The effects of different types of emotion words on emotion picture processing – evidence from event-related potential

Abstract

Emotional information can be seen everywhere in daily life. Research on emotional words often employs lexical decision tasks to judge the veracity of words, involving only superficial processing and not the deep processing of emotional significance. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the effect of types of emotional words on the processing of emotional pictures. Participants were publicly recruited for a button-press experiment to discuss the impact of emotional words on the processing of emotional pictures from both behavioral and physiological mechanisms. The results of experiment 1 show: (a) in terms of reaction time, the processing speed for negative emotional words was slower, with longer reaction times; (b) In terms of accuracy, positive emotional words had a higher correct rate than negative emotional words. The results of experiment 2 found: (a) a significant main effect of emotional word type in the late processing stage; (b) a significant interaction between emotional word type and congruency. Previously presented emotional words affect the processing of subsequently presented emotional pictures, with differences in the processing of the four types of words, indicating a significant role of language in emotional processing.