: This work focuses on emotional concepts. We define concepts as patterns of neural activation that re-enact a given external or internal experience, for example the interoceptive experience related to fear. Concepts are mediated and expressed through words. In the following, we will use “words” to refer to word meanings, assuming that words mediate underlying concepts. Since emotional concepts and the words that mediate them are less related to the physical environment than concrete ones, (...) at first sight they might be depicted as abstract concepts. Evidence coming from several studies shows, instead, that the issue is more complex. In this work, we will briefly outline the debate and illustrate results from recent studies on comprehension of concrete, emotional and abstract words in children and adults. We will argue that emotional words can be accounted for from a grounded perspective and will contend that emotional words represent a particular set of words that differs from both the concrete and purely abstract ones. Keywords: Embodied and Grounded Cognition; Abstract Concepts; Emotional Words; Language Acquisition; Language Processing La peculiarità delle parole emotive: un approccio basato sulla grounded cognition Riassunto: Questo lavoro si incentra sui concetti emotivi. Intendiamo qui per concetti i pattern di attivazioni neurali che riattivano un’esperienza interna o esterna, per esempio le esperienze interocettive collegate alla paura. I concetti sono mediati ed espressi dalle parole. Di seguito, useremo “parole” in riferimento al significato delle parole, assumendo le parole come veicolo dei concetti. I concetti emotivi e le parole che li esprimono, dal momento che sono meno legati all’ambiente fisico rispetto a quelli concreti, potrebbero essere a tutta prima classificati come concetti astratti. Molti studi invece mostrano come la questione sia più complessa. In questo lavoro illustreremo brevemente il dibattito e i risultati di recenti studi sulla comprensione di parole astratte, concrete ed emotive in bambini e adulti, per mostrare come una prospettiva grounded possa rendere conto delle parole emotive, sostenendo che queste rappresentano un insieme particolare di parole, diverse sia da quelle concrete che da quelle puramente astratte. Parole chiave: Embodied and Grounded Cognition; Concetti astratti; Parole emotive; Acquisizione del linguaggio; Processamento del linguaggio. (shrink)

The hypothesis that word representations are emotionally impoverished in a second language (L2) has variable support. However, this hypothesis has only been tested using tasks that present words in isolation or that require laboratory-specific decisions. Here, we recorded eye movements for 34 bilinguals who read sentences in their L2 with no goal other than comprehension, and compared them to 43 first language readers taken from our prior study. Positive words were read more quickly than neutral words in (...) the L2 across first-pass reading time measures. However, this emotional advantage was absent for negative words for the earliest measures. Moreover, negative words but not positive words were influenced by concreteness, frequency and L2 proficiency in a manner similar to neutral words. Taken together, the findings suggest that only negative words are at risk of emotional disembodiment during L2 reading, perhaps because a positivity bias in L2 experiences ensures that positive words are emotionally grounded. (shrink)

The present ERP study investigated effects of subliminal emotional words on preference judgments about subsequent visual target stimuli . Each target was preceded by a masked 17-ms emotional adjective. Four classes of prime words were distinguished according to the combinations of positive/negative valence and high/low arousal. Targets were liked significantly more after positive-arousing primes , relative to negative-arousing , positive-nonarousing , and negative-nonarousing primes . In the target ERP, amplitude of right-hemisphere positive slow wave was increased (...) after positive-arousing compared to negative-arousing primes. Evaluative priming effects on judgments and ERPs were more pronounced in high state-anxious participants. The results suggest that there is indeed affective/semantic processing of unconscious words, evaluative priming operates relatively late during target processing, to be effective, prime words need to score high on the arousal dimension, and individual differences in state anxiety modulate the susceptibility to subliminal evaluative priming. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAppraisal theories of emotion, and particularly the Component Process Model, claim that the different components of the emotion process are essentially driven by the results of cognitive appraisals and that the feeling component constitutes a central integration and representation of these processes. Given the complexity of the proposed architecture, comprehensive experimental tests of these predictions are difficult to perform and to date are lacking. Encouraged by the “lexical sedimentation” hypothesis, here we propose an indirect examination of the compatibility of the (...) theoretical assumptions with the semantic structure of a set of major emotion words as measured in a cross-language and cross-cultural study. Specifically, we performed a secondary analysis of the large-scale data set with ratings of affective features covering all components of the emotion process for 24 emotion words in 27 countries, constituting... (shrink)

In the current study, late Chinese–English bilinguals performed a facial expression identification task with emotion words in the task-irrelevant dimension, in either their first language or second language. The investigation examined the automatic access of the emotional content in words appearing in more than one language. Significant congruency effects were present for both L1 and L2 emotion word processing. Furthermore, the magnitude of emotional face-word Stroop effect in the L1 task was greater as compared to the (...) L2 task, indicating that in L1 participants could access the emotional information in words in a more reliable manner. In summary, these findings provide more support for the automatic access of emotional information in words in the bilinguals’ two languages as well as attenuated emotionality of L2 processing. (shrink)

George Lakoff discusses how emotion metaphors reflect the discrete bodily states associated with each emotion. The analysis raises questions about the context for and frequency of use of emotion metaphors and, indeed, emotion labels, per se. An assumption implicit to most theories of emotion is that emotion language is just another channel through which people express ongoing emotion states. Drawing from recent evidence that labeling ongoing emotions reduces their intensity, we propose that a primary function of emotion language is regulatory (...) rather than expressive. (shrink)

