Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-05T18:45:04.546Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How are affective word ratings related to lexicosemantic properties? Evidence from the Sussex Affective Word List

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2012

FRANCESCA M. M. CITRON ,
BRENDAN S. WEEKES  and
EVELYN C. FERSTL
FRANCESCA M. M. CITRON*
Affiliation:
University of Sussex and Freie Universität Berlin
BRENDAN S. WEEKES
Affiliation:
University of Sussex and University of Hong Kong
EVELYN C. FERSTL
Affiliation:
University of Sussex and Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Francesca Citron, Languages of Emotion Cluster, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, Berlin 14195, Germany. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Emotional content of verbal material affects the speed of visual word recognition in various cognitive tasks, independently of lexicosemantic variables. However, little is known about how the dimensions of emotional arousal and valence interact with the lexicosemantic properties of words such as age of acquisition, familiarity, and imageability, that determine word recognition performance. This study aimed to examine these relationships using English ratings for affective and lexicosemantic features. Eighty-two native English speakers rated 300 words for emotional valence, arousal, familiarity, age of acquisition, and imageability. Although both dimensions of emotion were correlated with lexicosemantic variables, a unique emotion cluster produced the strongest quadratic relationship. This finding suggests that emotion should be included in models of word recognition as it is likely to make an independent contribution.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , March 2014 , pp. 313 - 331
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Algom, D., Chajut, E., & Lev, S. (2004). A rational look at the emotional Stroop phenomenon: A generic slowdown, not a Stroop effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 133, 323–338.Google Scholar
Altarriba, J., & Bauer, L. M. (2004). The distinctiveness of emotion concepts: A comparison between emotion, abstract and concrete words. American Journal of Psychology, 117, 389–410.Google Scholar
Balota, D. A., Cortese, M. J., Sergent-Marshall, S. D., Spieler, D. H., & Yap, M. J. (2004). Visual word recognition of single-syllable words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 283–316.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bird, H., Franklin, S., & Howard, D. (2001). Age of acquisition and imageability ratings for a large set of words, including verbs and function words. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 33, 73–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (1999). Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW): Simuli, instruction manual and affective ratings (No. C-1). Gainesville, FL: University of Florida, Center for Research in Psychophysiology.Google Scholar
Coltheart, M. (1981). MRC Psycholinguistic Database. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 33A, 497–505.Google Scholar
Cutler, A. (1981). Making up materials is a confounded nuisance, or: Will we be able to run any psycholinguistic experiments at all in 1990? Cognition, 10, 65–70.Google Scholar
DeRose, S. J. (2005). The Compass DeRose guide to emotion words. Retrieved November 2, 2007, from http://www.derose.net/steve/resources/emotion/index.html Google Scholar
Estes, Z., & Verges, M. (2008). Freeze or flee? Negative stimuli elicit selective responding. Cognition, 108, 557–565.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barrett, L., & Russell, J. A. (1999). The structure of current affect: Controversies and emerging consensus. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8, 10–14.Google Scholar
Ferstl, E. C., Rinck, M., & von Cramon, D. Y. (2005). Emotional and temporal aspects of situation model processing during text comprehension: An event-related fMRI study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 724–739.Google Scholar
Gernsbacher, M. A., Goldsmith, H. H., & Robertson, R. R. W. (1992). Do readers mentally represent fictional characters’ emotional states? Cognition and Emotion, 6, 89–111.Google Scholar
Gilhooly, K. J., & Loogie, R. H. (1980). Age-of-acquisition, imagery, concreteness, familiarity, and ambiguity measures for 1,944 words. Behavior Research Methods and Instrumentation, 12, 395–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higgins, E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist, 52, 1280–1300.Google Scholar
Juhasz, B. J. (2005). Age-of-acquisition effects in word and picture identification. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 684–712.Google Scholar
