The Distinctiveness of Emotion Concepts: A Comparison between Emotion, Abstract, and Concrete Words Author(s): Jeanette Altarriba and

Lisa M. Bauer Source: The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 117, No. 3 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 389-410 Published by: University of Illinois Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4149007 Accessed: 01/02/2010 07:14
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The distinctiveness of emotionconcepts: A comparison betweenemotion,abstract, and concrete words

JEANETTE ALTARRIBA University at Albany, State University of New York LISA M. BAUER Utica College of Syracuse University Are the concepts represented by emotion words different from abstract words in memory? We examined the distinct characteristics of emotion concepts in 3 separate experiments. The first demonstrated that emotion words are better recalled than both concrete and abstract words in a free recall task. In the second experiment, ratings of abstract, concrete, and emotion words were compared on concreteness, imageability, and context availability scales. Results revealed a difference between all 3 word types on each of the 3 scales. The third experiment investigated priming in a lexical decision task for homogeneous (abstract-abstract and emotion-emotion) and heterogeneous (abstract-emotion and emotion-abstract) associated word pairs. Priming occurred only for the homogeneous and heterogeneous abstract-emotion word pair conditions. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed in terms of the circumplex, hierarchical, and semantic activation models. The results are most consistent with the predictions of the semantic activation model. Although the literature on the cognitive processing of emotion words is almost nonexistent, the evidence indicating the importance of emotional self-awareness and emotional intelligence in human development and psychological well-being is accumulating rapidly (Goleman, 1995). The awareness of emotions and the ability to recognize, name, and understand the causes of these feelings are important to overall emotional competence. These abilities have been linked to a lower incidence of depression in both children and adults, the cessation of eating disorders, and a reduction in mental illness in recent years (Goleman, 1995). Because emotional awareness is important, a logical and necessary step in this area of research is to discover the fundamental attributes of emotion words in human memory. Fundamental attributes of various word types have been examined by studying word representation and word retrieval. In the study of word
AMERICANJOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY Fall 2004, Vol. 117, No. 3, pp. 389-410
? 2004 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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concrete words over abstract words has to do with sensory information (Paivio, 1971, 1986; see also Schwanenflugel & Akin, 1994). According to the dual-coding theory, there are two functionally independent yet interconnected representational systems: a verbal system (the logogen system) and an imaginal system (the imagen system). The logogen system is responsible for the representation and processing of linguistic information. The imagen system is a nonverbal system responsible for the representation and processing of nonverbal information. These representations are differentially available in memory contingent on the stimulus' concreteness. Paivio's dual-coding theory accounts for concreteness effects by stating that both concrete and abstract words are represented in the logogen system, but only concrete words are connected to the imagen system. When a concrete word is produced, both the logogen and the imagen systems are activated, and they have an additive effect, thereby yielding an advantage for concrete words over abstract words in lexical processing. Therefore, concrete words are remembered better than abstract words because the image provides an additional means through which the concrete words can be stored and retrieved. A second explanation used to interpret concreteness effects is a context availability hypothesis, which emphasizes the ease with which a context or circumstance in which the word appeared can be recalled (Schwanenflugel et al., 1992). For example, it may be easy to think of a context for the word bedbut difficult to think of a context for the word freedom.According to this hypothesis, concreteness effects arise from a differential availability of contextual information. The contextual information can be retrieved from prior knowledge or from information in the stimulus environment. Therefore, when abstract and concrete words are presented in isolation it is more difficult to retrieve contextual information for abstract words than for concrete words, resulting in poorer recall for abstract words. This theory predicts that with adequate contextual support, abstract

and wordretrieval, a robustfindingis thatconcretewords representation such as bedare rememberedbetter than abstractwords such asfreedom (Schwanenflugel,Harnishfeger,& Stowe, 1988). This advantagein the processingof concretewords,often calleda concretenesseffect,has been of tasks,includinglexicaldecision (Day,1977;James, reportedin a variety 1975), paired associatelearning, free recall, recognition (Paivio, 1971, 1986), and comprehension tests (Holmes & Langford,1976). Additionally,concretenesseffects exist for both children and adults (Vellutino& Scanlon, 1985). Concreteness effects often are explained in terms of Paivio's(1971, 1986) dual-codingmodel or by a context availability hyAkin, & Luh, 1992). pothesis (Schwanenflugel, Paivioand his colleagues suggested that the processingadvantageof

