The time course of processing emotion-laden words during sentence reading: Evidence from eye movements

Acta Psychologica 192 (2019) 1–10

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Acta Psychologica journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/actpsy

The time course of processing emotion-laden words during sentence reading: Evidence from eye movements

T

Faye Knickerbockera, Rebecca L. Johnsonb, , Emma L. Starrb, Anna M. Hallb, Daphne M. Pretib, Sarah Rose Slateb, Jeanette Altarribac ⁎

a

East Carolina University, United States of America Skidmore College, United States of America c University at Albany, State University of New York, United States of America b

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Keywords: Emotion-laden words Emotion Reading Eye movements

While recent research has explored the effect that positive and negative emotion words (e.g., happy or sad) have on the eye-movement record during reading, the current study examined the effect of positive and negative emotion-laden words (e.g., birthday or funeral) on eye movements. Emotion-laden words do not express a state of mind but have emotional associations and connotations. The current results indicated that both positive and negative emotion-laden words have a processing advantage over neutral words, although the relative timecourse of processing differs between words of positive and negative valence. Specifically, positive emotion-laden words showed advantages in early, late, and post-target measures, while negative emotion-laden words showed effects only in late and post-target measures.

1. Introduction

processing, which causes the individual to have fewer attentional resources and thus become “blind” to the repeated emotional item. Memory tasks have also demonstrated processing differences for emotional stimuli, such that emotional words are recalled more frequently than non-emotional words (Anooshian & Hertel, 1994; Kissler, Hebert, Peyk, & Junhofer, 2007; Rubin & Friendly, 1986). Emotional words with high arousal have been shown to produce faster processing in lexical decision tasks than non-emotional words (Altarriba & Canary, 2004; Hoffman, Kuchinke, Tamm, Vo, & Jacobs, 2009; Kanske & Kotz, 2007; Kousta, Vinson, & Vigliocco, 2009; Kuchinke, Vo, Hofmann, & Jacobs, 2007; Schacht & Sommer, 2009; Scott, O'Donnell, Leuthold, & Sereno, 2009). Finally, ERP studies show greater early posterior negativity for emotion words relative to neutral words (Hoffman et al., 2009; Kissler et al., 2007; Kissler & Hebert, 2013; Kissler, Hebert, Winkler, & Junghofer, 2009; Palazova, Mantwill, Sommer, & Schacht, 2011; Schacht & Sommer, 2009; Scott et al., 2009). Thus, findings across a number of studies using a variety of experimental methods show that emotional words are indeed processed differently than neutral stimuli. The processing differences of emotional vs. neutral words are driven by the inherent lexical differences of these types of words. Two dimensions of words include their level of arousal (which is the degree of internal activation), and their level of valence (which is the degree of positive or

A range of cognitive tasks have shown that processing is different for emotional words versus neutral words. For example, dot-probe studies have shown facilitory effects of emotional stimuli when using either negative, threatening word stimuli (MacLeod, Mathews, & Tata, 1986) or positive emotional word stimuli (Sutton & Altarriba, 2011). Affective priming studies suggest that processing of emotional stimuli occurs automatically, as briefly presented emotional priming stimuli (either negative or positive) influence participants' interpretation and processing speed of neutral target stimuli that follow them (Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986; Murphy & Zajonc, 1993). Using emotional Stroop tasks, researchers have found that negative emotional words interfere with cognitive processing, again implying that the emotional content in these words is activated automatically (Gotlib & McCann, 1984; McKenna, 1986; McKenna & Sharma, 1995, 2004; Sutton, Altarriba, Gianico, & Basnight-Brown, 2007). Studies using a repetition blindness paradigm in rapid serial visual presentation tasks (RSVP) show that participants recall negative emotional words more often than neutral ones, and that repetition blindness is greater for emotional words (Knickerbocker & Altarriba, 2013; Silvert, Naveteur, Honoré, Sequeira, & Boucart, 2004) perhaps because the emotional content captures more attention and increases the load for early

⁎

Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Neuroscience Program, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866, United States of America. E-mail address: [email protected] (R.L. Johnson).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.10.008 Received 10 April 2018; Received in revised form 31 August 2018; Accepted 14 October 2018 0001-6918/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Acta Psychologica 192 (2019) 1–10

F. Knickerbocker et al.

negative affect). Compared to neutral words, emotion words have both higher arousal and more polarized valence (Bradley & Lang, 1999). More recent research has emphasized differentiating between emotion and emotion-laden word types: further parsing apart the more nuanced semantic categories of emotional words which represent an emotion that can be directly experienced (as a state of mind) and words that have only an emotional association. Several reviews of the emotion word literature have emphasized the need to segment emotion-laden words from emotion words to improve future research (Altarriba, 2006; Pavlenko, 2008). The conceptual definitions of emotion and emotionladen words are unique. Emotion words (e.g., happy or sad) label a state of mind that can be directly experienced (e.g., I was sad yesterday). Emotion-laden words (e.g., marriage or funeral) do not represent a state of mind, but rather a word or concept associated with a state of mind (e.g., I was sad at the funeral yesterday.). Altarriba and Basnight-Brown (2011) suggested that emotion-laden words may exhibit the often-observed emotional processing advantage through a ‘mediated effect’ between the emotion-laden word itself and the emotion it elicits (e.g., marriage elicits happiness and joy, while funeral elicits sadness and fear). Investigations utilizing several different cognitive tasks have found evidence supporting the distinction between emotion and emotion-laden words (Altarriba & Basnight-Brown, 2011; Knickerbocker & Altarriba, 2011, 2013; Sutton & Altarriba, 2011, but see, Kousta, Vigliocco, Vinson, Andrews, & Del Campo, 2011; Kousta et al., 2009; Vinson, Ponari, & Vigliocco, 2014). For example, Knickerbocker and Altarriba (2013) found that the Emotion Repetition Blindness Effect (RB; effect where briefly presented repetitions of items are more difficult to identify than briefly presented unique items) was larger for emotion words than for emotion-laden words. In a series of primed lexical decision tasks, Kazanas and Altarriba (2015, 2016) demonstrated larger priming effects for emotion word primetarget pairs than for emotion-laden prime-target pairs. Finally, Knickerbocker (2014) used the Brown-Peterson task (Brown, 1958; Peterson & Peterson, 1959) and found that emotion and emotion-laden words exhibited significant release from proactive interference when followed by neutral items, however, emotion-laden words had a significantly larger release effect than emotion words. Furthermore, emotion-laden words elicited a significant release from proactive interference after viewing trials of emotion words. However, emotion words showed no evidence of release from PI when followed by emotion-laden words, presumably because the emotion-laden words appeared to gain a stronger emotional connection after three consecutive trials. These findings suggest that emotion and emotion-laden words are distinct and support the mediated account of emotion-laden words (Altarriba & Basnight-Brown, 2011).

