Valence Of Words Research Articles

Polarities influence implicit associations between colour and emotion

Colours are linked to emotional concepts. Research on the effect of red in particular has been extensive, and evidence shows that positive as well as negative associations can be salient in different contexts. In this paper, we investigate the impact of the contextual factor of polarity. According to the polarity-correspondence principle, negative and positive category poles are assigned to the binary response categories (here positive vs. negative valence) and the perceptual dimension (green vs. red) in a discrimination task. Response facilitation occurs only where the conceptual category (valence) and the perceptual feature (colour) share the same pole (i.e., where both are plus or both are minus). We asked participants (n = 140) to classify the valence of green and red words within two types of blocks: (a) where all words were of the same colour (monochromatic conditions) providing no opposition in the perceptual dimension, and (b) where red and green words were randomly mixed (mixed-colour conditions). Our results show that red facilitates responses to negative words when the colour green is present (mixed-colour conditions) but not when it is absent (monochromatic conditions). This is in line with the polarity-correspondence principle, but colour-specific valence-affect associations contribute to the found effects.

Electrophysiological correlates of emotion word processing in Spanish–English bilinguals

AbstractWe examined how proficiency influences the processing of emotion words in Spanish–English bilinguals (22 balanced and 20 unbalanced). All unbalanced bilinguals were more proficient in English than Spanish. Participants rated the valence of negative, neutral, and positive words in both languages while EEG was being recorded. ERP latencies and amplitudes were analyzed for two components. The language effect was significant on the late positive component (LPC) amplitude, which was larger for emotion than for neutral words for both groups in English. The unbalanced group presented larger LPC amplitudes for positive than for neutral and for neutral than for negative words in Spanish, suggesting emotion processing differences in these participants’ less proficient language. Valence effects were consistent across languages for the balanced group, but not for the unbalanced group, perhaps reflecting differences in reactivity to emotion words in the less proficient language.

Learning the Affective Value of Others in Schizophrenia: Examining the Role of Negative Symptoms and Cognitive Deficits

Prior research has examined the hypothesis that negative symptoms, such as anhedonia and lack of motivation, are caused by impaired memory for positive or rewarding experiences. Results have been inconsistent and less work has examined memory for socially-relevant information. The current study employed a repeated measures design to assess immediate and delayed recall of valenced material among 50 individuals with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and 25 demographically-matched controls. We examined the contribution of negative symptoms and cognitive deficits to the recall of positive material on two different tasks: 1) recall for valenced words and 2) the associative learning of valenced social acts paired with facial stimuli. Results indicated that for the word list recall task, individuals with schizophrenia recalled fewer negative words during the immediate recall phase than controls. On the social affective learning task, individuals with schizophrenia, compared to controls, demonstrated poorer learning of positive social behavior associations. Within individuals with schizophrenia, cognitive impairment, but not symptoms, was related to poorer performance on both tasks. In controls, symptoms reflecting deficits in social motivation and pleasure (but not cognitive functioning) were associated with poorer performance in learning associations with positive social behaviors on the affective learning task. Findings suggest that poor learning and recall of positive information in schizophrenia is particularly salient for social stimuli and that reduced recall of social information in schizophrenia is related to general cognitive ability but not negative symptoms. Implications for findings and future directions are discussed.

Effet de la valence émotionnelle de textes sur leur compréhension et l'apprentissage de nouveaux mots chez des élèves de 5éme année de primaire.

The present study examines the influence of the influence of emotional valence of texts (positive, negative and neutral), on text comprehension and learning of the new words of 139 pupils of 5th grade. Eight stories were built in three versions-positive, negative and neutral. Each story included a pseudoword that appeared three times. The student had to detect pseudowords meaning from several clues inserted in the text. The purpose for reading did not focus attention to the learning of unknown words (incidental learning). After the reading, text comprehension and learning of unknown words were assessed (orthographic recognition task and definition task). Measures of receptive vocabulary, decoding, reading comprehension and verbal working memory were also administered. The text comprehension scores as well as those obtained at the definition task were significantly lower after the reading of positive texts rather than negative or neutral texts. The effect of text valence of new words learning has not been demonstrated. The results are interpreted in terms of distracting effect of the positive emotional content on text comprehension. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotional Word Processing Within Configural Representations

