Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci (2015) 15:5568
DOI 10.3758/s13415-014-0315-6
The dynamic influence of emotional words on sentence processing
Jinfeng Ding & Lin Wang & Yufang Yang
Published online: 12 August 2014
# Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2014
Abstract In the present study, we aimed to examine how the
emotionality of words influences online sentence process-
ingspecifically, the influence of emotional words on the
processing of following words in sentences. We manipulated
the emotionality of verbs as well as the orthographic correct-
ness of their following (neutral) object nouns, so that the
orthographic violation of the (neutral) nouns occurred in either
emotional or neutral sentences. Event-related potentials
(ERPs) were recorded to both the nouns and the verbs. We
found that the orthographic violation of the nouns elicited a P2
and an N400 effect in the emotionally neutral sentences, but
an LPC effect in the emotionally charged sentences. We also
found that the emotional verbs elicited a larger N1, a larger P2,
and a larger N400 than did the neutral verbs. The ERP results
suggest that emotional words capture more attention than
neutral words, which further affects early orthographic analy-
sis of the following words. Our findings demonstrate a dy-
namic influence of emotional words on sentence processing.
Keywords Emotionality . Orthographic processing .
Language comprehension . ERP
Language can be used to express and elicit emotion during
communication. Generally, emotion is characterized along
two dimensions: valence (pleasant vs. unpleasant) and arousal
(arousing vs. calm; Russell, 1980). Very pleasant or unpleas-
ant stimuli are usually highly arousing. In the present study,
we used emotionality, represented as both valence and arousal,
J. Ding : L. Wang (*) : Y. Yang (*)
Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chaoyang District, Lincui Road 16,
Beijing 100101, China
e-mail: wangl@psych.ac.cn
e-mail: yangyf@psych.ac.cn
J. Ding
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
to refer to the emotional manipulation of the words. Both
positive and negative words were taken as emotional words.
The privileged status of emotional words has been extensively
explored in behavioral studies (for a review, see Vuilleumier
& Huang, 2009). Recently, the use of event-related potentials
(ERPs) has led to considerable progress in our understanding
of emotional words processing. ERP is a technique used for
studying the time course of brain activities in response to
certain stimuli. It includes several components, and the differ-
ent components reflect different cognitive processes.
Most ERP studies on emotional language processing have
used isolated emotional words as stimuli. These studies have
compared the ERP responses to emotional and neutral words
in different tasks (for reviews, see Citron, 2012; Kissler,
Assadollahi, & Herbert, 2006). Some early ERP components,
such as the P1, N1, P2, and early posterior negativity (EPN),
were found to be larger in response to emotional words.
Larger P1s/N1s for emotional than for neutral words have
been reported, which interacted with word frequency (Scott,
ODonnell, Leuthold, & Sereno, 2009). These effects might
be attributed to the top-down signals imposed by the amyg-
dala on sensory cortex (Vuilleumier, 2005) and indicate that
the emotionality of words affects very early visual perception
and attention allocation. The P2 and EPN effects have similar
temporal latencies and are both taken as a reflection of
automatic attention orientation to emotional stimuli during
early stages of meaning encoding. In addition, Kanske and
Kotz (2007) reported an N400 effect, indicating facilitated
semantic processing of emotional relative to neutral words.
Moreover, a late positive complex (LPC) difference was found
in response to emotionality, reflected by the larger amplitudes
for emotional words (Carreti et al., 2008; Fischler & Bradley,
2006; Kissler, Herbert, Winkler, & Junghofer, 2009; Schacht
& Sommer, 2009b), and the direction of the effect has varied
in different studies. Larger amplitudes for positive than for
negative and neutral words (Herbert, Junghofer, & Kissler,
2008; Herbert, Kissler, Junghfer, Peyk, & Rockstroh, 2006;
Kissler et al., 2009) or for negative than for neutral words
56
(Hofmann, Kuchinke, Tamm, V, & Jacobs, 2009; Schacht &
Sommer, 2009a) have been reported for this component.
Overall, the LPC effect reflects sustained elaborate processing
of the emotionally salient stimuli, and it is influenced by
stimulus properties (e.g., lexical category, word frequency,
or word length) and tasks. Another ERP component, the
P600, is similar to the LPC in terms of latency and topograph-
ical distribution. They both start approximately 500 ms after
critical-word onset and have a central-posterior scalp distribu-
tion. The P600 effect has been found in response to syntactic,
semantic, or orthographic violations and has been associated
with reanalysis processing. The emotional LPC effect has
been supposed to belong to the P300 family, which reflects a
reevaluation of the stimulus (Citron, 2012; Holt, Lynn, &
Kuperberg, 2009). However, it remains controversial whether
the P600 belongs to the P300 family (Coulson, King, &
Kutas, 1998; Frisch, Kotz, von Cramon, & Friederici, 2003;
Osterhout & Hagoort, 1999; Schacht, Sommer, Shmuilovich,
Martenz, & Martn-Loeches, 2014). It should be noted that
the EPN and LPC have been robustly responsive to emotional
features across these studies that have used isolated emotional
words as stimuli.