of natural sentence reading, they intermixed emotion and emotionladen words within their positive and negative emotional stimuli. The multitude of previously reviewed evidence on the importance of emotional word type led Knickerbocker, Johnson, and Altarriba (2015) to conduct a study examining the processing of only emotion words (not including emotion-laden words) during natural sentence reading. They compared eye movement measures for positive emotion and neutral word targets (Experiment 1), as well as negative emotion and neutral word targets (Experiment 2). Similar to Scott et al. (2012), all three word types were matched on several lexical characteristics. Readers processed both positive and negative emotion words faster than neutral words, further supporting the processing advantage for emotion words. These effects were apparent in measures of early processing (e.g., first fixation duration), late processing (e.g., total time) and in the posttarget region (e.g., percentage of regressions out to the target word). Emotion words had an early processing advantage, which continued even after one's eyes left the target word and processed the rest of the sentence. Interestingly, the results were stronger with positive emotion than negative emotion words (i.e., several early and post-target measures that were significant for positive emotion words were not for negative emotion words). 1.2. The current study The current study was designed to continue the investigation into the influence of word types on sentence reading. While Knickerbocker et al. (2015) compared positive emotion, negative emotion, and neutral words, the current study compared positive emotion-laden, negative emotion-laden, and neutral words. The same eye-tracking methods and measures utilized by Knickerbocker et al. were used to explore the processing of emotion-laden words. Eye-tracking measures were examined for the complete eye movement record, including early, late, and post-target measures. Participants were presented with positive emotion-laden words (Experiment 1) or negative emotion-laden words (Experiment 2) and neutral words (both Experiments). All three groups of words were matched on a number of lexical variables and embedded within fully grammatical sentence frames. Based on the findings of the previously discussed studies on emotion and emotion-laden words, it was expected that positive and negative emotion-laden words would exhibit a processing advantage over neutral words. This led to the initial prediction that emotion-laden target words should be processed faster than neutral words in early, late, and post-target measures. However, the findings of Knickerbocker and Altarriba (2013) and Kazanas and Altarriba (2015, 2016) hint that emotion-laden words result in smaller effects than emotion words. Further, the findings of Knickerbocker (2014) provided evidence that the mediated emotion component of emotion-laden words may take longer to activate, as compared to emotion words. Based on these investigations and the mediated effect proposed by Altarriba and Basnight-Brown (2011), there was an expectation that the effects may be smaller in this study than in Knickerbocker et al. (2015), or have a longer time course to influence the measures (e.g., not having an influence on the early measures of processing, such as first fixation on the target, landing position, or skipping rate).

1.1. Emotion effects in eye-tracking Although there has been a wealth of research exploring the effects of emotion words, few of those studies have explored how emotion words are processed within the context of natural sentence reading using an eye-tracker. This methodology captures cognitive processing during reading as it unfolds, with high accuracy and sensitivity (Rayner, 1998, 2009). Scott et al. (2012) provided one of the few studies to examine emotion words via eye-tracking. They captured eye movements during sentence reading with positive or negative emotional target words (matched with neutral target words on several lexical variables). Scott et al. found emotion effects that were influenced by word frequency. Compared to neutral words, low frequency positive and negative emotional words had shorter: (a) first fixation durations; (b) single fixation durations; (c) gaze durations; and (d) total times. However, only high frequency positive emotional target words showed this processing advantage (not high frequency negative emotional words). Scott et al. concluded that both positive and negative emotional words were faster and easier to process than neutral words, and that this effect was modulated by word frequency. Although Scott et al. (2012) explored emotion effects in the context

2. Experiment 1 2.1. Method 2.1.1. Participants Sixty-six participants were recruited from an introductory psychology course subject pool at a small, liberal arts college.1 All 1 Brysbaert and Stevens (2018) recommend having at least 1600 word observations per condition for sufficient power when using linear mixed effects

2

Acta Psychologica 192 (2019) 1–10

F. Knickerbocker et al.

participants were native English speakers and had normal or correctedto-normal vision. Participants received 1 h of research credit for participating in this study.

Table 1 Mean lexical characteristics for neutral and positive emotion-laden words. Neutral

2.1.2. Apparatus An Eyelink 1000 eye-tracker (SR Research, ON, Canada) interfaced with a Pentium 4 (Intel Corp., Santa Clara, CA, USA) computer was used to track eye movements during natural sentence reading. The eyetracker captured and recorded participants' eye movements every millisecond as they read sentences on a computer screen. Participants' heads remained positioned securely in the eye-tracker's head and chin rests. Text was presented at a distance of 83 cm from the participant on a 21-inch NEC Accusync120 CRT computer monitor in 14-point Courier New font where 4 characters equaled 1° of visual angle. Although participants read the sentences binocularly, eye movements were only recorded for the right eye.

Valence Arousal Length (no. of letters) Word Frequency (Kučera-Francis) Word Frequency (log HAL) Orthographic Neighborhood Size Familiarity Syllables (no.) Age of Acquisition Mean naming RT (ms) Mean LDT RT (ms)

Positive

p

M

SD

M

SD

5.49 4.22 5.94 29.39 8.85 2.83 535 1.89 336 637.28 619.77

0.37 0.72 1.57 27.13 1.32 3.73 51 0.62 101 55.91 51.08

7.56 5.68 6.03 26.94 8.72 3.53 536 1.83 350 634.71 618.22

0.06 1.04 1.75 19.42 1.45 5.02 54 0.70 103 52.86 50.22

< 0.001 < 0.001 0.83 0.67 0.69 0.50 0.94 0.72 0.68 0.84 0.90

Note. Kučera-Francis word frequencies are reported in frequencies per million.

(M = 5.93, SD = 1.21) and those that included positive emotion-laden words (M = 5.86, SD = 0.94). In the predictability norm, 20 participants were given the beginning of each sentence frame (up to the target word) and predicted the following word (i.e., the target word) in the sentence. Neither the neutral words nor the positive emotion-laden words were predictable from the beginning sentence context (both means < 1%) and there was no significant difference in the predictability between these two word types (p = .16). See Appendix A for the full list of experimental sentences.

2.1.3. Stimuli The stimuli consisted of a total of 72 single line sentences. Each sentence included either a neutral or positive emotion-laden target word. Target words were selected from the Affective Norms for English Words database (ANEW; Bradley & Lang, 1999) and included 12 nouns, 12 verbs, and 12 adjectives for each condition. Positive emotion-laden words were selected based on valence and arousal (9-point rating scales). Emotional words tend to have high arousal ratings in comparison to neutral words. Positive emotional words also tend to be very high on ratings of valence. Valence is an indication of the strength of the emotional association for a given word. Moderate ratings indicate no strong emotional associations, and high ratings indicate positive emotional associations (low ratings indicate negative emotional associations). These ratings can be found in several norms, but most frequently in ANEW. Valence and arousal were significantly higher for positive words than for neutral words. Target words were matched on several factors, taken from the English Lexicon Project (ELP; Balota et al., 2002) and N-Watch (Davis, 2005), which previous research has found to influence reading. See Table 1 for the lexical characteristics of the neutral and positive emotion-laden words. Paired sentence frames were developed with the target words appearing approximately in the middle of the sentence so that both the neutral and positive emotion-laden target words were similar in understandability and grammar. For example, “The noble knight wore iron/useful armor that protected him in battle” where iron is the neutral target word and useful is the positive emotion-laden target word. Items were counterbalanced so that participants viewed each sentence frame only once and read each target word only once.

