Abstract
In the field of emotional language research, emotional words have always been the main stimulus for researchers to explore the cognitive mechanisms underlying emotional language processing. In previous studies, most of the emotion-label words (e.g., nausea) and emotion-laden words (e.g., corpse) were collectively referred to as emotion words without distinguishing between the two categories. The main purpose of this study was to explore the emotion effect and cognitive processing mechanism between emotion-label word and emotion-laden word, including two experiments. In experiment 1, An Affective Simon Task was administered to explore the emotion effects of two valence (positive and negative) emotion-label words and emotion-laden words. The results showed that the emotion-label words, regardless of the valence, induced significant Simon effects, while the emotion-laden words only showed Simon effects on the negative valence, which initially proved that the two types of words had different emotional effect. Experiment 2 further explored the cognitive processing mechanism of emotion-label words and emotion-laden words by employing event-related potential (ERP) technology. The ERP data revealed that (1) regardless of the valence, emotion-label words were elicited larger P100 than emotion-laden words and mainly appear in the left posterior sites, (2) regardless of the valence, emotion-laden words elicited larger N170 than emotion-label words, and there was no hemispheric difference, (3) regardless of the valence, emotion-label word and emotion-laden words elicited in similar Late Positivity Complex (LPC) in central sites. According to the current findings, emotion-label words and emotion-laden words had significant differences in emotion effect and cognitive processing. The emotional information in emotion-label words was perceived earlier, while the emotional information in emotion-laden words had stronger physiological activation.
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Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding authors Zhijin Zhou. The data are not publicly available due to them containing information that could compromise research participant privacy.
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This research was supported by a grand from the Doctoral Research Fund Project of Henan University of Chinese Medicine (Grant No. BSJJ2022-11).
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Jia, D., Zhang, H., Wang, Y. et al. Which word makes you feel more negative? “Nausea” or “corpse”. Curr Psychol 42, 31724–31735 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-04164-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-04164-x