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stimuli can be learned as well as concrete stimuli. This prediction was supported in a paired-associate experiment. Bransford and McCarrell (1974) found that when abstract stimuli were meaningfully related to the response pairs, they were recalled as well as concrete stimuli because the response pairs were providing the context for the abstract stimuli (Schwanenflugel et al., 1992). Additional support for the context availability hypothesis stems from studies that have found that concreteness effects disappear when the stimuli are presented in a supportive context (Schwanenflugel et al., 1988; Schwanenflugel & Stowe, 1989). The role of imageability, the extent to which a mental image is evoked by a referent, has also been examined. The basic premise of the dualcoding theory is that concrete words are recalled better than abstract words because concrete words have an imagen system that abstract words lack. Therefore, the imageability of various word types plays a role in the predictions of the dual-coding theory. Additionally, it is possible that imagery plays a role in the accessibility of contextual information. Schwanenflugel et al. (1992) investigated whether the effects of imageability on recall are independent of the effects of contextual information on recall. Participants were asked to recall unrelated abstract and concrete stimuli that were equated on the accessibility of contextual information. They also investigated the strategies that participants used when recalling the stimuli. The results uncovered an effect of imageability inWhen participants reported implementdependent of context availability. ing imagery, concreteness effects were present regardless of whether the stimuli were equated on context availability.However, when participants did not report using imagery to recall the items, concreteness effects were found only when the stimuli were not equated on context availability. Therefore, it appears that when imagery is perceived as being helpful in completing a task, it may be used. However, if imagery does not appear to be necessary in completing a task, information that is readily available from prior knowledge will be used. The aforementioned research on concreteness effects indicates that concrete and abstract words have been investigated on dimensions such as concreteness, context availability, and imageability. It is important to note that in the concreteness effects literature emotion words often are included with the abstract stimuli with no justification for this classification (Chiarello, Senehi, & Nuding, 1987; Eviator, Menn, & Zaidel, 1990; Nelson & Schreiber, 1992). Previous studies have not considered that emotion words may elicit different activations and may be distinct from abstract words and that if emotion terms are classified as abstract, the results may be confounded. It may be that emotion words placed in the abstract category increase or decrease the actual concreteness effects by influencing the measures of the abstract category.

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The aim of the present series of experimentsis to investigatewhether emotion wordsbehaveas abstract wordsbehave (i.e., lowin concreteness, context availability, and imagery) or whether concepts represented by emotion wordshave characteristics that are distinctlydifferentfrom the characteristicsof the concepts represented by abstractand concrete words. This was accomplished by looking at the results of a free recall experiment, a rating study,and a priming experiment. In each case, it waspredictedthatemotionwordswouldbe respondedto differently than concrete and abstractwords. of emotion words whetherthe classification Experiment1 investigated as abstract in previousstudieswasappropriate byconductinga simplefree recall experiment. Experimenters(Paivio,1971, 1986) have found that concretewordswere recalledmore often than abstract words.If emotion wordsdo not elicit differentcharacteristics than abstract words,then the number of emotion wordsrecalled in a free recall taskshould be no different from the number of abstractwords recalled. In addition, both abstractand emotion wordsshould be recalled less often than concrete words.Experiment1 investigated whetheremotion wordshavethe same memorialpropertiesas abstractand concrete words. EXPERIMENT 1 METHOD Participants fromthe University 30 menand30women, at students, Sixty undergraduate tookpart in thisstudy forpartial of a course Each fulfillment Albany requirement. wasa native participant English speaker. Materials The abstract, a priori.Words wereclassified concrete,and emotionwords whosemeaningdenoteda material as concretewords. objectwereclassified Multidimensional andfactor thatemotional studies exscaling analytic suggest consist of bothavalence(pleasant orunpleasant) andanarousal periences (low, or high) component(Russell, & Bullock, medium, 1980,1991;Russell 1985). words whosemeanings wereaffective andhadpleasantness or unTherefore, andarousal as emotionwords. wereclassified Words pleasantness components whosemeanings referred to something froma material that independent object werenotclassified asan emotion word weredesignated asabstract words. Using thesecriteria, 72words wereselected fromBleas(24of eachof the threetypes) dale(1987),Chiarello et al. (1987),Clore, andFoss(1987),Nelsonand Ortony, Schreiber andO'Connor (1992),Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, (1987),andWhissell
(1989).

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A list of words was constructed for each of the three word types (abstract, concrete, and emotion). Each list consisted of 20 words, and all three lists were matched in frequency and in length. These lists are presented in Table 1. Additionally, four buffer words, two presented at the beginning of each list and two presented at the end of each list, were used to reduce primacy and recency effects. For the abstract list, the buffers were easy, donor,travel,and finish. For the For the emotion list, concrete list, the buffers were dragon,penny, card,and pepper. the buffers were excited,lonely,infatuated,and upset.Therefore, each participant heard 24 words, but only the middle 20 words were included in the scoring.

Procedure
To ensure that the participants understood the task, a 10-word practice list composed of all three word types was presented before the experimental list. For both the practice and the experimental list, each word was presented auditorily for 5 s. Participants were told before the presentation of each list that they were to remember as many words as possible because they would later need to recall the words. After the presentation of each list, the practice list and one of the three experimental lists, participants were asked to write down as many words as they could remember on a sheet of paper containing 10 blanks for the practice list and 24 blanks for the experimental lists. They were given as much time as they needed.

