The role of semantic memory in the recognition of emotional valence conveyed by written words

ABSTRACT

The main goal of this study was to examine the role of semantic memory in the recognition of emotional valence conveyed by words. Eight participants presenting with the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) and 33 healthy control participants were administered three tasks designed to investigate the formal association between the recognition of emotional valence conveyed by words and the lexical and semantic processing of these words. Results revealed that individuals with svPPA showed deficits in the recognition of negative emotional valence conveyed by words. Moreover, results evidenced that their performance in the recognition of emotional valence was better for correctly than for incorrectly retrieved lexical entries of words, while their performance was comparable for words that were correctly or incorrectly associated with semantic concepts. These results suggest that the recognition of emotional valence conveyed by words relies on the retrieval of lexical, but not semantic, representations of words.

KEYWORDS:

• Semantic memory
• word recognition
• emotion recognition
• emotional valence
• semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the participants and their families for supporting our research. The authors thank Nathalie Bier, Ph.D., from the Centre de recherche de l’Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (CR-IUGM), who helped our team recruiting individuals with svPPA. C.H. was supported by a salary award from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé (26809). M-P.T. was also supported by a scholarship from the Centre thématique de recherche en neurosciences (CTRN). This research was partially supported by funds granted to M.A.W. by the Fonds de recherche du Québec-Société et culture (FRQ-SC), Grant number: FRQ-SC 2013-NP-168556, and the Quebec Network for Research on Aging (RQRV). We would like to thank Noémie Ouellet and Ariane Tosti, from the Centre de recherche CERVO for their contribution in the neuropsychological assessment of individuals with svPPA. Finally, we thank Gabrielle Couturier for her significant contribution in the administration of experimental tasks in control participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.