The impact of emotions on cognitive processes has been studied intensively in the last years. The aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship between visuospatial attention processes and emotions. Visuospatial attention processes were investigated by using a localization task which required processing of the words that formed the configuration. In the localization task, participants were asked to indicate the position of the target word which matched the color of the fixation cross (“+”) by pressing the relevant keyboard button. In each trial, four words in different colors were positioned to form a square configuration. In different experimental conditions, words that formed the configuration varied in their valence (neutral, positive and negative words). The intertrial transitions (trial 1  trial 2) consisted of changes in the target’s location within the configuration (e.g. top right corner), size of configuration (big/small square) and type of word (emotional/neutral). The main goal of the present study is to investigate the interaction between the processing of emotional and neutral words and certain variables. The variables were the size of the attended area and localizing the target word that was repeated or changed across trials. By changing the size of the configuration (small / big sized square) across trials, the size of the attended area was determined. The results revealed that changes in word valence and size of the configuration led to differences in the localization task performance. It was found that neutral and negative words led to target location repetition cost. Different location targets were processed faster suggesting that word processing was easier. Additionally, bigger, compared to smaller configurations, led to better performance only when emotional words were used. Overall findings of the present study suggest that configural representations are formed automatically by using the word stimuli, and they influence the processing of emotional and neutral words differently

Neural and Behavioral Correlates of Clinical Improvement to Ketamine in Adolescents With Treatment Resistant Depression

Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is a serious problem in adolescents. Development and optimization of novel interventions for these youth will require a deeper knowledge of the neurobiology of depression. A well-established phenomenon of depression is an attention bias toward negativity and away from positivity that is evidenced behaviorally and neurally, but it is unclear how symptom reduction is related to changes to this bias. Neurobiological research using a treatment probe has promise to help discover the neural changes that accompany symptom improvement. Ketamine has utility for such research because of its known rapid and strong antidepressant effects in the context of TRD. Our previous study of six open-label ketamine infusions in 11 adolescents with TRD showed variable response, ranging from full remission, partial response, non-response, or clinical worsening. In this study, we examined the performance of these participants on Word Face Stroop (WFS) fMRI task where they indicated the valence of affective words superimposed onto either congruent or incongruent emotional faces before and after the ketamine infusions. Participants also completed a clinical assessment (including measurement of depression symptomology and anhedonia/pleasure) before and after the ketamine infusions. Following ketamine treatment, better WFS performance correlated with self-reported decreased depressive symptoms and increased pleasure. Analyses of corticolimbic, corticostriatal and default mode (DMN) networks showed that across networks, decreased activation during all conditions (congruent negative, congruent positive, incongruent negative, and incongruent positive) correlated with decreases in depressive symptoms and with increases in pleasure. These findings suggest that in adolescents with TRD, clinical improvement may require an attenuation of the negativity bias and re-tuning of these three critical neural networks to attenuate DMN and limbic regions activation and allow more efficient recruitment of the reward network. Lower activation across conditions may facilitate shifting across different salient emotional stimuli rather than getting trapped in downward negative spirals.

Representation of associative and affective semantic similarity of abstract words in the lateral temporal perisylvian language regions

The examination of semantic cognition has traditionally identified word concreteness as well as valence as two of the principal dimensions in the representation of conceptual knowledge. More recently, corpus-based vector space models as well as graph-theoretical analysis of large-scale task-related behavioural responses have revolutionized our insight into how the meaning of words is structured. In this fMRI study, we apply representational similarity analysis to investigate the conceptual representation of abstract words. Brain activity patterns were related to a cued-association based graph as well as to a vector-based co-occurrence model of word meaning. Twenty-six subjects (19 females and 7 males) performed an overt repetition task during fMRI. First, we performed a searchlight classification procedure to identify regions where activity is discriminable between abstract and concrete words. These regions were left inferior frontal gyrus, the upper and lower bank of the superior temporal sulcus bilaterally, posterior middle temporal gyrus and left fusiform gyrus. Representational Similarity Analysis demonstrated that for abstract words, the similarity of activity patterns in the cortex surrounding the superior temporal sulcus bilaterally and in the left anterior superior temporal gyrus reflects the similarity in word meaning. These effects were strongest for semantic similarity derived from the cued association-based graph and for affective similarity derived from either of the two models. The latter effect was mainly driven by positive valence words. This research highlights the close neurobiological link between the information structure of abstract and affective word content and the similarity in activity pattern in the lateral and anterior temporal language system.