All of the above-mentioned studies have used isolated
words as stimuli. When the emotional words have been pre-
sented in sentence or discourse contexts, different patterns of
ERP effects have been reported. For instance, Holt et al.
(2009) found larger N400s for emotional than for neutral
words, indicating that the emotional words were difficult to
integrate into neutral contexts. However, De Pascalis, Arwari,
DAntuono, and Cacace (2009), Martn-Loeches et al. (2012),
and L. Wang, Bastiaansen, Yang, and Hagoort (2013) reported
smaller N400s for positive than for negative words, indicating
facilitated semantic integration of pleasant as compared to
unpleasant words, probably because healthy people are more
likely to expect pleasant information than to expect unpleasant
information (Kanske & Kotz, 2007). In addition to the N400
effect, a larger late positivity was found for negative than for
neutral words (Bayer, Sommer, & Schacht, 2010) or for
emotional words than for neutral words (Delaney-Busch &
Kuperberg, 2013; Holt et al., 2009,in their Exp. 1, emotion
evaluation). However, a negativity bias, reflected by a larger
LPC for negative than for positive and neutral words, was also
revealed (Delaney-Busch & Kuperberg, 2013; Fields &
Kuperberg, 2012; Holt et al., 2009). All together, the late
positive effect might reflect a reallocation of attentional re-
sources to reevaluate the emotional words (Hajcak, Weinberg,
MacNamara, & Foti, 2012) for further integration, and it
might be more sensitive to emotional valence (Bayer et al.,
2010). A few studies have also reported early ERP effects
(such as N1/P2) that reflect a very rapid establishment of
emotional expectations (Len, Daz, de Vega, & Hernndez, priority information. The priority of information can be deter-
2010) or enhanced perceptual processing of emotional words
(L. Wang et al., 2013). The heterogeneity of the ERP effects
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci (2015) 15:5568
for emotional words might result from the nature of the
preceding contexts (e.g., the length of the preceding context:
Len et al. [using long story contexts] vs. Fields & Kuperberg
[using short sentences] vs. Martn-Loeches et al. [using a few
words]) and tasks (e.g., Holt et al. [using explicit emotion
classification] vs. De Pascalis et al. [using correctness judg-
ment] vs. Wang et al. [using reading for comprehension]).
Therefore, relative to neutral words, emotional words ob-
tain enhanced processing both in isolation and in sentence
contexts, as indicated by increased perceptual processing,
deeper semantic analysis, and more elaborate emotion evalu-
ation (as suggested by the above-mentioned ERP effects). The
enhanced processing of emotional words also results in supe-
rior memory of emotional relative to neutral information
(Conway et al., 1994; Doerksen & Shimamura, 2001;
Kensinger, Brierley, Medford, Growdon, & Corkin, 2002;
Kensinger & Corkin, 2003; Maratos, Allan, & Rugg, 2000;
Phelps, LaBar, & Spencer, 1997). Moreover, the emotional
effect on memory was not restricted to the emotional infor-
mation itself, but extended to its accompanying or following
information. There is debate as to whether emotionality en-
hances or impairs accompanying neutral information process-
ing. The enhancement effect is explained on the basis of
priority-binding theory, in which emotion-linked stimuli are
given processing priority (MacKay et al., 2004). According to
this theory, neutral information co-occurring with emotional
information will be better processed and memorized.