2.1.5. Procedure Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. To begin the eye-tracking portion, the experimenter sat the participant in front of the eye-tracker, aligned the eye-tracker, and calibrated the machine. Calibration was accepted if average error was < 0.30° of visual angle (corresponding to approximately 1 character) and maximum error was < 0.50°. Calibration was checked between each trial; participants were recalibrated when necessary. There were 10 practice trials, followed by 72 experimental trials, which were presented one at a time in randomized order. Participants were instructed to read sentences naturally and silently to themselves and then press a button on a button box to proceed to the next trial. For a third of the trials, a comprehension question appeared along with two possible answers. Participants responded to the questions using a button box. These comprehension questions measured basic comprehension of the previously read sentence and minimized skimming. The questions appeared randomly to keep participants from easily predicting their occurrence. Comprehension accuracy was high for all participants (range = 79–100%, M = 98.6%). Upon completing the experiment, participants were fully debriefed and given research credit. The entire study lasted < 60 min.

2.1.4. Normative data Before collecting the eye-tracking data, the sentences were normed for understandability and predictability to ensure that both target words fit equally well within the sentences, but were not predictable by the sentence context. In the understandability norm, 20 participants rated how well the target word fit within the sentence frame using a 7point scale (1 – not understandable; 7 – very understandable). Items were counterbalanced such that participants only saw each target word and each sentence frame once. All target words were rated as understandable; there was no significant difference (p = .90) between the average ratings of sentence frames that included neutral words

2.2. Results and discussion Extremely short fixations (< 80 ms) were pooled with adjacent fixations that fell within one character position of one another (see Rayner, 1998). Isolated fixations shorter than 80 ms or longer than 1000 ms were removed from the data. In addition, trials were removed if any blinking or track loss occurred on the pre-target word, target word, or post-target word. These trimming procedures led to 4.19% data loss. Consistent with Knickerbocker et al. (2015), several measures were analyzed from the eye movement record to interpret the time course of the positive emotion-laden and neutral target word processing. These measures can be understood as: (a) early, or first-pass, measures of processing; (b) late measures of processing; and (c) post-target region measures of processing, as defined by the two words after the target word (any differences in the size of the words in the post-target region

(footnote continued) analyses to analyze psycholinguistic data. Given that each participant read 36 sentences in each condition, and assuming that readers skip content words roughly 15% of the time when they read (Rayner, 2009), at least 53 participants were needed to achieve adequate power. We had 66 participants in Experiment 1 and 60 in Experiment 2. 3

Acta Psychologica 192 (2019) 1–10

F. Knickerbocker et al.

were counterbalanced because the post-target regions of all sentences were used in the experimental and control conditions). Early measures included: (a) first fixation duration (the time spent on the first fixation on the target word); (b) single fixation duration (the time spent on the first fixation on the target word if the reader made only one fixation on it); (c) gaze duration (the total time spent on the target word before leaving it); (d) landing position (where the reader landed as measured by the number of character positions from the beginning of the target word); and (e) skipping rate (the percentage of trials in which the reader skipped the target word during the first pass reading). Late measures included: (a) total time (the total time spent on the target word including any regressions back to it); (b) regressions in (the percentage of trials in which the reader returned to the target word after leaving it); and (c) second pass time (the time spent on the second reading of the target word). Finally, post-target measures included: (a) spillover (the time spent on the first fixation after leaving the target word); (b) first fixation duration in the post-target region (the time spent on the first fixation on the two-word region following the target word, see Johnson, 2009; Perea & Pollatsek, 1998); (c) gaze duration in the post-target region; (d) total time in the post-target region; and (e) the percent of regressions out of the post-target region. Table 2 shows the means of the neutral and positive emotion-laden conditions for each eye-tracking measure. Generalized linear mixed-effects models (LMMs) were used to analyze the dependent variables from the lmerTest package (Kuznetsova, Brockhoff, & Bojesen Christensen, 2015) within the R environment for Statistical Computing (R Development Core Team, v. 3.2.0, 2015). For each scalar dependent measure, a linear mixed-effects model was fit to the data with random intercepts for participants and items. Positively skewed data were log transformed to ensure a more normal distribution of values. Target word type (emotion-laden or neutral) was effect coded (where the neutral condition was coded as −0.5 and the emotion-laden condition was coded as +0.5) and entered as a fixed effect. These codings were used so that the unstandardized beta coefficients represent the change in fixation durations (in log ms) or fixation probabilities (in proportions) when changing conditions. The binary dependent measures were analyzed using mixed-effects logistic regression, with the same random and fixed effects (Jaeger, 2008). P

values for these binary measures were calculated using the z-distribution. In early measures of processing, there was a processing advantage for positive emotion-laden words. First fixation durations (b = −0.024, t = −2.90, p = .004), single fixation durations, (b = −0.027, t = −3.00, p = .003), and first pass (gaze) durations (b = −0.033, t = −3.16, p = .002) were shorter when participants read positive emotion-laden words than when they read neutral words. There was also a significantly higher skipping rate for the positive emotion-laden words than for the neutral words (b = 0.236, z = 2.62, p = .009). There was a marginally significant difference in landing position as a function of target word condition (b = 0.106, t = 1.86, p = .063), such that participants tended to land further into the positive emotion-laden words than the neutral words. There were also differences in eye movements in late measures of processing. Participants spent less total time (b = −0.048, t = −3.79, p < .001) and less second pass time (b = −7.515, t = −2.11, p = .035) when they were reading positive emotion-laden words than neutral words. However, there was no difference in the number of regressions back into the two types of target words (b = −0.133, z = −1.35, p = .177). There were also significant differences in eye movements in the post-target region. Participants spent less total time in the post-target region when the target word was emotion-laden than when it was neutral (b = −0.030, t = −2.38, p = .017). There were also fewer regressions made out of the post-target region following a positive emotion-laden word (b = −0.285, z = −2.69, p = .007). There was no significant difference, however, in spillover (b = 0.006, t = 0.60, p = .551), the duration of the first fixation after the target word (b = 0.001, t = 0.10, p = .952), or in the first pass duration after the target word (b = −0.013, t = −1.03, p = .305), as a function of the target word condition. These results indicate that a processing advantage exists for positive emotion-laden words relative to neutral words during sentence reading. Facilitative effects were seen in early, late, and post-target measures, suggesting that the positive emotion-laden effect is robust and longlasting.

Table 2 Means on each eye movement measure, as a function of target word condition, for experiment 1.

The goal of Experiment 2 was to explore emotion effects, and their relative time course, in negative emotion-laden words. While some previous studies indicate that words with emotional arousal facilitate processing regardless of their polarity in valence (either positive or negative; e.g., Kousta et al., 2009), others have shown differences in effects when processing negative vs. positive emotion word stimuli (e.g., Dahl, 2001; Estes & Verges, 2008; Hoffman et al., 2009; Kazanas & Altarriba, 2015, 2016; Kiehl, Hare, McDonald, & Brink, 1999; Knickerbocker et al., 2015; Kuperman, Estes, Brysbaert, & Warriner, 2014; Scott et al., 2012; Stenberg, Wiking, & Dahl, 1998; Wentura, Rothermund, & Bak, 2000). Experiment 2 allowed us to see whether the facilitative effects seen in Experiment 1 (for positive emotion-laden words) also extend to negative emotion-laden words by comparing them to words with neutral valence.