Bliss is blue and bleak is grey: Abstract word-colour associations influence objective performance even when not task relevant

Humans associate abstract words with physical stimulus dimensions, such as linking upward locations with positive concepts (e.g., happy = up). These associations manifest both via subjective reports of associations and on objective performance metrics. Humans also report subjective associations between colours and abstract words (e.g., joy is linked to yellow). Here we tested whether such associations manifest on objective task performance, even when not task-relevant. Across three experiments, participants were presented with abstract words in physical colours that were either congruent with previously-reported subjective word-colour associations (e.g., victory in red and unhappy in blue), or were incongruent (e.g., victory in blue and unhappy in red). In Experiment 1, participants' task was to identify the valence of words. This congruency manipulation systematically affected objective task performance. In Experiment 2, participants completed two blocks, a valence-identification and a colour-identification task block. Both tasks produced congruency effects on performance, however, the results of the colour identification block could have reflected learning effects (i.e., associating the more common congruent colour with the word). This issue was rectified in Experiment 3, whereby participants completed the same two tasks as Experiment 2, but now matched congruent and incongruent pairs were used for both tasks. Again, both tasks produced reliable congruency effects. Item analyses in each experiment revealed that these effects demonstrated a degree of item specificity. Overall, there was clear evidence that at least some abstract word-colour pairings can systematically affect behaviour.

The influence of word valence on the right visual field advantage in the VHF paradigm: time to adjust the expectations

ABSTRACT Previous studies found that valence and visual half-field have an influence on word reading: Words are processed more efficiently when they evoke positive feelings and when they appear in the right visual field. In the present study we tried to address previous (contradictory) reports of an interaction between valence and visual half-field.A group of 39 right-handed undergraduates completed a lexical decision task in their native language (Dutch). They responded to 300 trials with real words and 300 trials with non-words. Overall, participants responded more efficiently to positive words and there was a strong right visual field advantage. We did not find a significant interaction, however. Further analysis indicated that to find a replicable interaction between a stimulus characteristic and visual half-field, one requires much high numbers of participants and stimuli than done so far. Experimental power is particularly low when the interaction is not fully crossed (a right visual field advantage for one type of stimulus and an equally large left visual field advantage for the other type of stimulus). If such investment cannot be made, the outcome is likely to be ambiguous at best and deceiving at worst if only significant findings are published.

Reward Modulates Affective Priming Effect in Cognitive Conflict Processing: Electrophysiological Evidence.

Previous research demonstrated that cognitive conflict could induce an affective priming effect, and the stage (detection/resolution) of conflict processing led to different directions (positive/negative) of the affective priming effect. We suggested that rewards play a critical role in the affective priming effect on conflict resolution. The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs), using the arrow flanker task as primes and choosing specific affective words as targets to investigate the affective priming effect induced by cognitive conflict during the resolution stage. Our question was whether rewards created a modulating effect. Participants were asked to judge the congruency of the prime stimuli and then evaluate the valence of the target words. For behavioral results, the conflict effect was significant, and the reward promoted the behavioral performance of participants. For ERP results, enhanced N2 amplitudes for incongruent primes indicated a significant conflict effect. More importantly, as expected, in the rewarded condition, the enhanced N400 amplitudes for positive targets following incongruent primes were found, indicating a positive priming effect. However, in the unrewarded condition, the reduced N400 amplitudes for positive targets following incongruent primes were found, indicating conflict resolution hindered the processing of positive stimuli. These findings suggested that cognitive conflict-induced the positive priming effect during the resolution stage and that rewards had a moderating effect on the positive priming effect.

Word Valence and Syntactic Relationship

Word Valence and Syntactic Relationship

Common and specific dimensions of internalizing disorders are characterized by unique patterns of brain activity on a task of emotional cognitive control

Alterations in neural systems underlying cognitive control are well-documented across individuals with various internalizing disorders. The current study examined how individual differences in underlying traits related to internalizing disorders influence brain activation, as assessed by fMRI, when cognitive control must be exerted to make a decision about the emotional valence (positive, negative) of a task-relevant word displayed concurrently with a task-irrelevant emotional face. Taking a bi-factor model approach, fifty-five middle-aged female participants were characterized on symptom level on a common internalizing latent factor representing shared symptoms across anxiety and depression, as well as on specific factors remaining after taking the common internalizing factor into account: low positive affect, anxious arousal, and anxious apprehension. Contrasting activation on trials requiring higher vs. lower control revealed that higher levels of the Common Internalizing factor are associated with less deactivation of regions of the default mode network. Higher levels of the Low Positive Affect-specific factor are associated with less differentiation in engagement of portions of the fronto-parietal control network, while higher levels of the Anxious Arousal-specific factor are associated with less of a differentiation in activation of the thalamus. No effects were observed for level of the Anxious Apprehension-specific factor. These results suggest that prior findings of alterations in default mode activity associated with depression may not be specific to depressive symptoms per se but may characterize internalizing symptoms more generally. In addition, they suggest that reduced engagement of cognitive control regions may be more associated with low positive affect than depressive symptoms more generally.