Table 1. Words used in Experiment 1 Emotion words angry thrilled furious happy grateful glad depressed delighted disappointed hopeful discouraged afraid cheerful love sad surprised mad anxious joy annoyed Concrete words machine airplane flag basket clock apartment scissors building balloon magazine sock cigar dog newspaper castle girl rope elephant canoe factory Abstract words height quench patriotism health capability aid humor wealth win advice drama wisdom attitude culture intellect nonsense honor chaos obey heaven

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RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Incorrectresponsesand bufferwordswere not scored. An analysisof variance(ANOVA) wasconducted to comparethe means acrossthe three conditions. Meannumberof wordsrecalledand standarddeviationsfor recalled5.70 the threewordtypesare as follows.On average,participants abstractwords (SD= 0.40), 7.75 concrete words (SD= 0.40), and 9.1 indicate that the emotion words (SD= 0.38). The results of the ANOVA differentfrom each other,F(2, 108) = 19.01, three meansare statistically MSE= 3.08, p < .001. Planned comparisons revealed that participants recalled more emotion wordsthan abstractor concrete words,followed by concrete words,and then by abstractwords (all ps < .05). These findings replicateearlierresultsthat concrete wordsare recalledmore often to our knowlwordsin free recallexperiments.Additionally, thanabstract wordsare emotion that first time for the these results demonstrate edge, wordsin a free recalltask. betterrecalledthan either concrete or abstract The currentfindingssuggestthat there are underlyingdifferencesin the processingof these three word types. In termsof the dual-codingtheoryand the context availability hypothesis mentioned earlier,the currentfindingsseem to suggestthatperhaps there is an underlyingdifference between the three word types.Paivio's (1971, 1986) dual-codingtheory statesthat concrete wordsare recalled better than abstract wordsbecause concrete wordshavean image associwith that wordslack.Perhapsemotion wordsalso have ated them abstract words. an image system,allowingthem to be recalledbetterthan abstract in termsof the context availability hypothesis(SchwanenfluAlternatively, gel et al., 1988), perhapsemotion wordshave more contexts associated with them and are representedby a broaderrange of contexts in which they have been experienced. The second experimentused a ratingtaskto investigatehow emotion, abstract,and concrete wordswere rated on concreteness, imageability, and context availability scales. It was predicted that the emotion words would more readily activate images and contexts than abstractwords would. This hypothesis is based partiallyon previous research on the studieshavefound of facialexpressions.Severalcross-cultural universality thatwhen participants performa recognitionof photographedemotional expressions task at least six emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) have a universalexpression (Ekman,Friesen, & Ellsworth, 1972;Izard,1971). This researchindicatesthatemotion words have perceptualreferents.Therefore, it is plausible that an image may words.Referring be more accessiblefor emotion wordsthan for abstract to the dual-coding theory, it may be that both concrete and emotion
words are stored in two representational systems, whereas abstract words

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are stored in a single representational system. For example, the concrete word tigermay elicit an image of a tiger, and the emotion word scared may elicit an image of a scared facial expression. However, it may be more difficult to elicit an image for an abstract word such as fact. It was also hypothesized that it is easier to produce an appropriate context for an emotion word than for an abstract word. It may be that the word happy immediately elicits the context of marriage and the word scared immediately elicits the context of public speaking. However, it may be more difficult to think of contexts for abstract words such as infinity and culture. These ideas are explored in Experiment 2. Emotion words were compared with abstract and concrete words using scales that measure word concreteness, imageability, and context availability. If emotion words produce ratings on these scales that differ from the other two word types, then it may be concluded that emotion words activate characteristics that distinguish them from concrete and abstract words.

EXPERIMENT 2 METHOD Participants

Seventy-eight undergraduate students from the University at Albany participated in this experiment for partial fulfillment of a course requirement or for extra credit. Each participant was a native English speaker.

Materials
Forty-eight concrete and 48 abstract words were selected from Bleasdale (1987), Chiarello et al. (1987), and Nelson and Schreiber (1992). Forty-eight emotion words were selected from Clore et al. (1987) and Shaver et al. (1987). These 144 words, which were matched in frequency (using Ku era & Francis, 1967) and length, were randomized and typed into lists. Mean frequency for concrete words was 36.94 (SD = 42.81). Mean frequency for abstract words was 42.56 (SD = 37.49) and for emotion words was 34.08 (SD = 39.98). Corresponding mean lengths were 6.17 (SD= 1.17), 6.65 (SD= 1.64), and 6.77 (SD= 2.01). These words are presented in Table 2.

