Effects of word emotional experience and participant emotionality in lexical decision

Abstract

Previous research has shown that the emotional content of words affects how quickly they are recognised. One recent measure of word emotionality is emotional experience that measures the degree to which reading a word can invoke emotional experiences tied to the word. Words that are higher in emotional experience are recognised more rapidly in the lexical decision task.The current study examines how words' emotional experience and participants' emotionality affect performance on the lexical decision task. To this end, participants were given five emotion measures and completed a lexical decision task with words varying on emotional experience.It was found that participants who scored higher on the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule showed a weaker emotional experience effect. No other emotion measures interacted with emotional experience.These results are predicted by and interpreted within a framework where the semantic representation of words includes emotion information that is grounded in experience of our internal states.