Similar, not universal: the cognitive dimensions of conceptual prototypes of basic emotions in English and in Polish.

The current study explores the differences in conceptualisation of the prototypical basic emotion lexicalisations (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise) in English and in Polish. Measures of concreteness, imageability and context availability were collected and analysed across the six semantic categories of basic emotions, across different parts of speech and between the self-determined genders of the study participants. The initial results indicate that within these cognitive dimensions the conceptualisations of basic emotions in English and in Polish are only similar on the more general but not the higher levels of conceptualisation. The folk-psychological division between positive and negative emotions and the grammatical parts of speech reveal similar patterns in basic emotion concepts in both Polish and in English. However, on the higher levels of conceptualisations that include specific basic emotion semantic categories and self-identified gender, marked language-specific differences become apparent. Different negative emotions drive the statistical differences in Polish and in English, and the gender effects on the measures of concreteness, imageability and context availability are opposite from one language to the other. In other words, basic emotions may be broadly mutually intelligible, but not exactly the same when communicated across languages and cultures.

Paired-associate learning, animacy, and imageability effects in the survival advantage.

The current study examined animacy and paired-associate learning through a survival-processing paradigm (Nairne et al. in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33(2), 263-273, 2007; Schwartz & Brothers, 2014). English-speaking monolingual participants were asked to learn a set of new word translations to improve their chances of survival or to improve their study abroad experience. Animate and inanimate words were included in this task, to further examine animacy effects in cued recall paradigms (Popp & Serra in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42(2), 186-201, 2016; VanArsdall et al. in Experimental Psychology, 60(3), 172-178, 2013). Across sentence-completion, matching, and picture-naming tasks, learning was facilitated by the survival context, relative to the study abroad context and an intentional learning condition. Scenario ratings indicated this survival advantage could also be a function of higher imageability ratings for the survival context than for the study abroad context. Replicating previous findings with cued recall, inanimate words were overall better remembered than animate words, across all three tasks, though survival processing facilitated language-learning for both animate and inanimate categories. This 'reverse animacy effect' replicated previous findings by Popp and Serra (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42(2), 186-201, 2016), showing animate words can interfere with a participant's ability to create associations with their words, including those in a new language. These results are discussed with regards to the widely-reliable survival and animacy advantages, with a particular emphasis on the role of imageability in this paradigm.

How do Emotion Word Type and Valence Influence Language Processing? The Case of Arabic-English Bilinguals.

The current study examines the influence of word type (i.e., emotion-label vs. emotion-laden) and valence (i.e., positive vs. negative vs. neutral) on the processing of emotion words among bilinguals. To this end, three groups of Arabic-English bilinguals (n = 120 per group) completed the tasks of free recall, ratings for concreteness, imageability and context availability, and discrete word association. Two groups, representing different levels of second language (L2) exposure completed the tasks in English while the third group completed the tasks in Arabic. The results of the free recall and rating tasks generally supported the influence of word type, valence and L2 exposure on the processing of emotional content; namely, emotion-label vs. emotion-laden vs. neutral words and negative vs. positive emotion words generally behaved significantly differently, and the participants with increased L2 exposure usually outperformed the ones with less exposure. In contrast, the word association task often failed to present statistically significant findings. The results are interpreted in line with the specific nature of the Arabic mental lexicon, the existing literature, and relevant theoretical models of emotion and the bilingual mental lexicon. Directions for future research are proposed.

The Distinctiveness of Emotion Words: Does It Hold for Foreign Language Learners? The Case of Arab EFL Learners.

Empirical evidence has recently been provided for the distinctiveness of emotion words as compared to abstract and concrete words for monolinguals, calling for a reconsideration of the relation between emotion and language. The present study investigates whether the distinctiveness of emotion words among monolinguals holds for foreign language learners. To this end, three groups (n = 120 per group) of late Arabic-English bilinguals who learned English as a foreign language completed tasks including free recall, rating, and discrete word association. One group completed the tasks in Arabic while the other two groups, representing two levels of foreign language exposure, completed the tasks in English. Planned comparisons indicated the distinctiveness of emotion words in the participants' first and foreign languages in the free recall and rating tasks while no significant differences were found in the word association task. The results are discussed in light of the existing literature and relevant theoretical models.

Effects of Valence on Hemispheric Specialization for Emotion Word Processing.

The use of emotion in language is a key element of human interactions and a rich area for cognitive research. The present study examined reactions to words of five types: positive emotion (e.g., happiness), negative emotion (e.g., hatred), positive emotion-laden (e.g., blessing), negative emotion-laden (e.g., prison), and neutral (e.g., chance). Words and nonwords were intermixed in a lexical decision task using hemifield presentation. Results revealed a general left hemisphere advantage. Overall, reaction times for positive words were faster than for negative or neutral words and this effect varied by hemifield of presentation. These results support a valence hypothesis of specialized processing in the left hemisphere of the brain for positive emotions and the right hemisphere for negative emotions.