Target region First pass measures First fixation Single fixation First pass (gaze) Landing position Skipping rate Late measures Total time Regressions In Second pass time Post-target region Spillover First fixation First pass (gaze) Total time Regressions Out

Neutral

Positive

p

248 (82) 252 (81) 284 (120) 2.53 (1.82) 12.4% (33.0)

241 (73) 244 (73) 274 (116) 2.63 (1.90) 15.0% (35.7)

0.004 0.003 0.002 0.06 0.009

341 (192) 13.3% (34.0) 50.0 (133.8)

323 (179) 12.0% (32.5) 42.0 (123.1)

< 0.001 0.18 0.03

244 (85) 249 (83) 376 (186) 471 (259) 11.2% (31.5)

247 (87) 249 (84) 371 (186) 457 (257) 8.8% (28.3)

0.55 0.95 0.31 0.02 0.007

3. Experiment 2

3.1. Method 3.1.1. Participants Sixty students in an introductory psychology course at a small, liberal arts college were recruited to participate in the current experiment. The sample was distinct from the Experiment 1 sample. All participants were native English speakers with normal or corrected-tonormal vision. Participants received 1 h of research credit for participating in the study.

Note. All durations are in ms. Standard deviations are in parentheses. For the First Pass (Gaze), Go Past Time, and Total Time measures, trials without any fixations are not included. Second Pass Time includes trials with no fixations (counted as a 0 ms duration). Spillover includes the duration of the first fixation made after leaving the target region (including both forward and regressive saccades). Statistically significant effects are indicated in bold. 4

Acta Psychologica 192 (2019) 1–10

F. Knickerbocker et al.

Table 3 Mean lexical characteristics for neutral and negative emotion-laden words. Neutral

Valence Arousal Length (no. of letters) Word frequency (Kučera-Francis) Word frequency (log HAL) Orthographic neighborhood size Familiarity Syllables (no.) Age of acquisition Mean naming RT (ms) Mean LDT RT (ms)

Negative

Table 4 Means on each eye movement measure, as a function of target word condition, for experiment 2.

p

M

SD

M

SD

5.49 4.22 5.94 29.39 8.85 2.83 535 1.89 336 637.28 619.77

0.37 0.72 1.57 27.13 1.32 3.73 51 0.62 101 55.91 51.08

2.39 7.73 5.94 26.91 8.58 2.69 514 1.89 375 654.67 628.47

0.78 0.87 1.19 35.63 1.38 4.24 40 0.71 84 63.48 53.49

Target region First pass measures First fixation Single fixation First pass (gaze) Landing position Skipping rate Late measures Total time Regressions In Second pass time Post-target region Spillover First fixation First pass (gaze) Total time Regressions Out

< 0.001 < 0.001 1.00 0.75 0.40 0.88 0.10 1.00 0.24 0.22 0.48

Note. Kučera-Francis word frequencies are reported in frequencies per million.

3.1.2. Apparatus The present study utilized the same apparatus as in Experiment 1.

Neutral

Negative

p

236 (69) 240 (71) 268 (109) 2.52 (1.83) 13.5% (34.1)

237 (74) 241 (75) 269 (115) 2.47 (1.83) 12.3% (32.8)

0.75 0.88 0.88 0.43 0.22

329 (182) 16.9% (37.5) 57.1 (141)

315 (163) 13.5% (34.2) 41.8 (111)

0.008 0.002 < 0.001

239 (82) 242 (83) 339 (166) 425 (238) 11.9% (32.4)

233 (77) 236 (77) 329 (158) 406 (222) 10.9% (31.1)

0.01 0.01 0.03 0.008 0.28

Note. All durations are in ms. Standard deviations are in parentheses. For the First Pass (Gaze), Go Past Time, and Total Time measures, trials without any fixations are not included. Second Pass Time includes trials with no fixations (counted as a 0 ms duration). Spillover includes the duration of the first fixation made after leaving the target region (including both forward and regressive saccades). Statistically significant effects are indicated in bold.

3.1.3. Stimuli Stimuli for this experiment consisted of 72 single line sentences, which included either a neutral or negative emotion-laden target word. The negative emotion-laden target words consisted of 12 nouns, 12 verbs, and 12 adjectives selected from the ANEW database. The negative emotion-laden words were selected to have high arousal and low valence ratings. The same control words used in Experiment 1 were used for Experiment 2, and the negative emotion-laden target words were matched to the neutral target words on lexical factors. Valence and arousal of the negative emotion-laden words differed significantly from the neutral words. See Table 3 for the lexical characteristics of the negative emotion-laden and neutral words. As in Experiment 1, experimental sentence frames were created that could present either a negative emotion-laden or a neutral target word. An example is, “Before the game, the key/corrupt player accepted the bribe,” where key is the neutral target word and corrupt is the negative emotion-laden target word.

fixation duration, gaze duration, landing position, or skipping rate (all ps > 0.222). However, significant differences were found in the later measures. Compared to neutral words, participants: (a) spent less total time on negative emotion-laden words (b = −0.035, t = −2.66, p = .008); (b) made fewer regressions back to negative emotion-laden words (b = −0.291, z = −3.06, p = .002); and (c) spent less second-pass time reading negative emotion-laden words (b = −15.480, t = −4.17, p < .001). Furthermore, there were also significant differences in post-target measures. Compared to neutral words, readers: (a) spent less time on the first fixation after leaving negative emotion-laden words (spillover; b = −0.025, t = −2.60, p = .010); (b) spent less time on the first fixation in the post-target region following negative emotion-laden words (b = −0.023, t = −2.50, p = .012); (c) had shorter gaze durations in the post-target region following negative emotion-laden words (b = −0.027, t = −2.12, p = .034); and (d) spent less total time in the post-target region (b = −0.036, t = −2.65, p = .008) following negative emotion-laden words. Although readers made numerically fewer regressions out of the post-target region following negative emotionladen words, this effect did not reach statistical significance (b = −0.113, z = −1.07, p = .284). As in Experiment 1, a facilitative effect was seen when comparing negative emotion-laden words to neutral control words. However, this effect did not appear in early measures of processing, but rather was only seen in late and post-target measures of processing. It seems that the time course of negative emotion-laden effects was delayed relative to those of positive emotion-laden words. Given the different time course seen when readers process negative emotion-laden words (Experiment 2) from that seen when readers process positive emotion-laden words (Experiment 1), we conducted cross-experiment comparisons to explore these possible interactions. Although the participants and sentences differed across the two experiments, the neutral words were identical across both experiments and the emotion-laden words were matched on their lexical characteristics. When target word type (neutral vs. emotion-laden), experiment (positive vs. negative), and their interaction were entered into the LME models as fixed effects, there was a significant interaction in the early measures of single fixation duration (b = 0.026, t = 1.98,

3.1.4. Normative data Before collecting data, the sentences were normed for understandability and predictability using the same procedures as in Experiment 1. All sentences were rated as understandable; there was no significant difference (p = .49) between the average ratings for neutral words (M = 5.09, SD = 1.19) and negative emotion-laden words (M = 4.96, SD = 1.21). Neither the neutral words nor the negative emotion-laden words were predictable from the beginning sentence context (both means < 1%) and there was no significant difference in the predictability between these two word types (p > .05). See Appendix B for a list of all experimental sentences. 3.1.5. Procedure The procedure was the same as in Experiment 1. Comprehension accuracy was again high for all participants (range = 92–100%, M = 98.6%). 3.2. Results and discussion Data removal was done following the same procedures used in Experiment 1. This led to 4.5% data loss. The dependent measures and analyses were the same as those described in Experiment 1. Means of all eye-movement measures for each target word condition can be found in Table 4. There were no significant differences between negative emotionladen and neutral words in early measures of processing. These included no differences on target words in first fixation duration, single 5

