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The emotion potential of simple sentences: additive or interactive effects of nouns and adjectives?

The vast majority of studies on affective processes in reading focus on single words. The most robust finding is a processing advantage for positively valenced words, which has been replicated in the rare studies investigating effects of affective features of words during sentence or story comprehen...

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Autores principales: Lüdtke, Jana, Jacobs, Arthur M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4531214/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26321975
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01137
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author Lüdtke, Jana
Jacobs, Arthur M.
author_facet Lüdtke, Jana
Jacobs, Arthur M.
author_sort Lüdtke, Jana
collection PubMed
description The vast majority of studies on affective processes in reading focus on single words. The most robust finding is a processing advantage for positively valenced words, which has been replicated in the rare studies investigating effects of affective features of words during sentence or story comprehension. Here we were interested in how the different valences of words in a sentence influence its processing and supralexical affective evaluation. Using a sentence verification task we investigated how comprehension of simple declarative sentences containing a noun and an adjective depends on the valences of both words. The results are in line with the assumed general processing advantage for positive words. We also observed a clear interaction effect, as can be expected from the affective priming literature: sentences with emotionally congruent words (e.g., The grandpa is clever) were verified faster than sentences containing emotionally incongruent words (e.g., The grandpa is lonely). The priming effect was most prominent for sentences with positive words suggesting that both, early processing as well as later meaning integration and situation model construction, is modulated by affective processing. In a second rating task we investigated how the emotion potential of supralexical units depends on word valence. The simplest hypothesis predicts that the supralexical affective structure is a linear combination of the valences of the nouns and adjectives (Bestgen, 1994). Overall, our results do not support this: The observed clear interaction effect on ratings indicate that especially negative adjectives dominated supralexical evaluation, i.e., a sort of negativity bias in sentence evaluation. Future models of sentence processing thus should take interactive affective effects into account.
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spelling pubmed-45312142015-08-28 The emotion potential of simple sentences: additive or interactive effects of nouns and adjectives? Lüdtke, Jana Jacobs, Arthur M. Front Psychol Psychology The vast majority of studies on affective processes in reading focus on single words. The most robust finding is a processing advantage for positively valenced words, which has been replicated in the rare studies investigating effects of affective features of words during sentence or story comprehension. Here we were interested in how the different valences of words in a sentence influence its processing and supralexical affective evaluation. Using a sentence verification task we investigated how comprehension of simple declarative sentences containing a noun and an adjective depends on the valences of both words. The results are in line with the assumed general processing advantage for positive words. We also observed a clear interaction effect, as can be expected from the affective priming literature: sentences with emotionally congruent words (e.g., The grandpa is clever) were verified faster than sentences containing emotionally incongruent words (e.g., The grandpa is lonely). The priming effect was most prominent for sentences with positive words suggesting that both, early processing as well as later meaning integration and situation model construction, is modulated by affective processing. In a second rating task we investigated how the emotion potential of supralexical units depends on word valence. The simplest hypothesis predicts that the supralexical affective structure is a linear combination of the valences of the nouns and adjectives (Bestgen, 1994). Overall, our results do not support this: The observed clear interaction effect on ratings indicate that especially negative adjectives dominated supralexical evaluation, i.e., a sort of negativity bias in sentence evaluation. Future models of sentence processing thus should take interactive affective effects into account. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-08-11 /pmc/articles/PMC4531214/ /pubmed/26321975 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01137 Text en Copyright © 2015 Lüdtke and Jacobs. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Lüdtke, Jana
Jacobs, Arthur M.
The emotion potential of simple sentences: additive or interactive effects of nouns and adjectives?
title The emotion potential of simple sentences: additive or interactive effects of nouns and adjectives?
title_full The emotion potential of simple sentences: additive or interactive effects of nouns and adjectives?
title_fullStr The emotion potential of simple sentences: additive or interactive effects of nouns and adjectives?
title_full_unstemmed The emotion potential of simple sentences: additive or interactive effects of nouns and adjectives?
title_short The emotion potential of simple sentences: additive or interactive effects of nouns and adjectives?
title_sort emotion potential of simple sentences: additive or interactive effects of nouns and adjectives?
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4531214/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26321975
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01137
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