Affective picture processing is modulated by emotion word type in masked priming paradigm: an event-related potential study

ABSTRACT

Although a large body of research demonstrates the role of language in emotion processing (e.g. emotional facial expressions), how emotion-laden words (e.g. poison, reward) and emotion-label words (e.g. fear, satisfaction) differently impact affective picture processing is not clear. Emotion-label words label affective states straightforwardly, whereas emotion-laden words engender emotion via reflection. The current study adopted the masked priming paradigm to examine how Chinese emotion-laden words and emotion-label words distinctively influence affective picture processing. Twenty Chinese speakers decided the valence of the pictures with their cortical responses recorded. Emotion-label words facilitated affective picture evaluation behaviourally. Moreover, pictures that were preceded by emotion-laden words generated larger electrophysiological activation than those preceded by emotion-label words. Combined behavioural and ERP evidence revealed that emotion word type modulated affective picture processing, suggesting different roles of emotion-laden and emotion-label words in how emotion is shaped by language.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion word
• emotion word type
• emotion-label words
• emotion-laden words
• affective picture

Acknowledgement

This work has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the Ph.D. degree in Education by the first author.

Disclosure statement

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

ORCID

Chenggang Wu http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3837-3841

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Universidade de Macau: [grant number MYRG2015-00221-FED,MYRG2016-00193-FED,MYRG2017-00217-FED].