Kanske, P., & Kotz, S. A. (2007). Concreteness in emotional words: ERP evidence from a hemifield study. Brain Research, 1148, 138–148.Google Scholar
Kanske, P., & Kotz, S. A. (2010). Leipzig affective norms for German: A reliability study. Behavior Research Methods, 42, 987–991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kissler, J., Herbert, C., Peyk, P., & Junghofer, M. (2007). Buzzwords. Early cortical responses to emotional words during reading. Psychological Science, 18, 475–480.Google Scholar
Kousta, S.-T., Vigliocco, G., Vinson, D. P., Andrews, M., & Del Campo, E. (2011). The representation of abstract words: Why emotion matters. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1, 14–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kousta, S.-T., Vinson, D. P., & Vigliocco, G. (2009). Emotion words, regardless of polarity, have a processing advantage over neutral words. Cognition, 112, 473–481.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuchinke, L., Võ, M. L.-H., Hofmann, M., & Jacobs, A. M. (2007). Pupillary responses during lexical decisions vary with word frequency but not emotional valence. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 65, 132–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lang, P. J., Bradley, M. M., & Cuthbert, B. N. (1990). Emotion, attention, and the startle reflex. Psychological Review, 97, 377–395.Google Scholar
Lang, P. J., Bradley, M. M., & Cuthbert, B. N. (1999). International Affective Picture System (IAPS): Instruction manual and affective ratings (corpus No. A-4). Gainesville, FL: University of Florida, Center for Research in Psychophysiology.Google Scholar
Larsen, R. J., Mercer, K. A., & Balota, D. A. (2006). Lexical characteristics of words used in emotional Stroop experiments. Emotion, 6, 62–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewis, P. A., Critchley, H. D., Rotshtein, P., & Dolan, R. J. (2007). Neural correlates of processing valence and arousal in affective words. Cerebral Cortex, 17, 742–748.Google Scholar
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. (2001). Web-based CELEX. Retrieved November 23, 2007, from http://celex.mpi.nl/ Google Scholar
Morrison, C. M., Chappell, T. D., & Ellis, A. W. (1997). Age of acquisition norms for a large set of object names and their relation to adult estimates and other variables. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 50A, 528–559.Google Scholar
Nakic, M., Smith, B. W., Busis, S., Vythilingam, M., & Blair, J. R. (2006). The impact of affect and frequency on lexical decision: The role of amygdala and inferior frontal cortex. NeuroImage, 31, 1752–1751.Google Scholar
Paivio, A., Yuille, J. C., & Madigan, S. A. (1968). Concreteness, imagery and meaningfulness values for 925 nouns. Journal of Experimental Psychology Monograph Supplement, 76, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reisenzein, R. (1994). Pleasure-arousal theory and the intensity of emotions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 525–539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, M. D., Storbeck, J., Meier, B. P., & Kirkeby, B. S. (2004). Watch out! That could be dangerous: Valence–arousal interactions in evaluative processing. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1472–1484.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Russell, J. A. (1991). Culture and the categorization of emotions. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 426–450.Google Scholar
Russell, J. A. (2003). Core affect and the psychological construction of emotion. Psychological Review, 110, 145–172.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scott, G. G., O'Donnell, P. J., Leuthold, H., & Sereno, S. C. (2009). Early emotion word processing: Evidence from event-related potentials. Biological Psychology, 80, 95–104.Google Scholar
Stadthagen-Gonzales, H., & Davis, C. (2006). The Bristol norms for age of acquisition, imageability and familiarity. Behavior Research Methods, 38, 598–605.Google Scholar
Võ, M. L.-H., Conrad, M., Kuchinke, L., Urton, K., Hofmann, M. J., & Jacobs, A. M. (2009). The Berlin Affective Word List reloaded (BAWL-R). Behavior Research Methods, 41, 534–538.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Võ, M. L.-H., Jacobs, A. M., & Conrad, M. (2006). Cross-validating the Berlin Affective Word List. Behavior Research Methods, 38, 606–609.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, A. (1999). Emotions across languages and cultures: Diversity and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Citron Supplementary Material

Table

Download Citron Supplementary Material(File)
File 117.8 KB