Acta Psychologica 192 (2019) 1–10

F. Knickerbocker et al.

p = .048), gaze duration (b = 0.031, t = 2.10, p = .036), and skipping (b = 0.352, z = 2.72, p = .007) and the interaction in first fixation duration (b = 0.022, t = 1.80, p = .073) and landing position (b = −0.153, t = −1.87, p = .062) approached significance. In each of these cases, the nature of the interaction was such that the facilitative emotion-laden effect only held for these early measures in Experiment 1, when positive stimuli were used. The interaction was also significant or approached significance in a few of the later measures, namely in the percentage of regressions made back into the target word (b = −0.422, z = −3.12, p = .002) and in the first fixation on the post-target word (b = −0.023, t = −1.87, p = .062). Here, the nature of the interaction was that the facilitative emotion-laden effect was stronger in Experiment 2 (when negative stimuli were used) compared to Experiment 1 (when positive stimuli were used). These cross-experiment comparisons provide additional support for the argument that positive and negative emotion-laden words follow a different timecourse of processing, with positive words showing earlier effects and negative words showing later effects.

were less robust for negative emotion words than for positive emotion words, they found facilitative effects in early measures (e.g., first fixation [6 ms], single fixation [6 ms]), late measures (e.g., total time [17 ms], regressions in [3.4%], and second pass time [14.8 ms]), and only one post-target measure (regressions out of the post-target region [2.8%]). Even with the lack of early effects, negative emotion-laden targets and emotion targets had similarly-sized late and post-target effects. Post-hoc analyses comparing the current stimuli to those of Knickerbocker et al. (2015) indicated that the mean valence of the negative emotion words (M = 2.19) did not differ significantly from the valence of negative emotion-laden words (M = 2.39, p = .19), nor did the arousal of negative words (M = 5.82) differ from that of the emotion-laden words (M = 5.73, p = .71). The change in early target measures from Knickerbocker et al. (2015) to the current study cannot be explained by stimuli differences in valence and arousal. The different time courses for positive emotion-laden words and negative emotion-laden words do support several previous studies that reported larger emotional processing advantages with positive stimuli as compared to negative stimuli. In their eye movement study, Scott et al. (2012) found that for low-frequency words, both positive and negative emotion words led to a processing advantage over neutral words but only positive emotional words showed this processing advantage for high-frequency words. Knickerbocker et al. (2015) found that the processing advantage for negative emotion words was less robust in the post-target region than it was for positive emotion words. Kazanas and Altarriba (2015, 2016), across several primed lexical decision tasks, observed slower reaction times overall for negative words than positive words, and similar results have been documented in primed naming tasks (Kuperman et al., 2014). Hoffman et al. (2009) found that while both high-arousal and low-arousal positive words elicited a negative potential early on (i.e., between 80 and 120 ms after onset), only high-arousal negative words had an early facilitative effect. Several studies have reported issues with the recall of negative stimuli (Herbert et al., 2009; Herbert, Junghöfer, & Kissler, 2008). Finally, a number of other studies using varied methodologies have reported other processing issues with negative stimuli: (a) negatively valenced words require more cognitive resources (Dahl, 2001; Estes & Verges, 2008; Kiehl et al., 1999; Stenberg et al., 1998; Wentura et al., 2000); and (b) negative stimuli overall reduce processing speed (MacKay et al., 2004; Sutton et al., 2007). Thus, in contrast to the effects seen in positive words, prior research indicates that the effects of negative words (1) can be less robust than those for positive words, (2) may only be present in a subset of items, and (3) appear later in the time course of processing. The results from the current study echo these findings in showing that the facilitative effects seen in positive emotion-laden words were seen even in early measures of processing and continued throughout later measures of processing, while those of negative emotion-laden words were not present until later in the eye-movement record. The potential list of explanations above does beg the question, why then was the negative emotion-laden processing advantage exhibited so consistently with late measures and measures of the post-target region? One obvious explanation is that the small effect became more robust as sentence processing continued and the difference between the negative emotion-laden condition and the neutral condition increased over time (reaching the level of statistical significance). This explanation is supported by the findings of Knickerbocker (2014). In their study, participants showed release from proactive interference when switching from emotion to emotion-laden words, but not when switching from emotion-laden to emotion words. When given time to repeatedly process negative emotion-laden words, participants began to view them as more strongly negatively emotional. The pattern of significant late and post-target effects observed in the current study mirror the findings of Knickerbocker (2014). These effects can be accounted for by the mediated effect between the emotion-laden words and the emotion they

4. General discussion 4.1. Summary of findings The current study followed the design and procedure of Knickerbocker et al. (2015) but used positive or negative emotion-laden target words rather than positive or negative emotion target words. The goal of the current study was to replicate the previous findings with an advantage in the processing speed of positive and negative emotionladen words over neutral words. The results from several eye-tracking measures revealed an advantage where both positive and negative emotion-laden words were processed faster than neutral words. These results support eye-tracking research indicating that emotional stimuli have a processing advantage over neutral stimuli (Knickerbocker et al., 2015; Scott et al., 2012). The current study further supported the general emotional advantage reported using a variety of different research techniques outside of eye-tracking (Altarriba & Basnight-Brown, 2011; Knickerbocker, 2014; Knickerbocker & Altarriba, 2011, 2013; Silvert et al., 2004; Sutton & Altarriba, 2011). Experiment 1 revealed a processing advantage for positive emotionladen words in early, late, and post-target measures. These findings suggested that positive emotion-laden target word processing significantly facilitated the processing of the remainder of the sentence. This pattern of findings was similar to that seen in positive emotion words by Knickerbocker et al. (2015), who showed facilitative effects in early (e.g., first fixation [5 ms], single fixation [5 ms], gaze duration [6 ms], and landing position [0.18 characters]), late (e.g., total time; 10 ms), regressions in (2.3%), and second pass time (8.1 ms)), and posttarget measures (e.g., spillover [8 ms], first fixation [7 ms)], gaze duration [14 ms], total time [23 ms], and regressions out [1.9%]). Positive emotion-laden words exhibited effects across all three of these time points, with effects of similar size. Post-hoc comparisons of the valence and arousal with Knickerbocker et al. (2015) revealed the valence of positive emotion words (M = 7.64) did not differ significantly from the valence of the positive emotion-laden words (M = 7.56, p = .55), and the arousal of the emotion words (M = 5.66) did not differ from that of the emotionladen words (M = 5.68, p = .93). Experiment 2 revealed a facilitative effect of negative emotionladen words in late and post-target measures, despite the lack of early effects when the reader initially viewed the negative emotion-laden target word. While the negative emotion-laden targets exhibited no significant effects when first being viewed, once the reader continued to the post-target region and continued reading the sentence, several significant faciliatory effects were observed. These results are also interesting in comparison to those reported by Knickerbocker et al. (2015) for negative emotion words. Although their reported effects 6

Acta Psychologica 192 (2019) 1–10

F. Knickerbocker et al.

elicit, as suggested by Altarriba and Basnight-Brown (2011).