Emotion processing in congenital amusia: the deficits do not generalize to written emotion words

ABSTRACT Congenital amusia is a lifelong impairment in musical ability. Individuals with amusia are found to show reduced sensitivity to emotion recognition in speech prosody and silent facial expressions, implying a possible cross-modal emotion-processing deficit. However, it is not clear whether the observed deficits are primarily confined to socio-emotional contexts, where visual cues (facial expression) often co-occur with auditory cues (emotion prosody) to express intended emotions, or extend to linguistic emotion processing. In order to better understand the underlying deficiency mechanism of emotion processing in individuals with amusia, we examined whether reduced sensitivity to emotional processing extends to the recognition of emotion category and valence of written words in individuals with amusia. Twenty Cantonese speakers with amusia and 17 controls were tested in three experiments: (1) emotion prosody rating, in which participants rated how much each spoken sentence was expressed in each of the four emotions on 7-point rating scales; (2) written word emotion recognition, in which participants recognized the emotion of written emotion words; and (3) written word valence judgment, in which participants judged the valence of written words. Results showed that participants with amusia preformed significantly less accurately than controls in emotion prosody recognition; in contrast, the two groups showed no significant difference in accuracy rates in both written word tasks (emotion recognition and valence judgment). The results indicate that the impairment of individuals with amusia in emotion processing may not generalize to linguistic emotion processing in written words, implying that the emotion deficit is likely to be restricted to socio-emotional contexts in individuals with amusia.

Проблемы перевода Достоевского

The translation of Dostoevsky’s works presents numerous problems, and their analysis can be a most efficient way for the creation of a translation theory and methodology for profound texts characterized by the fact that words link on different levels and each time activate distinct elements of their semantic range. The discrepancy between semantic ranges in different languages leads to the high possibility of losing one or more correlations between words in translation. For the reader of the translation, the consequence is the disappearance of one or more threads of meaning running through the original text. Authorial transversal concepts and hidden quotes suffer the most from this situation, as the reduction or the change of the initial valence of the word causes that the translated word, even if perfectly fitted for the narrow context of the concrete sentence, completely loses its reference to the cited text or the thread the concept waves in the text. The article offers concrete examples of and possible solutions to the problems occurring during the process of translation. This kind of problem usually helps to reveal the strategy and the attitude of the author of the text.

指先が変える単語の意味

Drawing on the literature about approach-avoidance behavior, this study tested whether asymmetries in the ways people interact with their smartphones using flick input (an input method based on swiping a key in a certain direction to produce the desired letter) influence their evaluations of the emotional valence of words. Specifically, a downward flick is regarded as an approach behavior in that the movement of a finger is directed toward the self, while an upward flick is regarded as avoidance behavior in that the movement is directed away from the self. In five studies, the predicted relationship between emotional valence and direction of finger movement on the smartphone was observed for nonwords and existing words. On average, words with more downward flick letters were rated as more positive in valence than words with more upward flick letters (hereafter referred to as the Flick effect). Of note, the Flick effect was not found among people who have never owned a smartphone, suggesting that smartphone use with flick input shapes the meaning of words.

Computing the Affective-Aesthetic Potential of Literary Texts

In this paper, we compute the affective-aesthetic potential (AAP) of literary texts by using a simple sentiment analysis tool called SentiArt. In contrast to other established tools, SentiArt is based on publicly available vector space models (VSMs) and requires no emotional dictionary, thus making it applicable in any language for which VSMs have been made available (>150 so far) and avoiding issues of low coverage. In a first study, the AAP values of all words of a widely used lexical databank for German were computed and the VSM’s ability in representing concrete and more abstract semantic concepts was demonstrated. In a second study, SentiArt was used to predict ~2800 human word valence ratings and shown to have a high predictive accuracy (R2 > 0.5, p < 0.0001). A third study tested the validity of SentiArt in predicting emotional states over (narrative) time using human liking ratings from reading a story. Again, the predictive accuracy was highly significant: R2adj = 0.46, p < 0.0001, establishing the SentiArt tool as a promising candidate for lexical sentiment analyses at both the micro- and macrolevels, i.e., short and long literary materials. Possibilities and limitations of lexical VSM-based sentiment analyses of diverse complex literary texts are discussed in the light of these results.