Starting from a comparison of the similarities between a poem by Sylvia Plath called Tulips and the words of someone in the thrall of a delusion I develop a phenomenology of how mood is basic to our articulation of the world. To develop this argument I draw on Heidegger’s concept of attunement [befindlichkeit] and his contention that basic emotions open up aspects of the world for closer inspection and articulation. My thesis in this paper is that there is an (...) underlying structural similarity between the forms of words used in poems and those found in medically diagnosed delusions and this similarity is based on the role of mood in both arenas. The difference, I argue, is that although both forms of articulation are negotiated ‘as if’ the subject matter was literal, the person writing the poem is self-aware that their uses of language are figurative and metaphorical. This is because the emotional lens they use to describe a situation poetically can always be removed by a return to a ground-mood of acceptance, that prevents them from becoming lost in the poetical mood. The person experiencing psychosis, on the other hand, is unable to extricate herself from the mood that underlies their delusional utterances as they have lost access to the ground-mood that the poet takes for granted. I illustrate the point using Hume’s famous statement about the mood he philosophises in and look at ways sufferers from delusions could regain a sense of the non-literal projections of their words. (shrink)

Sound symbolism refers to non-arbitrary associations between word forms and meaning, such as those observed for some properties of sounds and size or shape. Recent evidence suggests that these connections extend to emotional concepts. Here we investigated two types of non-arbitrary relationships. Study 1 examined whether iconicity scores (i.e. resemblance-based mapping between aspects of a word’s form and its meaning) for words can be predicted from ratings in the affective dimensions of valence and arousal and/or the discrete emotions (...) of happiness, anger, fear, disgust and sadness. Words denoting negative concepts were more likely to have more iconic word forms. Study 2 explored whether statistical regularities in single phonemes (i.e. systematicity) predicted ratings in affective dimensions and/or discrete emotions. Voiceless (/p/, /t/) and voiced plosives (/b/, /d/, /g/) were related to high arousing words, whereas high arousing negative words tended to include fricatives (/s/, /z/). Hissing consonants were also more likely to occur in words denoting all negative discrete emotions. Additionally, words conveying certain discrete emotions included specific phonemes. Overall, our data suggest that emotional features might explain variations in iconicity and provide new insight about phonemic patterns showing sound symbolic associations with the affective properties of words. (shrink)

Little is known about the impact of context on the meaning of emotion words. In the present study, we used a semantic profiling instrument to investigate features representing five emotion components of 11 emotion words in situational contexts involving success or failure. We compared these to the data from an earlier study in which participants evaluated the typicality of features out of context. Profile analyses identified features for which typicality changed as a function of context for all emotion (...) words, except contentment, with appraisal features being most frequently affected. Those context effects occurred for both hypothesised basic and non-basic emotion words. Moreover, both data sets revealed a four-dimensional structure. The four dimensions were largely similar. The results suggest that context may not change the underlying dimensionality but affects facets of the meaning of emotion words. (shrink)

This study sought to examine the effect of the quality of chatbot services on customer satisfaction, repurchase intention, and positive word-of-mouth by comparing two groups, namely chatbots with and without emotion words. An online survey was conducted for 2 weeks in May 2021. A total of 380 responses were collected and analyzed using structural equation modeling to test the hypothesis. The theoretical basis of the study was the SERVQUAL theory, which is widely used in measuring and managing service quality (...) in various industries. The results showed that the assurance and reliability of chatbots positively impact customer satisfaction for both groups. However, empathy and interactivity positively affect customer satisfaction only for chatbots with emotion words. Responsiveness did not have an impact on customer satisfaction for both groups. Customer satisfaction positively impacts repurchase intention and positive word-of-mouth for both groups. The findings of this study can serve as a priori research to empirically prove the effectiveness of chatbots with emotion words. (shrink)

This paper proposes a model for the analysis of emotions in which each emotion word in each language is made up of a universal component and a language-specific component; the universal component is drawn from a set of universal human emotions which underlie all emotion words in all languages, and the language-specific component involves a language-particular thought pattern which is expressed as part of the meanings of a variety of different words in the language. The meanings of a (...) variety of emotion words of Biblical Hebrew are discussed and compared with the meanings of English words with the same general meaning; it is shown that a number of the Biblical Hebrew words directly represent the biblical conception of God and the role of God combined with one or another of the proposed universal emotions. (shrink)

Previous research has shown that emotionally-valenced words are given higher judgements of learning (JOLs) than are neutral words. The current study examined potential explanations for this emotional salience effect on JOLs. Experiment 1 replicated the basic emotionality/JOL effect. In Experiments 2A and 2B, we used pre-study JOLs and assessed memory beliefs qualitatively, finding that, on average, participants believed that positive and negative words were more memorable than neutral words. Experiment 3 utilised a lexical decision task, (...) resulting in lower reaction times (RTs) for positive words than for neutral words, but equivalent RTs for negative and neutral words, suggesting that processing fluency may partially account for higher JOLs for positive words, but not for negative words. Finally, we conducted a series of moderation analyses in Experiment 4 which assessed the relative contributions of fluency and beliefs to JOLs by measuring both factors in the same participants, showing that RTs made no significant contribution to JOLs for either positive or negative words. Our findings suggest that although positive words may be more fluently processed than neutral words, memory beliefs are the primary factor underlying higher JOLs for both positive and negative words. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPrior research and theory has suggested that rumination plays a role in nonsuicidal self-injury, and rumination increases recall of negative autobiographical information in dysphoric...

An account of the conflict between our positive and negative emotional relationships to the Earth and how they will be resolved for the Symbiocene, the next period in the history of the Earth.