Informed consent

4.2. Conclusions, implications, and future directions

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

The current study extended previous investigations into the distinction between emotion and emotion-laden words, in addition to the emotional processing advantage by providing the first findings of a significant reading processing advantage for positive and negative emotion-laden words. Further, the effect was less robust in negative stimuli than in positive stimuli. While a direct statistical comparison to Knickerbocker et al. (2015) may not be appropriate, the general differing pattern of results continues to support the notion that emotion and emotion-laden words form distinct categories. The negative emotion-laden condition findings in particular provide at the very least some support for the mediated account of Altarriba and Basnight-Brown (2011). The mediated account of emotion-laden words could be further and more directly studied using several designs. We suggest an extension of Kazanas and Altarriba (2015, 2016) be conducted. This study would include new priming conditions comparing emotion – emotion-laden priming to emotion-laden – emotion priming. Finding significantly larger priming in the emotion – emotion-laden condition would more generally support the mediated account. Failing to observe significant priming in the emotion-laden – emotion condition would support the effect of this mediated connection between emotion and emotion-laden words as found in the current study and in Knickerbocker (2014). Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) could be manipulated to include brief and long conditions, in addition to including masked conditions. An increased (i.e., statistically significant) priming effect in the emotionladen – emotion condition at longer SOAs would continue to support the mediated account, particularly as presented in the current investigation. Second, the eye-tracking task, as well as the other cognitive tasks described previously, should be used to investigate the emotion and emotion-laden category distinction in more applied populations. For example, testing individuals suffering from phobias or who have specific identified anxiety triggers may yield interesting findings. These individuals may be more responsive to emotion-laden stimuli related to their phobias and anxieties when compared to other emotion-laden stimuli. There would be some inherent mental health risks for participants, and significant planning and care would be required. This would potentially provide support for the mediation account of emotion-laden words, while hopefully informing clinical researchers and aiding in the continued development of mental health treatments related to breaking cues and triggers related to mental health issues.

Acknowledgements Faye Knickerbocker and Rebecca Johnson contributed equally to this project and serve as co-first authors. The data sets analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Part of this research was presented at the 85th Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association in Boston, MA and the 57th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society in Boston, MA. Appendix A. Experiment 1 List of Sentences with Target Words (Neutral/Positive Emotion-Laden) Kathy went to the store to buy a poster/gift for Tony's anniversary. My mother sent me a poster/gift in the mail yesterday. The gymnast felt very stiff/powerful after her routine yesterday. The actress gave a stiff/powerful performance in the play. I held the door for the blond/elegant woman who was behind me. Sam and Ben spotted the blond/elegant movie star at the restaurant. The sound of the unexpected rattle/laughter surprised all of us. The neighbors heard the baby's rattle/laughter all night long. Tyler was insistent that he did not elbow/kiss his friend Katie last night. Jason had not meant to elbow/kiss Stephanie's cheek in the hall. The novel explains how the alien/magical creature came to earth. The characters were lost in a truly alien/magical world they did not know. Joseph had such a sheltered/fun childhood that he didn't want to go to college. After an hour, we found a sheltered/fun spot on the mountain to spend the night. Abigail's truly impressive salad/triumph made her the star of the dinner party. That was the greatest salad/triumph I've ever experienced. Cassidy stayed up all night to rock/snuggle the baby until it fell back asleep. The little boy wanted to rock/snuggle his baby sister but was too small. George was responsible for the basket/abundance of trash in the house. Karen came home to the basket/abundance of sweets on the kitchen table. A little relaxation will activate/save my ability to perform. Bradley forgot to activate/save his new account information. Julie gave Alan the appliance/dollar he had really needed. Sophie was thankful for the appliance/dollar she received from the stranger. The surfer enjoyed the spray/fame she felt on the waves. Tiffany was confused by the unexpected spray/fame she was hit by. Hannah needs to be limber/lively for her game today. The coach was impressed by the limber/lively new player on the team. She needed to be more patient/engaged with the process of buying a house. I try to get my students to be patient/engaged with the class material. The sunny room was very yellow/tidy and pleasant to be in. The garden had many beds of yellow/tidy flowers growing in neat lines. The noble knight wore iron/useful armor that protected him in battle.

Compliance with ethical standards Conflict of interest Faye Knickerbocker declares that she has no conflict of interest. Rebecca L. Johnson declares that she has no conflict of interest. Emma Starr declares that she has no conflict of interest. Anna M. Hall declares that she has no conflict of interest. Daphne M. Preti declares that she has no conflict of interest. Sarah Rose Slate declares that she has no conflict of interest. Jeanette Altarriba declares that she has no conflict of interest. Ethical approval All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/ or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. 7

Acta Psychologica 192 (2019) 1–10

F. Knickerbocker et al.

I so frequently cook with my iron/useful skillet that I need a new one. Ronald wanted to invest/win the money at stake on the horse race. Miles was going to invest/win the cash from the bet he made. The little girl was very noisy/thoughtful in her class this afternoon. The protesters were very noisy/thoughtful in expressing their opinion. The baker made Grace a custom/luscious chocolate cake for her party. Yesterday, I received a custom/luscious bathrobe from my girlfriend. Tara passed a very quiet/handsome man in the hallway. Catherine felt unsettled by how quiet/handsome her new doctor was. Congress passed a key/humane piece of new legislation. The non-profit provides key/humane treatment to the victims. Harold really wanted to butter/improve his morning toast but had no time. We asked the chef to butter/improve our food and he was offended. All I want is to sit on the chair/beach and take a nap. Derek left his wallet on the chair/beach yesterday when he got ready to leave. The cowboys came to circle/rescue the injured Native Americans. The plane went to circle/rescue the sinking enemy ship. The critic enjoyed the detail/comedy found in the play. The writer struggled to incorporate detail/comedy into her newest work. Cindy saw the suggestive statue/wink and was shocked. The antique dealer gave her a small statue/wink before she left the store. We went on a tour with the museum/wealthy curator last weekend. We attended the exhibit with the museum/wealthy patron who funded it. Daphne attended a lecture by the highway/wise engineer last Wednesday night. They asked the highway/wise policeman for directions to the event. Elizabeth and Amy like to bake/cheer for the school's soccer team. Jessica and Sam want to bake/cheer with their best friends. Anna and Gregory forgot my umbrella/birthday and now I'm upset. Ursula ruined my umbrella/birthday last week and made me cry. The image of the coast/heaven she imagined was beautiful. She dreamed about the coast/heaven that her grandmother had described. The congregation will paint/bless the new church today. The young priest will paint/bless the newly built alter. The young patient got the privacy/miracle she needed today. He just wanted a little privacy/miracle to get him through the day. Because I'm sick, I want to concentrate/heal before I take the test. She didn't have the energy to concentrate/heal fully after her fall. The professor tried to patent/nourish the student's idea about time travel. The scientist unsuccessfully tried to patent/nourish the mutated plants.