Color associations to emotion and emotion-laden words: A collection of norms for stimulus construction and selection.

Color has the ability to influence a variety of human behaviors, such as object recognition, the identification of facial expressions, and the ability to categorize stimuli as positive or negative. Researchers have started to examine the relationship between emotional words and colors, and the findings have revealed that brightness is often associated with positive emotional words and darkness with negative emotional words (e.g., Meier, Robinson, & Clore, Psychological Science, 15, 82-87, 2004). In addition, words such as anger and failure seem to be inherently associated with the color red (e.g., Kuhbandner & Pekrun). The purpose of the present study was to construct norms for positive and negative emotion and emotion-laden words and their color associations. Participants were asked to provide the first color that came to mind for a set of 160 emotional items. The results revealed that the color RED was most commonly associated with negative emotion and emotion-laden words, whereas YELLOW and WHITE were associated with positive emotion and emotion-laden words, respectively. The present work provides researchers with a large database to aid in stimulus construction and selection.

Multiple Translations in Bilingual Memory: Processing Differences Across Concrete, Abstract, and Emotion Words.

Historically, the manner in which translation ambiguity and emotional content are represented in bilingual memory have often been ignored in many theoretical and empirical investigations, resulting in these linguistic factors related to bilingualism being absent from even the most promising models of bilingual memory representation. However, in recent years it was reported that the number of translations a word has across languages influences the speed with which bilinguals translate concrete and abstract words from one language into another (Tokowicz and Kroll in Lang Cogn Process 22:727-779, 2007). The current work examines how the number of translations that characterize a word influences bilingual lexical organization and the processing of concrete, abstract, and emotional stimuli. In Experiment 1, Spanish-English bilinguals translated concrete and abstract words with one and more than one translation. As reported by Tokowicz and Kroll, concreteness effects emerged only when words had more than one translation across languages. In Experiment 2, bilinguals translated emotion words with more than one translation. Concreteness effects emerged in both language directions for words with more than one translation, and in the L1-L2 language direction for words with a single translation across languages. These findings are discussed in terms of how multiple translations, specifically for emotion words, might be incorporated into current models of bilingual memory representation.

Emotion Word Processing: Effects of Word Type and Valence in Spanish-English Bilinguals.

Previous studies comparing emotion and emotion-laden word processing have used various cognitive tasks, including an Affective Simon Task (Altarriba and Basnight-Brown in Int J Billing 15(3):310-328, 2011), lexical decision task (LDT; Kazanas and Altarriba in Am J Psychol, in press), and rapid serial visual processing (Knickerbocker and Altarriba in Vis Cogn 21(5):599-627, 2013). Each of these studies has found significant differences in emotion and emotion-laden word processing. The current study investigated this word type distinction using a bilingual sample, to assess emotion and emotion-laden word processing in a bilingual's two languages. Sixty Spanish-English bilinguals performed a masked LDT with positive and negative emotion and emotion-laden word pairs, in either Spanish or English. Overall, the four-way interaction of relatedness, word type, valence, and language was significant. Response times (RTs) to emotion words were significantly faster than RTs to emotion-laden words, but only in English. These results indicate that the emotion/emotion-laden word type distinction may be the most robust in a person's dominant language.

Emotion Word Type and Affective Valence Priming at a Long Stimulus Onset Asynchrony.

As the division between emotion and emotion-laden words has been viewed as controversial by, for example, Kousta and colleagues, the current study attempted a replication and extension of findings previously described by Kazanas and Altarriba. In their findings, Kazanas and Altarriba reported significant differences in response times (RTs) and priming effects between emotion and emotion-laden words, with faster RTs and larger priming effects with emotion words than with emotion-laden words. These findings were consistent across unmasked (Experiment 1) and masked (Experiment 2) versions of a lexical decision task, where participants either explicitly or implicitly processed the prime words of each prime-target word pair. Findings from Experiment 2 have been previously replicated by Kazanas and Altarriba with a Spanish­English bilingual sample, when tested in English, the participants' functionally dominant language. The current study was designed to extend these previous findings, using a l000-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), which was longer than the 250-ms SOA originally used by Kazanas and Altarriba. Findings from the current study supported the division between emotion and emotion-laden words, as they replicated those previously described by Kazanas and Altarriba. In addition, the current study determined that negative words were processed significantly slower in this experiment, with a long SOA (replicating findings by Rossell and Nobre).

Emotion effects during reading: Influence of an emotion target word on eye movements and processing.

