation during rapid eye-movement sleep on neutral and emotional memory.

Sleep-dependent memory consolidation has been extensively studied. Neutral declarative memories and serial reaction time task (SRTT) performance can benefit from slow-wave activity, characterized by less than 1 Hz frequency cortical slow oscillations (SO). Emotional memories can benefit from theta activity, characterized by 4–8 Hz frequency cortical oscillations. Applying transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) during sleep entrains specific frequencies to alter sleep architecture. When applying cathodal tDCS (CtDCS), neural inhibition or excitation may depend on the waveform at the applied frequency. A double dissociation was predicted, with CtDCS at SO frequency improving neutral declarative memory and SRTT performance, and theta frequency CtDCS inhibiting negative emotional memory. Participants completed three CtDCS conditions (Theta: 5 Hz, SO: 0.75 Hz and control: sham) and completed an SRTT and word recognition task pre- and post-sleep, comprising emotional and neutral words to assess memory. In line with predictions, CtDCS improved neutral declarative memory when applied at SO frequency. When applied at theta frequency, no negative emotional word memory impairment was found but a positive association was found between post-stimulation theta power and emotional word recognition. SRTT performance was also not altered by either CtDCS frequency. Future studies should investigate overnight theta CtDCS and examine the effects of CtDCS during and after stimulation.

The mediational role of distracting stimuli in emotional word recognition

Emotions are considered distractions that often prompt subsequent actions. In this way, the aim of this work was to examine the role of distracting stimuli on the relationship of RT and accuracy. In order to do that, a word recognition task was carried out in which emotional valence was manipulated. More precisely, a mediational model, testing how changes in distracting stimuli mediate RT predicting accuracy across emotional conditions, was carried out. The results suggest that changes in task demands should distract from the secondary task to the extent that these task demands implicate and affect accuracy. Moreover, the distracting task seems to mediate between accuracy and the target task under emotional stimuli, showing the negative distracting condition to be the most remarkable effect. Furthermore, neutral distracting latencies did not affect accuracy. Understanding the mechanisms by which emotion impairs cognitive functions has important implications in several fields, such as affective disorders. However, the effects of emotion on goal-directed cognitive processing remain unclear.

S143 Emotions, episodic memory and error monitoring – Age-dependent event-related potential characteristics

Objectives The aim of the study was to analyze the event-related potential (ERP) features of working memory and error monitoring processes both of which are assumed to decline by aging. For this purpose, age-related changes of emotional word recognition and decision making patterns in risky conditions were investigated. Methods Data were collected in three different experimental conditions in young (18–26 yrs) and elderly (60–75 yrs) participants. In an episodic memory task subjects were asked to memorize a set of emotional words and word recognition test was performed. The two-choice-single-outcome gambling and the Balloon Analogue Risk Tasks (BART) were used to study sequential decision making risking to lose or to gain by each move. Results The old/new effect on the N400 ERP component and the effect of valence for negative words were more pronounced in the young. The feedback-related negativity component corresponded to the goodness of outcome and the P3 showed complex feedback evaluation, but only in the young. The reward positivity ERP component increased as a function of reward contingencies, but only in the young. Discussion and conclusions The findings indicate prioritized processing of aversive stimuli in the young. The neural mechanisms signaling the most salient feedback stimulus properties are altered by aging. Sequential tracking of outcome contingencies has a key role in action planning and progressive expectation. Significance The obvious decline of the cognitive functions investigated indicate diminished capacity of adaptive behavior in the elderly.

Congruent bodily arousal promotes the constructive recognition of emotional words.

Considerable research has shown that bodily states shape affect and cognition. Here, we examined whether transient states of bodily arousal influence the categorization speed of high arousal, low arousal, and neutral words. Participants realized two blocks of a constructive recognition task, once after a cycling session (increased arousal), and once after a relaxation session (reduced arousal). Results revealed overall faster response times for high arousal compared to low arousal words, and for positive compared to negative words. Importantly, low arousal words were categorized significantly faster after the relaxation than after the cycling, suggesting that a decrease in bodily arousal promotes the recognition of stimuli matching one's current arousal state. These findings highlight the importance of the arousal dimension in emotional processing, and suggest the presence of arousal-congruency effects.