the whole class. Usually, Franklin was too shy and stiff/feeble to play guitar in front of other people. Sadly, Rachel always felt sheltered/lost and was never an outgoing person. After growing up in a town, Sean was sheltered/lost and could not live in a city. Ursula was forced to tell the noisy/rancid child that he could not yell on the bus. The little boy was noisy/rancid and had to be sent to his room. Ashley tried to comfort her blond/blind friend, who was upset about his dead cat. While in the store, I saw a blond/blind child crying because he was lost. The thriller seemed surprisingly quiet/morbid, especially after watching a musical. From his front porch, the quiet/morbid boy watched the car crash without saying a word. Before the game, the key/corrupt player accepted the bribe. In the competitive game, she was a key/corrupt player that night. Carrie was paid to paint the iron/putrid sculpture that is in front of the school. We decided to remove the iron/putrid gates that surrounded the entire property. Zachary was watching the limber/rotten child upset his parents by climbing the tree. Even when trapped by the police, the limber/rotten thief was able to escape. The boss wondered if his patient/insane employee would mind working over-time. At long last, the patient/insane man was finally given his medicine. In art class, the child drew a yellow/foul stick figure on a blank sheet of paper. When I looked up, the yellow/foul sun was the only thing in the sky. George was awoken by a small alien/bloody figure drowning in his backyard pool. The story described a small, alien/bloody creature who had landed here from outer space. Students are punished if they elbow/rape someone on campus. The boy claimed he did not elbow/rape the girl after the party. The new street gang will circle/slaughter us if we face them in their territory. The cowboys will likely circle/slaughter the Native Americans if they attack the fort. These unexpected findings are going to rock/pollute the scientific community. The heavy metal band will rock/pollute the radio airwaves with their new songs. Tom has a dark past and will rattle/poison the ethical standards of this company. I am warning you that Roxanne will rattle/poison your friendship and trust at some point. The art teacher tried to patent/crucify my new design. The professor openly attempted to patent/crucify my ideas about time travel. The strong aromas from the restaurant will probably activate/torture my sense of smell. I think the flower is going to activate/torture my allergies and give me a runny nose. She will usually bake/drown the cake with too much sugar. I am sure that Kevin will bake/drown the cookie mix with peanut butter. Lisa is not sure about the room and will paint/scream if we decide to move in. Ned informed me that he will paint/scream all day if the mural isn't done.

Appendix B. Experiment 2 List of Sentences with Target Words (Neutral/Negative Emotion-Laden) Billy tried to sell the custom/broken toolbox to his nephew. Jean saved money to buy the custom/broken bike that no one else at the store liked. Everyone knew that Craig was stiff/feeble when he spoke in front of 8

Acta Psychologica 192 (2019) 1–10

F. Knickerbocker et al.

Alice is planning to play a joke and spray/pinch the new window washer. Victor wanted to spray/pinch the girls who were cleaning cars. The new employee attempted to invest/jail her boss with information from the report. He wants to invest/jail his future in the world of politics. My dad has a tendency to coast/riot when he is upset at work. The employee will coast/riot at work if he isn't supervised. The pilot is going to concentrate/crash on the abandoned runway. The nearsighted bus driver will concentrate/crash on the narrow side street. Paula always found that the highway/failure was worse if it was unpredictable. I try to avoid any highway/failure because I am afraid of making a big mistake. Faith argued with Tom about her privacy/injury because he was not respecting her feelings. The lawyer fought hard for the privacy/injury of his client to be noted by the court. The realtor disliked the detail/poverty found in the development. The critic disliked the detail/poverty found in the painting. Security quickly found the poster/killer that was reported by students. Cathy immediately noticed the poster/killer she saw while driving. Chris took the terrible salad/tragedy as a sign that it was time to change jobs. It was her first exposure to a Greek salad/tragedy, which she found very enjoyable. I certainly did not expect the statue/funeral that you made me see today. The director was concerned about the statue/funeral in the first scene of the movie. I don't like to think about butter/hell because of the negative consequences it brings. I successfully avoided the butter/hell I knew was waiting for me at the dinner table. The policeman viewed the appliance/suicide as he peered into the vacant home. Beth could not forget about the appliance/suicide she saw at the farm house. The discussion focused on the chair/disaster that Carol avoided during her divorce. It was unfortunate that the chair/disaster caused such a problem. The mayor didn't like the town's museum/morgue and tried to fix it. The teacher disliked the museum/morgue she saw on the field trip. Avoid discussing the umbrella/damage you saw in the old house. I ignored Robert's lecture about the umbrella/damage because he was repeating himself. The little boy seemed to ignore the basket/cancer that his new friend had. The teacher commented on the student's basket/cancer during the parent-teacher meeting.

Balota, D. A., Cortese, M. J., Hutchinson, K. A., Kessler, B., Loftis, B., Neely, J. H., ... Yap, M. J. (2002). The English Lexicon Project: A web-based repository of descriptive and behavioral measures for 40,481 English words and non-words. Available at http:// elexicon.wustl.edu/. Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (1999). Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW). Gainesville, FL: The NIMH Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention, University of Florida. Brown, J. (1958). Some tests of the decay theory of immediate memory. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 10(1), 12–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 17470215808416249. Brysbaert, M., & Stevens, M. (2018). Power analysis and effect size in mixed effects models: A tutorial. Journal of Cognitive, 1(1), 9. https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.10. Dahl, M. (2001). Asymmetries in the processing of emotionally valenced words. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 42, 97–104. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9450. 00218. Davis, C. J. (2005). N-Watch: A program for deriving neighborhood size and other psycholinguistic statistics. Behavior Research Methods, 37, 65–70. Estes, Z., & Verges, M. (2008). Freeze or flee? Negative stimuli elicit selective responding. Cognition, 108, 557–565. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2008.03.003. Fazio, R. H., Sanbonmatsu, D. M., Powell, M. C., & Kardes, F. R. (1986). On the automatic activation of attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(2), 229–238. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.50.2.229. Gotlib, I. H., & McCann, C. D. (1984). Construct accessibility and depression: An examination of cognitive and affective factors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 427–439. Herbert, C., Ethofer, T., Anders, S., Junghöfer, M., Wildgruber, D., Grodd, W., & Kissler, J. (2009). Amygdala activation during reading of emotional adjectives – An advantage for pleasant – An advantage for pleasant content. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 4(1), 35–49. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsn027. Herbert, C., Junghöfer, M., & Kissler, J. (2008). Event related potentials to emotional adjectives during reading. Psychophysiology, 4(1), 487–498. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1469-8986.2007.00638.x. Hoffman, M. J., Kuchinke, L., Tamm, S., Vo, M. L.-H., & Jacobs, A. M. (2009). Affective processing within 1/10th of a second: high arousal is necessary for early facilitative processing of negative but not positive words. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 9(4), 389–397. https://doi.org/10.3758/9.4.389. Jaeger, T. F. (2008). Categorical data analysis: Away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 434–446. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2007.11.007. Johnson, R. L. (2009). The quiet clam is quite calm: Transposed-letter neighborhood effects on eye movements during reading. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35, 943–969. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015572. Kanske, P., & Kotz, S. A. (2007). Concreteness in emotional words: ERP evidence from a hemifield study. Brain Research, 1148, 138–148. Kazanas, S. A., & Altarriba, J. (2015). The automatic activation of emotion and emotionladen words: Evidence from a masked and unmasked priming paradigm. The American Journal of Psychology, 128(3), 323–336. https://doi.org/10.5406/ amerjpsyc.128.3.0323. Kazanas, S. A., & Altarriba, J. (2016). Emotion word type and affective valence priming at a long stimulus onset asynchrony. Language and Speech, 59(3), 339–352. https://doi. org/10.1177/0023830915590677. Kiehl, K. A., Hare, R. D., McDonald, J. J., & Brink, J. (1999). Semantic and affective processing in psychopaths: An event-related potential (ERP) study. Psychophysiology, 36, 765–774. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8986.3660765. Kissler, J., & Hebert, C. (2013). Emotion, etmnooi, or emitoon? Faster lexical access to emotional than to neutral words during reading. Biological Psychology, 92, 464–479. Kissler, J., Hebert, C., Peyk, P., & Junhofer, M. (2007). Buzzwords: Early cortical responses to emotional words during reading. Psychological Science, 18, 475–480. Kissler, J., Hebert, C., Winkler, I., & Junghofer, M. (2009). Emotion and attention in visual word processing: An ERP study. Biological Psychology, 80, 75–83. Knickerbocker, F. (2014). Release from proactive interference: The impact of emotional and semantic shifts on recall performance (unpublished doctoral dissertation)Albany, NY: University at Albany, State University of New York. Knickerbocker, H., & Altarriba, J. (2011). Bilingualism and the impact of emotion: The role of experience, memory, and sociolinguistic factors. In V. Cook, & B. Bassetti (Eds.). Language and bilingual cognition (pp. 453–477). New York: Psychology Press/ Taylor & Francis. Knickerbocker, H., & Altarriba, J. (2013). Repetition blindness with emotion and emotion-laden word targets. Visual Cognition, 21(5), 599–627. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13506285.2013.815297. Knickerbocker, H., Johnson, R. L., & Altarriba, J. (2015). Emotion effects during reading: Evidence of differences in eye movements and processing. Cognition & Emotion, 29(5), 784–806. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2013.815297. 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, 140(1), 14–34. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021446. Kousta, S. T., Vinson, D. P., & Vigliocco, G. (2009). Emotion words, regardless of polarity, have a processing advantage over neutral words. Cognition, 112(3), 473–481. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2009.06.007. Kuchinke, L., Vo, 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. Kuperman, V., Estes, Z., Brysbaert, M., & Warriner, A. B. (2014). Emotion and language: Valence and arousal affect word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 143(3), 1065–1081. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035669. Kuznetsova, A., Brockhoff, P. B., & Bojesen Christensen, R. H. (2015). LmerTest: Tests in

