What makes a tumour worse: Taboo context affects how emotional distractors influence picture naming

ABSTRACT

Strong emotional words tend to command attention and disrupt cognitive processing. Three experiments investigated whether taboo context, defined by the inclusion of taboo distractors in a picture-word interference task, influences how a distractor’s emotional properties affect speech production. Participants named target pictures accompanied by written distractors varying in arousal and valence. Trials were presented in blocks with negative, positive, and neutral distractors that also included or omitted taboo distractors. Results showed that positive distractors had no significant effect on naming times, whereas negative distractors slowed picture naming only when they were higher in arousal and only in a taboo block. Naming times were slower overall in the taboo context compared to the non-taboo context. These findings suggest that the presence of taboo words changes the influence of non-taboo emotional words during speech production, which has implications for the role of attention in speech production theories and more broadly for cognition.

KEYWORDS:

• Taboo words
• arousal
• valence
• attention
• picture-word interference

Acknowledgement

We thank Nicolette Glidden, Lauren LaBat, Anne Rhynes, Harrison Adams, Rebecca Brewster, Andrea Davis, Liz Giraud, Eann Malabanan, Abby May, Elyse Smith, and Rebecca Thompson for assistance with stimuli development, data collection, and coding.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A 2 (Block Type) x 2 (Block Order) repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) on naming times replicated the main effects of Block Type and Block Order, but did not reveal a significant interaction, F < 1. Furthermore, we conducted a separate regression to test for interactions among Block Type, Arousal, and Valence, and among Block Order, Arousal, and Valence. These interactions were not significant, ts < 1.3. Thus, the simplified model with Block Order and Block Type as main effects is presented here.

2 Because items were manipulated between Distractor Valence conditions (with 16 pictures per condition), analyses by participants had more cases, were more powerful, and are thus reported below along with effect size coefficients.

Additional information

Funding

This research was partially supported by a Rhodes College Faculty Development Grant.