Evidence has come from studies that showed superior mem-
ory for the color (Doerksen & Shimamura, 2001; Kensinger &
Corkin, 2003) and spatial location (MacKay & Ahmetzanov,
2005) of emotional information relative to neutral informa-
tion, as well as for the neutral words preceding or following
emotional words relative to neutral words in the rest of the
contexts (Brierley, Medford, Shaw, & David, 2007; Guillet &
Arndt, 2009; Kensinger et al., 2002; Medford et al., 2005). On
the contrary, the impairment effect is explained according to
the attention-narrowing hypothesis (Christianson, 1992;
Easterbrook, 1959), which implies superior memory for emo-
tional information at the expense of neutral information in the
same contexts or scenes. For instance, MacKay et al. (2004)
found reduced recall of neutral words when the neutral words
followed taboo words relative to when they followed neutral
words. Similarly, Hadley and MacKay (2006) found that
neutral words were recalled worse in a mixed list of neutral
and taboo words than in a pure list of neutral words. Mather
and Sutherland (2011) outlined an arousal-biased competition
(ABC) theory to explain the contradictions in the emotional
memory studies. The ABC theory proposes that emotional
arousal makes high-priority information easier to be perceived
and more memorable, but reduces the processing of low-
mined by both bottom-up perceptual salience and top-down
factors such as goal relevance and expectations. Therefore, the
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci (2015) 15:5568
effect of emotionality on the memory of accompanying neu-
tral information could be attributed to the priority of the
neutral information, which might be determined by the rela-
tionship between the emotional and neutral information.
When neutral words were paired or presented with emotional
words in succession, their processing priority was low, due to
the lack of bottom-up or top-down enhancement. However,
when the neutral and emotional words appeared in the same
sentence, the neutral word obtained high processing priority,
due to its close semantic relatedness with the emotional word.
In the present study, we further explored the influence of
emotional words on the memory of their following neutral
words when they were presented in the same argument
structure.
In addition to the memory effect, we were also interested in
the influence of emotional words on the online encoding of
concurrent neutral words. It has been shown that the memory
trace is generally related to the depth of information analysis
(Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Craik & Tulving, 1975). In addition,
emotional words affect the memory of concurrent neutral
words. A logical question, then, is how the emotionality of
words affects the online processing of their subsequent neutral
words. That is to say, do the emotional words only obtain
privileged processing themselves, or will the emotional effect
spill over into the online processing of their following
information?
Hinojosa, Mndez-Brtolo, and Pozo (2012) investigated
the influence of emotional words on the processing of the
following neutral words in a priming study. They reported
larger amplitudes in the N1 and LPC components for the
neutral words preceded by highly arousing positive words,
as compared with those preceded by less arousing positive
words. The findings suggest that the arousal of emotional
words influences the allocation of attentional resources at
early perceptual processing and the postlexical analysis of
the subsequent neutral words. In order to examine how emo-
tional context modulates the semantic and syntactic process-
ing of following words, Jimenez-Ortega et al. (2012) present-
ed participants with emotional or neutral discourses, which
were followed by sentences that contained semantic or syn-
tactic violations. They found no modulation of emotional
context on the following semantic integration of the words,
as indicated by similar N400 and P600 effects in response to
semantic violations following the emotional and the neutral
contexts. However, they found a modulation of emotional
context on the syntactic processing of the following words.
The syntactic violations elicited a left anterior negativity
(LAN) and a P600 effect in the emotional context, but only
a P600 effect in the neutral context. The authors therefore
concluded that the emotional discourses induced different
emotional states (i.e., arousal levels), which led to modula-
tions of language processing. However, the emotional states
induced by the emotional discourses might differ from those
57
induced by single emotional words, because the processing of
emotional discourse occurs on a relatively large time scale.
Therefore, it remains unclear whether emotion conveyed by
single emotional words would modulate the processing of
following information in the same sentences. In addition, the
orthographic analysis of words, which serves as the basis of
semantic and syntactic analysis in written language compre-
hension, relates to the perceptual analysis of words. It might
be modulated differently from other levels of language pro-
cessing (such as semantic and syntactic levels) by emotional
context.