Somatic and visceral effects of word valence, arousal and concreteness in a continuum lexical space

Although affective and semantic word properties are known to independently influence our sensorimotor system, less is known about their interaction. We investigated this issue applying a data-driven mixed-effects regression approach, evaluating the impact of lexical-semantic properties on electrophysiological parameters, namely facial muscles activity (left corrugator supercilii, zygomaticus major, levator labii superioris) and heartbeat, during word processing. 500 Italian words were acoustically presented to 20 native-speakers, while electrophysiological signals were continuously recorded. Stimuli varied for affective properties, namely valence (the degree of word positivity), arousal (the amount of emotional activation brought by the word), and semantic ones, namely concreteness. Results showed that the three variables interacted in predicting both heartbeat and muscular activity. Specifically, valence influenced activation for lower levels of arousal. This pattern was further modulated by concreteness: the lower the word concreteness, the larger affective-variable impact. Taken together, our results provide evidence for bodily responses during word comprehension. Crucially, such responses were found not only for voluntary muscles, but also for the heartbeat, providing evidence to the idea of a common emotional motor system. The higher impact of affective properties for abstract words supports proposals suggesting that emotions play a central role in the grounding of abstract concepts.

Valence makes a stronger contribution than arousal to affective priming.

BackgroundRecent data suggest that both word valence and arousal modulate subsequent cognitive processing. However, whether valence or arousal makes a stronger contribution to cognitive processing is less understood.MethodsThe present study performed three experiments that varied the valence (positive or negative) and arousal (high or low) of prime-target word pairs in a lexical decision-priming task. Affective priming was derived from pure valence (Experiment 1), pure arousal (Experiment 2), or a combination of valence and arousal (Experiment 3).ResultsBy comparing three types of priming effects, we found an effect of valence on affective priming was obvious regardless of whether the relationship of the prime-target varied with valence, arousal, or the combination of valence and arousal. In contrast, an effect of arousal on affective priming only appeared in the condition that based on the arousal relationship of the prime-target pair. Moreover, the valence-driven priming effect, arousal-driven priming effect, and emotional-driven priming effect were modulated by valence type but not by arousal level of word stimuli.ConclusionThe present results revealed a pattern of valence and arousal in semantic networks, indicating that the valence information of emotional words tends to be more stable than arousal information within the semantic system, at least in the present lexical decision-priming task.

Ratings of the emotional valence and arousal of collocations and their constituent words: How can they be useful in L2 vocabulary research?

Two dimensions of emotional meaning appreciably influence how well a lexeme is processed and remembered: valence (how pleasing) and arousal (how exciting). Although subjective, Likert-style ratings of such dimensions have a long history of fruitful use in experimental psychology—including psycholinguistics and bilingualism research—they have seldom figured in research of second language vocabulary acquisition. A literature review highlights reasons why this neglect is problematic. Fortunately, valence and arousal ratings are freely available for thousands of single words in a few languages. However, ratings of phrasal vocabulary items are rare. This study investigated how well the valence and arousal of two-word English collocations composed of content words can be estimated by proxy measures based on the rated valence and arousal of the constituent words. Evidently, genuine whole collocation ratings are needed. However, the square of the correlation between proxy ratings and genuine ratings estimates the degree to which the emotional content of collocations is compositional (i.e., predictable from the constituent words) meaning that, for emotional content, 1 - r2 estimates the learning load of a typical collocation over and above the learning load of its constituent words. Finally, over 100 English MWEs are newly rated for valence and arousal.

Expectation Gates Neural Facilitation of Emotional Words in Early Visual Areas.

The current study examined whether emotional expectations gate attention to emotional words in early visual cortex. Color cues informed about word valence and onset latency. We observed a stimulus-preceding negativity prior to the onset of cued words that was larger for negative than for neutral words. This indicates that in anticipation of emotional words more attention was allocated to them than to neutral words before target onset. During stimulus presentation the steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP), elicited by flickering words, was attenuated for cued compared to uncued words, indicating sharpened sensory activity, i.e., expectation suppression. Most importantly, the SSVEP was more enhanced for negative than neutral words when these were cued. Uncued conditions did not differ in SSVEP amplitudes, paralleling previous studies reporting lexico-semantic but not early visual effects of emotional words. We suggest that cueing mediates re-entrant engagement of visual resources by providing an early “affective gist” of an upcoming word. Consequently, visual single-word studies may have underestimated attentional effects of emotional words and their anticipation during reading.