Recently, Scott, O'Donnell and Sereno reported that words of high valence and arousal are processed with greater ease than neutral words during sentence reading. However, this study unsystematically intermixed emotion (label a state of mind, e.g., terrified or happy) and emotion-laden words (refer to a concept that is associated with an emotional state, e.g., debt or marriage). We compared the eye-movement record while participants read sentences that contained a neutral target word (e.g., chair) or an emotion word (no emotion-laden words were included). Readers were able to process both positive (e.g., happy) and negative emotion words (e.g., distressed) faster than neutral words. This was true across a wide range of early (e.g., first fixation durations) and late (e.g., total times on the post-target region) measures. Additional analyses revealed that State Trait Anxiety Inventory scores interacted with the emotion effect and that the emotion effect was not due to arousal alone.

The Automatic Activation of Emotion and Emotion-Laden Words: Evidence from a Masked and Unmasked Priming Paradigm.

A primed lexical decision task (LDT) was used to determine whether emotion (e.g., love, fear) and emotion-laden (e.g., puppy, hospital) word processing differs, both explicitly and implicitly. Previous experiments have investigated how emotion word processing differs from both abstract and concrete word processing (Altarriba & Bauer, 2004; Altarriba, Bauer, & Benvenuto, 1999). To assess for differences between emotion and emotion-laden word processing, 2 experiments were conducted, the first assessing explicit processing (using an unmasked LDT) and the second assessing automatic processing (using a masked LDT). The prediction that semantic priming would differ between emotion word pairs and emotion-laden word pairs was confirmed in both experiments, with shorter response times for emotion targets and greater priming effects for emotion word pairs than for emotion-laden word pairs. The role of valence is discussed, emphasizing the ways valence affects the speed with which these words are accessed and processed.

Local and Global Task Switching Costs in Bilinguals Who Vary in Second Language Proficiency.

We examined the relationship between bilinguals' second language (L2) proficiency and their performance on a Stroop switching task, in which a color word (e.g., GREEN) appeared in a congruent ink color (e.g., green) or an incongruent ink color (e.g., red). Participants either read aloud the color word in the word-reading trials or named the ink color in the color-naming trials. Bilinguals who varied in L2 proficiency received 2 pure blocks, consisting of word-reading trials and color-naming trials, respectively, and 1 mixed block, consisting of intermixed word-reading and color-naming trials in an alternating-runs pattern. Comparing performance in nonswitch trials in the mixed block and the pure block provides a measure of global switch costs, whereas differences on switch trials and nonswitch trials in the mixed block reflect local switch costs. Bilinguals with higher L2 proficiency showed a marginally smaller Stroop effect in color naming, a smaller local switch cost in word reading (but not in color naming), and a smaller word-reading versus color-naming task set asymmetry in local switch costs. The latter result was consistent with the language switching finding that the L1/L2 switch cost asymmetry decreased as a function of bilinguals' L2 proficiency. Overall, the current findings support the facilitative role of L2 proficiency in bilinguals' task set switching: Those with higher L2 proficiency have better task set shifting and reconfiguration and updating abilities when they switch from a more difficult task set (color naming) to an easier task set (word reading) in a task-switching paradigm.

Emotion and mood: over 120 years of contemplation and exploration in the American Journal of Psychology.

Emotional states derived from stimuli such as visual objects, scenes, and films, linguistic input such as words and phrases, and other inputs such as music and humor have been examined over many decades in an attempt to understand how feelings are aroused and, in turn, how they influence behavior. From early introspectionists to modern-day social, clinical, and cognitive researchers studying the ways in which affect is derived from everyday conscious and unconscious experiences and how those experiences frame our perceptions for processing future encounters with emotional stimuli, over 120 years of work has been reported in The American Journal of Psychology. The current article provides an overview of the more salient and influential of those works and articulates the ways in which the reported findings influence our current explorations of emotion and mood.

Independent effects of word concreteness and word valence on immediate serial recall.

The present study examined the roles of word concreteness and word valence in the immediate serial recall task. Emotion words (e.g. happy) were used to investigate these effects. Participants completed study-test trials with 7-item study lists consisting of positive or negative words with either high or low concreteness (Experiments 1 and 2) and neutral (i.e. non-emotion) words with either high or low concreteness (Experiment 2). In serial recall performance, we replicated the typical item concreteness effect (concrete words are better recalled than abstract words) and obtained an item valence effect (positive/neutral words are better recalled than negative words). However, there was no concreteness × valence interaction. We conclude that both word valence and word concreteness independently contribute to the serial order retention of emotion words in the immediate serial recall task.

Multiple producible cues do not aid face-name memory: A reverse production effect.