References Altarriba, J. (2006). Cognitive approaches to the study of emotion-laden and emotion words in monolingual and bilingual memory. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 56, 232–256. Altarriba, J., & Basnight-Brown, D. M. (2011). The representation of emotion vs. emotionladen words in English and in Spanish in the Affective Simon Task. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15, 310–328. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006910379261. Altarriba, J., & Canary, T. M. (2004). The influence of emotional arousal on affective priming in monolingual and bilingual speakers. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 25(2), 248–265. Anooshian, L. J., & Hertel, P. T. (1994). Emotionality in free recall: Language specificity in bilingual memory. Cognition & Emotion, 8(6), 503–514. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 02699939408408956.

9

Acta Psychologica 192 (2019) 1–10

F. Knickerbocker et al. linear mixed effects models. R package version 2.0-33. Retrieved from https://CRAN. R-project.org/package_lmerTest. MacKay, D. G., Shafo, M., Taylor, J. K., Marian, D. E., Abrams, L., & Dyer, J. R. (2004). Relations between emotion, memory, and attention: Evidence from taboo Stroop, lexical decision, and immediate memory tasks. Memory and Cognition, 32(3), 474–488. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03195840. MacLeod, C., Mathews, A., & Tata, P. (1986). Attentional bias in emotional disorders. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95, 15–20. McKenna, F. P. (1986). Effects of unattended emotional stimuli on color-naming performance. Current Psychological Research and Reviews, 5(1), 3–9. https://doi.org/10. 1007/BF02686591. McKenna, F. P., & Sharma, D. (1995). Intrusive cognitions: An investigation of the emotional Stroop task. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21(6), 1595–1607. McKenna, F. P., & Sharma, D. (2004). Reversing the emotional Stroop effect reveals that it is not what it seems: The role of fast and slow components. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30(2), 382–392. Murphy, S. T., & Zajonc, R. B. (1993). Affect, cognition, and awareness: Affective priming with optimal and suboptimal stimulus exposures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(5), 723–739. Palazova, M., Mantwill, K., Sommer, W., & Schacht, A. (2011). Are effects of emotion in single words non-lexical? Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Neuropsychologia, 49, 2766–2775. Pavlenko, A. (2008). Emotion and emotion-laden words in the bilingual lexicon. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11(2), 147–164. https://doi.org/10.1017/ s1366728908003283. Perea, M., & Pollatsek, A. (1998). The effects of neighborhood frequency in reading and lexical decision. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance, 24, 767–779. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.24.3.767. Peterson, L. R., & Peterson, M. J. (1959). Short-term retention of individual verbal items. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58(3), 193–198. https://doi.org/10.1037/ h0049234. Rayner, K. (1998). Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 372–422. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909. 124.3.372.

Rayner, K. (2009). Eye movements and attention in reading, scene perception, and visual search. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62, 1457–1506. https://doi. org/10.1080/17470210902816461. Rubin, D. C., & Friendly, M. (1986). Predicting which words get recalled: Measures of free recall, availability, goodness, emotionality, and pronunciability for 925 nouns. Memory and Cognition, 14(1), 79–94. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209231. Schacht, A., & Sommer, W. (2009). Time course and task dependence of emotion effects in word processing. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 9, 28–43. 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(1), 95–104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2008.03.010. Scott, G. G., O'Donnell, P. J., & Sereno, S. C. (2012). Emotion words affect eye fixations during reading. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 38(3), 783–792. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027209. Silvert, L., Naveteur, J., Honoré, J., Sequeira, H., & Boucart, M. (2004). Emotional stimuli in rapid serial visual presentation. Visual Cognition, 11(4), 433–460. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/13506280344000239. Stenberg, G., Wiking, S., & Dahl, M. (1998). Judging words at face value: Interference in a word processing task reveals automatic processing of affective facial expressions. Cognition & Emotion, 12(6), 755–782. https://doi.org/10.1080/026999398379420. Sutton, T. M., & Altarriba, J. (2011). The automatic activation and perception of emotion in word processing: Evidence from a modified dot probe paradigm. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 23(6), 736–747. https://doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2011. 554392. Sutton, T. M., Altarriba, J., Gianico, J. L., & Basnight-Brown, D. M. (2007). The automatic access of emotion: Emotional Stroop effects in Spanish-English bilingual speakers. Cognition & Emotion, 21(5), 1077–1090. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 02699930601054133. Vinson, D., Ponari, M., & Vigliocco, G. (2014). How does emotional content affect lexical processing? Cognition & Emotion, 28(4), 737–746. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 02699931.2013.851068. Wentura, D., Rothermund, K., & Bak, P. (2000). Automatic vigilance: The attentiongrabbing power of approach- and avoidance-related social information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 1024–1037. https://doi.org/10.1037//00223514.78.6.1024.

10