Procedure
Twenty-six participants were asked to rate the stimuli on one of the following 7-point scales: concreteness, imageability, or context availability. The scales ranged from 1 (highlyabstract,difficultto image,or difficultto think of a context)to 7 (highlyconcrete, easyto image,oreasyto thinkof a context).The instructions for each of the three scales provided examples, thereby supplying participants with anchors on which to base their ratings. The example provided in the context availability scale was taken from a previous study by de Groot (1992) to ensure that

Table 2. Words used in Experiment 2 Emotion words angry content excited furious moody happy calm scared glad lonely anxious secure surprised alert sorry curious depressed troubled delighted hysterical love upset skeptical thrilled hurt zealous hopeful uncertain thankful concerned afraid unhappy grateful obsessed joy worried miserable nervous serious annoyed confident stupid sad disgusted affectionate mad awful cheerful Concrete words costume cloud brush mirror machine airplane pencil bible garden scissors asphalt timber pepper animal balloon apartment dentist crutch factory cards liquor newspaper jewel basket orange eagle building penny magazine poison tower mouth movie cigar elephant dragon burglar daughter fence jungle police flute castle clown nurse father crown truck Abstract words learning jeopardy mastery truth chance virtue treat attitude quench facility compulsion decency health origin capable wealth entry excuse glory patriotism dare fault capability legend fiction ability grace method impression permission concept chaos conquest essence advice drama haunt culture easy response welfare benefit intellect count theft false nonsense heaven

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the participants for each of the scales understoodthe directions.The instructions are similarto the instructionsused by previousresearchers(Altarriba, Bauer,& Benvenuto, 1999; Campos, 1990;Friendly,Franklin,Hoffman, & Rubin, 1982; ratedthe et al., 1992). Eachparticipant Gilhooly&Logie, 1980;Schwanenflugel wordson a single attribute. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION A 3 x 3 ANOVA that treated the rating scale type condition as a betweensubject variable and the word type condition as a within-subject variable was performed. There was a significant scale type effect, F(2, 141) = 94.05, MSE= 0.47, p < .001. There was also a significant word type effect, F(2, 141) = 977.10, MSE= 320.35, p < .001. A significant interaction between scale type and word type was also observed, F(4, 282) = 128.11, MSE= 42.00, p < .001, which indicates that there are differences in the ratings of word types on the different scales. Table 3 presents the mean concreteness, imageability, and context availability ratings for the 144 concrete, abstract, and emotion words. Within each scale, reliable differences were found between all three word types (all ps <.05). These findings were extremely important because they indicate that emotion words are rated differently from both abstractwords and concrete words on all three scales. The results indicate that concepts represented by emotion words are more imageable and are easier to think of a context for than abstract words but are less concrete than abstract words. They are less imageable, less concrete, and less likely to activate a context than concrete words. Previous studies of abstract and concrete words have found that correlations between concreteness and imagery range from .64 to .95 (Benjafield & Muckenheim, 1989; Christian, Bickley, Tarka, & Clayton, 1978; Friendly et al., 1982; Gilhooly & Logie, 1980; Paivio, 1986; Rubin, 1980; Rubin & Friendly, 1986; Schwanenflugel et al., 1988; Toglia & Battig, 1978; cf. Altarriba et al., 1999), and correlations between imagery and context availabilityrange from .68 to .82 (de Groot, Dannenburg, & van Hell, 1994; Schwanenflugel et al., 1988; cf. AltarriTable 3. Experiment2 mean (SD) concreteness,imageability, and context words for 144 and emotion concrete, abstract, availability ratings Ratingscale Wordtype Concrete Emotion Abstract Context availability Imageability 5.6 (0.56) 6.3 (0.36) 6.6 (0.54) 5.0 (0.65) 3.0 (0.27) 3.3 (0.68) 4.6 (0.75) 3.3 (0.60) 2.4 (0.88) Note.Ratingscale:I = low,7 = high.p < .05 for all comparisonsof interest. Concreteness

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ba et al., 1999). As can be seen in Table3, the previouspatternof results is consistentwith these correlations.Concretewordshavehigh concreteness ratings(M = 6.3) and also high imagery(M = 6.6) and context availwordshavelow concreteness (M = 3.3), ability(M = 5.6) ratings.Abstract (M = 4.6) ratings.Unlike preimagery(M = 2.4), and context availability viousstudies,the presentstudyalso examinedratingsfor emotion words. The emotion words had low concreteness (M= 3.0) and imagery (M= 3.3) ratings.The context availability rating (M = 5.0) is a bit higher than expected. However,it is importantto note that the aforementionedcorrelationswere calculatedon concrete and abstractword ratings.Taken together, the resultsof Experiment2 indicate that emotion wordsactivate differentpropertiesthan abstractand concrete words. Another aim of the current researchwas to investigatehow the concepts representedby emotion and abstractwords are represented in a broader neural networkby means of a priming paradigm.At least two models have been proposed to describe the mental representationof emotion words.One model is Russell's(1980, 1989) circumplexmodel of emotions. The circumplexmodel is a structural model wherebyemotion labels are categorizedon two dimensions,pleasantnessor unpleasantnessand high arousalor low arousal,therebyforminga circularstructure. Synonymstend to be closer to one another,whereasantonymsfall on the opposite side of the circle.The correlationbetween anytwoemotion wordsequalsthe cosine of the angle betweenthem. Russell's circummodel in or facilitation that plex postulates responding positivepriming will occur in relation to the distance in which the emotion wordsfall in the model. Shaveret al. (1987) proposed a hierarchicalmodel of emotion words. The emotion wordsbecome hierarchically organizedfirstas positiveand and then with emotions (love,joy, anger,sadness, negative prototypical and fear) at the superordinatelevel and membersof these prototypical emotions stored at subordinatelevels. This model, like the circumplex willoccur contingent model, predictsthatpositiveprimingor facilitation on the close proximity, in termsof distance,of the two emotion wordsof interest.Althoughthese twomodels haveaddressedthe mentalrepresentation of emotion words,they havedone so using explicit methods (such as rating studies) and have not addressed the notion of how emotion wordsare related to concrete and abstract wordsin termsof mental representation. proposes that concepts are connected to one another based on semantic relatedness (Collins & Loftus, 1975). The more semantically related the two concepts, the shorter the path between them. Activation of one A third model that has been studied implicitly is the semantic network model, which is also called the spreading activation model. This model