Are there effective mechanisms that can be used to remember someone's name? The production effect is a phenomenon that exemplifies memory's robust benefit for studied words or phrases that have been spoken out loud, as opposed to only hearing or seeing them. However, this robust effect has not yet been identified for face-name pairings. The present study seeks to examine the boundary conditions of the production effect in face-name pairings by incorporating the additional cue of valenced adjectives. Participants were presented with facial images and a sentence stating the name and a description of the individual. Sentences were learned in one of four ways: saying the sentence out loud, reading it silently, reading it while hearing it, or only listening to the sentence presented while viewing the face. Memory for the face, name, and adjective combinations were tested using various types of cues: face only (Experiment 1a), or face and name or adjective (Experiment 1b & Experiment 2). Results replicate the lack of a production effect for face-name memory, and instead support a reverse effect for such stimuli. These findings indicate the unique processing of faces and highlight boundary conditions of the production effect.

Divergent Thinking in Survival Processing: Did Our Ancestors Benefit From Creative Thinking?

The survival processing advantage is a robust mnemonic device in which information processed for its relevance to one's survival is subsequently better remembered. Research indicates that elaborative processing may be a key component underlying this memory effect, and that this mechanism resembles divergent thinking, whereby words with a greater number of creative uses in a given scenario are better remembered. If this particular function underpins adaptive memory, then individual differences in creativity may play a part in the degree to which people benefit from this advantage. We expected that highly creative individuals who engage more in divergent thinking would not necessarily benefit to a greater degree than less creative individuals, due to potential redundant processing. In this between-subjects experiment, participants rated words according to their relevance to the typical grasslands survival scenario or according to their pleasantness (a control common to the survival paradigm and known to enhance memory). While we did find a main effect of both condition (survival v. pleasantness) and creativity (high v. low), there was no interaction. This set of findings suggests that creative individuals may not benefit to a greater degree in survival processing, despite their ability to think divergently.

Does survival processing enhance implicit memory?

Recent research has shown that human memory may have evolved to remember information that has been processed for the purpose of survival, more so than information that has been processed for other purposes, such as home-moving. We investigated this survival-processing advantage using both explicit and implicit memory tests. In Experiment 1, participants rated words in one of three scenarios: survival, pleasantness, and moving, followed by a timed stem-cued recall/stem-cued completion task. Items were completed more quickly in the survival scenario, as compared with the other two for the explicit task, but no differences were found across conditions in the implicit task. In Experiment 2, the implicit task was changed to concreteness judgments to encourage more conceptual processing. Again, the survival-processing advantage occurred in the explicit task (speeded item recognition), but not in the implicit task. These results suggest that a survival-processing advantage may benefit participants' memory performance only during explicit retrieval.

The word concreteness effect occurs for positive, but not negative, emotion words in immediate serial recall.

The present study examined the roles of word concreteness and word valence in the immediate serial recall task. Emotion words (e.g. happy) were used to investigate these effects. Participants completed study-test trials with seven-item study lists consisting of positive or negative words with either high or low concreteness (Experiments 1 and 2) and neutral (i.e. non-emotion) words with either high or low concreteness (Experiment 2). For neutral words, the typical word concreteness effect (concrete words are better recalled than abstract words) was replicated. For emotion words, the effect occurred for positive words, but not for negative words. While the word concreteness effect was stronger for neutral words than for negative words, it was not different for the neutral words and the positive words. We conclude that both word valence and word concreteness simultaneously contribute to the item and order retention of emotion words and discuss how Hulme et al.'s (1997) item redintegration account can be modified to explain these findings.

Word type effects in false recall: concrete, abstract, and emotion word critical lures.

Previous research has demonstrated that definable qualities of verbal stimuli have implications for memory. For example, the distinction between concrete and abstract words has led to the finding that concrete words have an advantage in memory tasks (i.e., the concreteness effect). However, other word types, such as words that label specific human emotions, may also affect memory processes. This study examined the effects of word type on the production of false memories by using a list-learning false memory paradigm. Participants heard lists of words that were highly associated to nonpresented concrete, abstract, or emotion words (i.e., the critical lures) and then engaged in list recall. Emotion word critical lures were falsely recalled at a significantly higher rate (with the effect carried by the positively valenced critical lures) than concrete and abstract critical lures. These findings suggest that the word type variable has implications for our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie recall and false recall.

Mental health considerations for speech-language services with bilingual Spanish-English speakers.

Understanding communicatively impaired minority individuals may involve going beyond strictly linguistic and communicative domains. In particular, considering the psychoemotional aspects impacting these clients may be extremely helpful for treating them and enhancing their response to therapy. This article provides an overview of issues on minority bilingual individuals that are relevant to professionals in mental health and speech-language pathology. We use Hispanics, the fastest growing minority in the United States, for illustration. The material discussed in this article highlights some of the benefits of collaborative communication between mental health professionals and speech-language pathologists (SLPs). Such communication would enhance SLPs' understanding of the interesting interconnections among emotions, culture, and language in immigrant and minority persons with valuable applications to therapeutic services with these individuals.