In the present study, we aimed to examine the dynamic
influence of emotional words on sentence processing. That is,
how does the emotionality of words influence the online
processing and offline retrieval of the following neutral words
in the same sentences, and how are the emotional words
themselves processed online and retrieved offline? Previous
studies (e.g., Delaney-Busch & Kuperberg, 2013; Kissler
et al., 2009; Martn-Loeches et al., 2012) have shown that
emotional valence affects the processing of emotional words
both in isolation and in a context. However, little is known
about whether it also plays a role in modulating the processing
of the following words. The present study was designed as
exploratory research to investigate the influence of emotional
words on the processing of the neutral words that followed in
the same sentences. We manipulated the emotionality of the
verbs and the orthographic correctness of their directly follow-
ed nouns. We did not include Emotional Valence as a factor,
due to the difficulty of matching words on different word
properties (such as arousal, frequency, concreteness, and
imageability). In the attentional blink and priming paradigms,
individual words are presented in sequence. In contrast, the
verbs and nouns in the present study were in the same argu-
ment structure, which might increase the influence of the
verbs emotionality on the following nouns. Therefore, the
emotionality of the contexts was manipulated by using emo-
tional (including positive and negative) or neutral verbs in the
sentences. Meanwhile, the orthographic correctness of the
(neutral) object nouns following the verbs was manipulated
by changing strokes or radicals in a subtle way (e.g., to change
the Chinese characters to ). An ERP component,
the P2component, has been related to early orthographic anal-
ysis (Barnea & Breznitz, 1998; Luck & Hillyard, 1994;
Sereno, Rayner, & Posner, 1998). Also, the violation of or-
thographic features was found to elicit P2 and N400 effects
(Liu, Jin, Qing, & Wang, 2011; Meng, Tian, Jian, & Zhou,
2007) or a late positive effect (Laszlo & Federmeier, 2009;
Vissers, Chwilla, & Kolk, 2006). We compared the ERPs
elicited by orthographically violated and correct words in the
emotional and neutral verb contexts separately. When the
currently processed information is salient, more attentional
resources will be devoted to such information, leading to a
boosted ERP effect for the emotional verbs. Moreover,
58
according to different theories, emotional words influence
different processing stages of neutral words. According to
the priority-binding theory, the neutral nouns following emo-
tional verbs should obtain processing priority so that the
orthographic and lexico-semantic features of the neutral words
could be processed effectively, leading to a P2 effect and an
N400 effect in response to the orthographic violations.
According to the attention-narrowing hypothesis, on the other
hand, the following neutral nouns should receive limited
attentional resources, since more resources should be captured
by the preceding emotional verbs. This would result in de-
layed or impaired orthographic analysis, leading to a late ERP
effect (e.g., a late positive effect) or even the absence of one.
We also compared the ERPs elicited by emotional and neutral
verbs, from which we would expect both early (e.g., N1/P2)
and late (e.g., N400/LPC) ERP effects if the emotional words
automatically capture attention at early processing stages and
are integrated into contexts differently from neutral informa-
tion. In addition, we asked participants to recognize the emo-
tional and neutral verbs, as well as the following neutral
nouns, in an incidental memory task presented after the ERP
measures were collected. On the basis of previous findings
(e.g., Brierley et al., 2007; Guillet & Arndt, 2009; Hadley &
MacKay, 2006; MacKay et al., 2004), we expected to find a
higher accuracy for emotional verbs and different accuracies
for nouns following neutral and emotional verbs.
Method
Participants
A group of 22 university students (mean age 22 years, range
1926; 12 males, ten females) participated in the experiment
as paid volunteers. All were right-handed native Chinese
speakers with normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity.
They all reported no dyslexia or neurological impairment,
and they read and signed a written consent form. The data of
two participants (both males) were excluded because of poor
signal-to-noise ratios. The analysis reported here was per-
formed on the data from 20 participants (mean age 22 years,
range 1926; 10 males, 10 females).
Materials
We selected 200 emotional verbs (including 100 positive and
100 negative verbs), 200 neutral verbs, and 200 neutral nouns,
which were partly from the Chinese Affective Words System
(CAWS; Y. Wang, Zhou, & Luo, 2008). Then we asked 20
participants (who did not participate in the electroencephalog-
raphy [EEG] experiment; mean age 24 years, range 1928;
nine males, 11 females) to rate the verbs and nouns for
valence, arousal, concreteness, and imageability using
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci (2015) 15:5568
seven-point Likert scales (with 7 indicating the most positive,
most arousing, most concrete, and most imageable).
Furthermore, we checked the frequency of the critical verbs
(Cai & Brysbaert, 2010). We selected the words that were also
included in the CAWS and compared the in-house valence and
arousal ratings with the ratings in the CAWS. The results
showed that the ratings in the pretests were highly correlated
with those in the CAWS for both valence and arousal (r=.98,
p<.001, and r=.86, p<.001, respectively, for valence and
arousal), indicating that the test of 20 participants provided
us with reliable rating results. On the basis of the rating results,
we selected positive verbs whose valence ratings were higher
than 4, and negative verbs whose valence ratings were lower
than 3.8. Both the positive and the negative verbs were highly
arousing [mean (SD)=4.23 (0.80)]. For the neutral verbs, we
selected verbs whose valence ratings were around 4 and
whose arousal ratings were lower than 3.6 [mean (SD)=2.69
(0.32)].
Then we constructed sentence pairs based on the selected
verbs and nouns. All of the sentences had the same structure,
subject + verb + object + other words, with the previously
selected verbs serving as verbs and the previously chosen
nouns serving as objects. The critical object nouns never
appeared at the ends of the sentences. In each sentence pair,
the two sentences only differed in the verbs, which were either
emotional or neutral. The objects of the sentences in each
sentence pair were the same. We took the verbs and the
following nouns (i.e., the objects) as our critical words.