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node, the source node, leads to activation of the next node, which leads to activation of the next node, and so on. As the activation spreads, the strength of the activation decreases, so that concepts further from the source node are less likely to become activated than are nodes that are in close proximity to the source node. Although this model has not been applied to the mental representation of emotion words, it is plausible that emotion words can be represented by the semantic network model. The current research uses a priming paradigm to examine the mental representation of emotion words. Priming paradigms have been used extensively to examine the structure of semantic memory. If two words are semantically related and stored in close proximity in memory, then the presentation of the word prime should facilitate the response to the word target (Neely, 1977). In a lexical decision task participants judge whether a string of letters is a real word or a pseudoword. Facilitation in responses is assumed to reflect the degree of semantic relatedness between two concepts. Highly related concepts are stored more closely together. Related concepts also produce faster response times in word priming tasks. To our knowledge, the use of priming paradigms to study the mental representation of emotion words in relation to abstract and concrete words has not been reported. However,Bleasdale (1987) has applied the priming paradigm to investigate whether lexical processes are functionally distinct for concrete and abstract words. To examine this he created associated and unrelated word pairs that varied on prime and target concreteness (concrete-concrete [CC], abstract-abstract [AA], concrete-abstract [CA], and abstract-concrete [AC]). The related word pairs were equated for mean association strength. Bleasdale hypothesized that concrete and abstract words have functionally distinct lexical processes, so homogeneous word pairs (CC and AA) should show priming and heterogeneous word pairs (CA and AC) should not show priming. In Bleasdale's Experiment 3 the word pairs were presented to participants using a priming and lexical decision task. The participants were asked to respond to the target as quickly and as accurately as possible. A typical trial proceeded as follows. A prime was presented for 177 ms, an interstimulus interval (ISI) lasted for 500 ms, and then the target appeared. Bleasdale found that all pair types (AA, CC, AC, and CA) showed significant priming. Bleasdale (1987) stated that this finding could result from postlexical processes such as postlexical relatedness checking (checking the target against the prime for relatedness after target recognition). To investigate whether these findings resulted from postlexical processing, Bleasdale masked the prime and decreased the prime presentation rate in his Experiment 4 to eliminate postrecognition processes and permit only automatic processing to occur. Using the same stimuli as in his Experiment

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3, a typical trial in Bleasdale's Experiment 4 proceeded as follows. A prime was presented for 16.7 ms, there was an ISI of 32 ms, a mask appeared for 168 ms, and then the target appeared. The results of his Experiment 4 revealed significant priming for the homogeneous word pairs (AA and CC) and significant inhibition for the CA word pair condition. Bleasdale found that when prime and target word pairs were homogeneous, they primed each other; however, when prime and target word pairs were heterogeneous, they did not prime each other. Therefore, the results of his Experiment 4 imply that there are functionally distinct lexical processes for concrete and abstract words. The current research implements procedures similar to Bleasdale's (1987) in an attempt to establish whether emotion words elicit different relationships than abstract words. Concrete words were not included in this experiment, as Bleasdale has already demonstrated a distinction in processing concrete words as compared with abstract words. To do this, we constructed related and unrelated word pairs for abstract-abstract (AA), emotion-emotion (EE), abstract-emotion (AE), and emotionabstract (EA) conditions. The related word pairs were matched on mean association strength across the four pair types. The hypothesis was similar to Bleasdale's. We hypothesized that under conditions of automatic processing homogeneous word pairs (AA and EE) would yield priming and heterogeneous word pairs (AE and EA) would not, suggesting that different lexical processing occurs for emotion and abstract words. Based on previous research conducted by Bleasdale (1987) on abstract and concrete word pairs, we hypothesized that in the current study, priming would occur for the homogeneous word pairs (AA, EE) but not for the heterogeneous word pairs (AE, EA). These results would suggest that different lexical processes are involved in the coding, storage, and retrieval of abstract and emotion words. EXPERIMENT 3 METHOD et al.'s (1999) collection of Prime-targetpairsweregeneratedusingAltarriba wordassociations. each were for Twenty pairs generated the AA,EE,AE,and EA groups,for a total of 80 prime-targetpairs.The mean concretenessfor emotion wordswas 2.86 (SD= 0.32), and the mean concretenessfor abstractwordswas 3.37 (SD= 0.61). Thisdifferencewassignificant, t(79) = -7.03, p < .001.The mean = for emotion words was 3.23 (SD 0.81), and the mean imageability imageability for abstract wordswas2.8 (SD= 0.90). This differencewasalso significant,t(79) = 3.27, p < .001. The mean strengthof associationwasmatchedfor the four types
of related word pairs: AA, 13%; EE, 13%; AE, 11%; and EA, 11% (all ps > .05).

