The influence of lexical word properties on selective attention to emotional words: Support for the attentional tuning of valent word forms.

ABSTRACT: Using event-related potentials, it was found that selective attention to valence facilitates early affective discrimination of words with task-relevant valence and inhibits affective processing of words with task-irrelevant valence. This attention-based modulation of affective processing presumably relies on prior associative learning linking visual word forms with their affects. To investigate this hypothesis, we employed a valence-detection task and manipulated lexical (length, frequency) and affective (arousal) word features. Since we assumed that these features strongly influence the strength of visual form-affect associations, we expected them to play a crucial role in early affective discrimination. Fifty-eight participants made speeded responses only to words of one predefined targe

SUBMITTER: Schmuck J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11660035 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature