Presentation

Jessica M. Alexander¹, Ana Lopez-Nuñez¹, Brittney M. Rodriguez¹, Anfernee N. Duncombe¹, Sarah B. Malykke¹, George A. Buzzell¹; ¹Florida International University

Valence describes the positive-negative spectrum of affective mood states as well as the intrinsic appetitiveness (“kitten”) or aversiveness (“puke”) of a stimulus, such as a written word. Both affective and lexical valence have been shown to influence cognitive behavior and neural activity; synergy or conflict between them can impact performance on activities involving natural language, such as reading an emotionally-charged text. Long-standing research into the impact of lexical valence on performance in word recognition tasks has uncovered a distinct processing advantage for positively valenced words over their negative counterparts. This has been understood as evidence for a nuanced model of automatic vigilance whereby the immediate identification of stimuli that threaten or promote survival interacts with a cross-language bias for positive words. Positive words are more frequent in human languages and tend to have greater semantic richness, both of which facilitate lexico-semantic activation, amplify priming effects, and reduce eye fixation times during reading. Electrophysiological data have further corroborated this processing advantage: positive words are associated with neural responses that suggest facilitated semantic integration, enhanced attention, and deeper encoding. Investigations into the inter-relation between an individual's internal affective state with externally-presented lexical valence have found evidence for mood-congruent facilitation effects, which are particularly pronounced in positive mood states. Positive mood has been found to subserve assimilative processes that broaden access to stored semantic structures. Likewise, it has been argued that positive mood states relax inhibitory control and thereby broaden the scope of attentional filters, which facilitates the processing of unexpected or mood-incongruent stimuli. The generalizability of these patterns relating word recognition, lexical valence, and mood state has, however, been hampered by the low ecological validity of existing laboratory tasks. The current study investigated performance on a “real-world” task in which participants read aloud 20 passages, each 140-223 words in length and presented as a unified whole, and responded to simple, multiple-choice comprehension questions. The first half of each passage was designed to be strongly valenced to one extreme (e.g., very positive) with lexical valence making a dramatic switch at the midway point to the opposite extreme (e.g., very negative). Participant mood was assessed by self-report. For a subset of participants, simultaneous EEG is collected during performance of the reading task, and the audio waveform is synchronized with the recorded EEG to allow for event-related neural analyses at the individual word level. Data collection and analyses are currently underway. With a focus on speed, pitch, frequency of errors (such as mispronunciations), and post-error reading behavior, planned analyses will investigate the impact of individual differences in the (in)congruency between mood and lexical valence. Within the subset of participants with simultaneous EEG recording, we will further investigate the impact of the mid-passage switch in the valence of the lexical stimuli. Findings have the potential to shed light on the degree to which (in)congruency of lexical stimuli and mood state impact reading behavior and associated neural responses within a naturalistic setting.

Topic Areas: Reading, Language Production