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These mean strengths are highly similar to those used by Bleasdale (1987) in his comparison of concrete and abstract words. Each target was then recombined with an unrelated prime. Additionally, 80 pronounceable word-nonword pairs, 20 pairs in each of the four conditions, were produced from the same pool as the critical items.

Participants
Eighty University at Albany students participated for fulfillment of a course requirement. Participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision and were native English speakers.

Materials and apparatus

Two lists were created, each containing 40 related pairs (10 pairs in each of the four conditions), 40 unrelated pairs (10 pairs in each of the four conditions), and 80 pronounceable word-nonword pairs. Table 4 lists sample stimuli. The unrelated word pairs in the first list and the related word pairs in the second list Table 4. Sample stimuli used in Experiment 3 Condition Related Abstract-abstract easy/hard virtue/truth wisdom/knowledge answer/response mastery/expert Emotion-emotion happy/sad delighted/thrilled affectionate/caring glad/pleased regret/remorse Abstract-emotion busy/preoccupied honor/pride chaos/crazy soft/sensitive wealth/greed Emotion-abstract aggressive/forceful zealous/over indifferent/same rage/violence confident/strong Unrelated wide/hard struggle/truth turn/knowledge effort/response beside/expert interested/sad neglected/thrilled indecisive/caring isolated/pleased bewildered/remorse apart/preoccupied join/pride protected/crazy grow/sensitive scheme/greed puzzled/forceful terrible/over selfish/same sentimental/violence hopeless/strong

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appeared in the same serial position across the two lists. The stimuli within the lists were randomized with the exception that no more than three consecutive word pairs were of the same word pair condition. Each prime word and each target word was presented only once within a list. The practice trial conditions were proportionally equivalent to those of the experimental trials. This experiment was created using Micro Experimental Laboratory (MEL) psychology software (Schneider, 1988, 1990). The experiment was presented on a crystal scan monitor interfaced with an IBM-PCcomputer. All primes and targets were presented in white lowercase letters on a black background.

Procedure
Participants read instructions indicating that they would be participating in a lexical decision task in which a fixation point, a prime, a mask, and a target would appear. Their task was to indicate whether the target was a word or a nonword by pressing either the "m"key or the "z"key, respectively. Participants were informed that both speed and accuracy were important. A typical trial proceeded as follows. First, a fixation point ("+") appeared in the center of the computer screen for 1,500 ms as a pretrial warning. Next, a prime word appeared in the center of the screen for 125 ms. Immediately after the prime, a mask of "#"s appeared. The mask appeared in the center of the screen for 50 ms and was matched in length to the longest word in the experiment. Immediately after the presentation of the mask a target appeared for 1,500 ms. The participants had 2,000 ms to indicate whether the target was a word or a nonword before the next trial began. Participants were shown 160 experimental trials and were given a brief rest period between the first and second block. A typical session lasted approximately 25 min.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Participant reaction times were excluded from the analysis if they were less than 200 ms or greater than 1,500 ms. A 2 (prime) x 2 (target) x 2 (relationship) repeated-measures analysis of variance was conducted. There was a significant prime x target x relationship interaction, F (1, 79) = 5.41, MSE= 4,117.71, p < .05. There was also a significant main effect of target, F(1, 79) = 15.85, MSE= 3,715.94, p < .001 and a significant main effect of relationship, F(1, 79) = 26.98, MSE= 5,157.97, p < .001. Emotion words were responded to more slowly than abstract words (755 ms vs. 737 ms). Also, unrelated word pairs resulted in longer response latencies than related word pairs (762 ms vs. 732 ms). Planned comparisons revealed significant facilitation and overall priming in the homogeneous word pair conditions (AA and EE), and in one of the heterogeneous word pair conditions (AE; ps < .05). However, no significant priming was found in the other heterogeneous word pair condition (EA; p > .05). Table 5 displays the mean reaction times, priming, and percentage error for Experiment 3.

