Ferré Pilar, Haro Juan, Huete-Pérez Daniel, Fraga Isabel
Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Psychology, Research Center for Behavior Assessment (CRAMC), Tarragona, Spain.
Cognitive Processes & Behavior Research Group, Department of Social Psychology, Basic Psychology, and Methodology, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2021 Jul;74(7):1234-1243. doi: 10.1177/1747021821990003. Epub 2021 Feb 8.
There is substantial evidence that affectively charged words (e.g., or ) are processed differently from neutral words (e.g., ), although there are also inconsistent findings in the field. Some lexical or semantic variables might explain such inconsistencies, due to the possible modulation of affective word processing by these variables. The aim of the present study was to examine the extent to which affective word processing is modulated by semantic ambiguity. We conducted a large lexical decision study including semantically ambiguous words (e.g., ) and semantically unambiguous words (e.g., ), analysing the extent to which reaction times (RTs) were influenced by their affective properties. The findings revealed a valence effect in which positive valence made RTs faster, whereas negative valence slowed them. The valence effect diminished as the semantic ambiguity of words increased. This decrease did not affect all ambiguous words, but was observed mainly in ambiguous words with incongruent affective meanings. These results highlight the need to consider the affective properties of the distinct meanings of ambiguous words in research on affective word processing.
有大量证据表明，带有情感色彩的词汇（如……或……）与中性词汇（如……）的处理方式不同，尽管该领域也存在不一致的研究结果。一些词汇或语义变量可能解释了这种不一致性，因为这些变量可能会对情感词汇的处理产生调节作用。本研究的目的是考察语义模糊对情感词汇处理的调节程度。我们进行了一项大型词汇判断研究，包括语义模糊的词汇（如……）和语义明确的词汇（如……），分析反应时间（RTs）受其情感属性影响的程度。研究结果揭示了一种效价效应，即正性效价使反应时间加快，而负性效价则使其减慢。随着词汇语义模糊性的增加，效价效应减弱。这种减弱并非影响所有模糊词汇，主要出现在情感意义不一致的模糊词汇中。这些结果凸显了在情感词汇处理研究中考虑模糊词汇不同意义的情感属性的必要性。