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Table 5. Experiment 3 mean reaction times (ms), priming, and percentage error Prime-target relationship Related Unrelated Priming effect M Error M Error M Error M Error *p < .05. Abstract-abstract 754 2.0% Emotion-emotion 740 776 3.0% 4.0% Emotion-abstract 738 749 3.0% 2.0% Abstract-emotion 743 767 2.0% 3.0% 708 2.0% +46*

+36*

+11

+24*

Error analysis A 2 (prime) x 2 (target) x 2 (relationship) analysis of variance on the error data was conducted. There was a main effect of target, F(1, 79) = 8.11, MSE= 0.00, p < .01. There were more errors when the targets were
emotion words (M = 0.03) than when the targets were abstract words (M 0.02). Further investigation showed that there were no speed-accuracy
=

trade-offs because participants were both slower to respond and less accurate for word pairs with emotion targets. Therefore, no further analyses on the error data were conducted. Because the prime was constrained in this experiment (i.e., a mask was used), these findings suggest that the significant facilitation and overall priming in the homogeneous word pair conditions reflects automatic processing rather than strategic processing. However, the lack of priming for the heterogeneous word pair condition (EA) suggests that asymmetric priming is occurring. There are several ways in which these results can be interpreted. It may be that abstract and emotion words possess different attributes or are mentally represented differently. GENERAL DISCUSSION The experiments presented here were designed to investigate whether emotion words possess distinct attributes. Specifically, Experiment 1 demonstrated that emotion words are more readily recalled from a list

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containing emotion, abstract, and concrete words that were matched in frequency and length. Aspects of those emotion words produced greater memorability in later recall, as compared with the other two word types. Experiment 2 further examined the nature of emotion words in memory by comparing the ratings of the three word types (abstract, concrete, and emotion) on concreteness, imageability, and context availability scales. A significant interaction between scale type and word type was observed, indicating that there is a difference between all three word types on each of the three scales. Emotion words were rated the lowest on the concreteness scale. As hypothesized, emotion words were rated as being easier to image and as being easier to access an appropriate context for than abstractwords. Emotion words were rated lower than concrete words on the imageability and context availability scales. These results indicate that although emotion words have often been included in the abstract stimuli in the literature, when rated on concreteness, imageability, and context availability they are different from abstract and concrete words. A priming paradigm was used in Experiment 3 to investigate the mental representation of emotion words. Homogeneous (AA and EE) and heterogeneous (AE and EA) word pair conditions were presented to participants in a lexical decision task. The results revealed a significant 2 (prime) x 2 (target) x 2 (relationship) interaction and significant priming in the homogeneous word pairs (AA and EE) and in the heterogeneous AE word pair condition. These results resemble those found in Bleasdale's (1987) Experiment 3 for concrete and abstract words. These results may be explained by differences in the lexical processing or mental representation of abstract and emotion words. It may be that because abstract and emotion words differ significantly on concreteness, imageability, and context availability, these factors influence how these two word types are processed. An explanation of how abstract and concrete words may be processed differently was explored by Kroll and Merves (1986). Kroll and Merves (1986) conducted a series of experiments to compare the speed and accuracy of lexical decisions for concrete and abstract nouns. In Kroll and Merves's Experiment 3 participants were presented with either two blocks of concrete nouns preceding two blocks of abstract nouns or two blocks of abstract nouns preceding two blocks of concrete nouns. Each block included 25 nouns and 25 pseudoword distractors. The results of Experiment 3 revealed that the order of presentation influenced the speed and accuracy of lexical decisions. When abstract nouns were preceded by concrete nouns (CA), the time to judge abstract nouns was significantly shorter than the time to judge concrete nouns. When concrete nouns were preceded by abstract nouns (AC), the time to judge the abstract nouns was slightly but not significantly shorter than the time to

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judge the concrete nouns. Kroll and Merves provided several possible explanations for these results. One explanation was that the opportunity to process the nouns in separate blocks led to a change in response strategy. Rather than responding to whether the stimulus was a real word or a pseudoword, the participants were responding to whether the stimuli had perceptual referents. Kroll and Merves later dismissed this explanation after analyzing the recall data and finding no residual concreteness effects. Is it not possible that words are being processed differently regardless of whether concreteness effects are present? For example, if concrete words are processed first, participants may adopt a perceptual referent response strategy that will aid in accurate responses. However, when the abstract blocks are presented after the presentation of the concrete blocks, the perceptual referent response strategy is not useful for responding to the abstract stimuli, so recognition is negatively affected. Conversely, if abstract words are presented first, they may be processed by a verbal representation response strategy that is suitable for the concrete blocks that follow. In this example only one type of processing is used for each word type; therefore, the lack of concreteness effects should not be of any concern. Could it be that presentation order also influences the processing of emotion and abstract primes and targets? It is plausible that participants are adopting a perceptual referent (or a contextual information) implicit response strategy when emotion primes are presented. This strategy is suitable for processing subsequent emotion targets but not subsequent abstract targets. When abstract targets are preceded by emotion primes, a suitable response strategy is not available, so recognition is adversely affected. It is important to note here that Experiment 2 illustrated that emotion words are rated significantly higher than abstract words on both imageability and context availabilityscales. This explanation can account for the results of Experiment 3. In Experiment 3 the abstract-emotion word pair condition showed significant priming, whereas the emotionabstract word pair condition did not. This may have occurred because the strategy used for processing abstract words is suitable for processing subsequent emotion words, but the strategy adopted for processing emotion words is not suitable for processing subsequent abstract words. A second way of explaining the results obtained in Experiment 3 focuses on the representation of emotion words in a semantic network model. According to research on the semantic representation of concepts, both the strength and the number of paths associated with a concept are important in the retrieval of information (Anderson, 1974; Collins & Loftus, 1975; de Groot, 1989). When a person is presented with a stimulus, the source concept, activation spreads from it to concepts associated with it. However, there is a limitation on the amount of activa-

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tion that can be spread from a source. Anderson (1974) found that the more paths are associated with a source concept, the more difficult it is to retrieve the information along any one of these paths. The stronger the path between the source node and an associated concept, the more activation the associated concept receives from the source node and subsequently the easier it is to retrieve information along this path. In Experiment 3 the strength of the word pairs was held constant. However, it is possible that emotion words have more paths than abstract words. Emotion words may have more synonyms and antonyms than abstract words. For example, the word happyhas synonyms such as delighted, pleased,ecstatic,and glad and an antonym sad. An abstract word such as hour does not have as many synonyms and antonyms. Additionally, emotion words are rated higher than abstract words on imageability and context availability.The higher rating on context availabilitymay indicate that emotion words are associated with more contexts than abstractwords. The number of paths departing from a concept node for concrete, abstract, and emotion words was investigated in a normative study conducted by the authors (Altarriba et al., 1999). In this study, participants were instructed to write beside a stimulus word the first word that came to mind that was meaningfully related to the stimulus word. The number of associations generated for each stimulus was tabulated. The mean number of associations for each word type was then calculated. On average, emotion words had the greatest number of associations (M = 23.48), followed by abstract words (M= 21.40) and then concrete words (M= 17.34). Planned comparisons revealed that the mean number of associations for all of the word types were significantly different from each other (all ps < .05). These results are consistent with the aforementioned interpretation of the observed priming effects. Although there was no intention to directly test either the hierarchical model of emotions (Shaver et al., 1987) or the circumplex model of emotions (Russell, 1980, 1989), the results of Experiment 3 do not support the predictions of either model. The hierarchical model predicts that words in a cluster should prime each other more than words across clusters. The circumplex model predicts that emotion words stored closer together should show more priming than words stored further apart. Both the hierarchical and the circumplex model would predict that the emotion words and delighted and sad would show more priming than the words happy happy because happyand delighted are located much closer (and in the same subordinate level in the subcategory labeled cheerfulness) than happy and sad are located in hierarchical model (which may even separate clusters). The that there words and sad beshould be no priming for the predict happy cause the word happyis located in a subordinate category in a different cluster than the word sad, and the word happyis on the positive side of the multilevel hierarchy,whereas the word sad is on the negative side. Because

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priming occurs for antonyms (as was observed in Experiment 3), a semantic network model of emotion appears to be more useful in the representation of emotion than either of the other two models. The semantic network model predicts facilitation for emotion words that are highly associated regardless of where in the hierarchical model they are located and their and high-low arousal dimenposition on the pleasantness-unpleasantness sions of the circumplex model. In conclusion, the present data show that emotion words are more memorable and more readily recalled than concrete and abstract words. The results also indicate that the concepts represented by emotion words activate different levels of concreteness, imageability, and context availability relative to both abstract and concrete words. Specifically, the results indicate that concepts represented by emotion words are more imageable and are easier to think of a context for than abstract words but are less concrete than abstract words. They are less imageable, less concrete, and less likely to activate a context than concrete words. Additionally, when operating under automatic lexical processing, emotion words and abstract words prime associated words of the same type (AA and EE), and abstract words prime emotion words (AE), but emotion words do not prime abstract words (EA). These results are consistent with the predictions of the semantic activation model and are inconsistent with the predictions of the circumplex and hierarchical network models. Taken together, these results indicate that the concepts represented by emotion words are characteristically different from and activate different relationships than abstract words. Notes We would like to thank Allyse Scher for her assistance with data collection. We are also grateful for the comments and suggestions ofJames H. Neely and Douglas L. Nelson on an earlier version of this manuscript. Portions of this paper were presented at the 37th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Chicago, IL. This work was funded through a faculty research award granted to J.A., and portions of these data were submitted in partial fulfillment of the master of arts degree in psychology by L.M.B. Correspondence about this article should be sent toJeanette Altarriba,Department of Psychology, SS 369, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY 12222 (e-mail:ja087@albany.edu). Received for publication April 4, 2003; revision received September 1, 2003. References Altarriba,J., Bauer, L. M., & Benvenuto, C. (1999). Concreteness, context-availability, and imageability ratings and word associations for abstract, concrete, and emotion words. BehaviorResearch 31, Methods,Instruments,& Computers, 578-602.

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