Another 20 participants (mean age 22 years, range 1827;
eight males, 12 females) rated the sentences plausibility,
emotional valence, arousal, and imageability on seven-point
Likert scales (with 7 indicating the most plausible, most
positive, most arousing, and most imageable). On the basis
of the plausibility ratings, we chose 160 sentence pairs that
were relatively plausible [means (SDs)=4.50 (0.61) and 4.53
(0.63), respectively, for the emotional and neutral sentences].
In all, 84 out of the 160 emotional sentences contained neg-
ative verbs. Then we created an orthographically violated
condition by changing strokes or radicals from the critical
nouns in all of the sentence pairs. The alterations of strokes
or radicals rendered the character unpronounceable and mean-
ingless. However, the orthographically violated words looked
very similar to the correct ones and conformed to the rules of
Chinese orthography. Therefore, the alterations of strokes and
radicals should be perceived as repairable. A within-subjects
design was created with a combination of two variables
emotionality of the verbs (emotional, neutral) and orthograph-
ic correctness of the nouns (correct, violated)which created
four conditions: emotionalcorrect, emotionalviolated, neu-
tralcorrect, and neutralviolated. Table 1 presents examples
of the experimental stimuli.
Table 2 presents the rating results for the selected verbs and
sentences. We used paired-samples t tests to analyze the
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci (2015) 15:5568 59

Table 1 Examples of the experimental stimuli

The examples were originally in Chinese. The critical verbs are in boldface, and the critical object nouns are underlined

differences between the emotional and neutral verbs and for the emotional and neutral conditions; t(159)=0.87,
sentences separately for each variable. Since we were inter- p=.388].
ested in the emotionality effect (including valence and arous-
al), the positive and negative conditions were collapsed into Procedure
one emotional condition in the tests. The results showed that
the emotional and neutral verbs were significantly different in Participants were seated comfortably in front of a computer
valence and arousal, but not in frequency, concreteness, and screen. All of the words were shown in white on a black
imageability. In addition, the emotional and neutral sentences background in Song typeface. The words subtended visual
were significantly different in valence and arousal, but not in angles of 4.58 and 6.87, respectively, for the compound
plausibility and imageability. two-character and compound three-character words. A trial
In the end, we also measured the cloze probabilities of the started with a 300-ms fixation cross in the center of the screen.
neutral nouns in the emotional and neutral sentence contexts. Each word of the sentence was presented for 300 ms and was
In the cloze probability test, another 20 participants (mean age followed by a 200-ms blank screen. Then, 1,000 ms after the
21 years, range 1825; ten males, ten females) were asked to presentation of the last word, the next trial began. Participants
complete the sentences, which were presented up to where the were told that there would be a comprehension test after the
critical neutral nouns would appear. The results showed that experiment, so they needed to read and comprehend the
the critical neutral nouns showed equally low cloze probabil- sentences carefully.
ities between the emotional and neutral conditions [means After the presentation of all sentences, an incidental recog-
(SDs)=1.06 % (3.09 %) and 1.44 % (4.86 %), respectively, nition test was presented. In this test, we presented 80 emo-
tional verbs, 80 neutral verbs, as well as 80 neutral ortho-
graphically correct nouns that were shown in the sentences. In
Table 2 Statistical analysis results for critical verbs and sentences order to balance the ratio of old and new words, we also added
240 new words in the test. These were 80 emotional verbs, 80
Item Emotional Neutral t
Mean (SD) Mean (SD) neutral verbs, and 80 neutral nouns. The distractor verbs were
significantly different in valence [means (SDs)=4.85 (0.48),
Positive verb valence 4.92 (0.67) 4.06 (0.24) 10.97*** 4.13 (0.20), and 3.11 (0.56), respectively, for the positive,
Negative verb valence 2.42 (0.67) 4.00 (0.25) 21.08*** neutral, and negative distractor new verbs; F(2, 157) =
Verb arousal 4.23 (0.80) 2.69 (0.32) 24.54*** 196.69, p<.001; post hoc analysis ps<.001] and arousal
Verb frequency 2.48 (0.55) 2.54 (0.72) 0.77 [means (SDs)=4.06 (0.51) and 3.19 (0.27), respectively, for
Verb concreteness 3.28 (0.55) 3.35 (0.44) 1.47 the emotional and neutral distractor new verbs; F(1, 158)=
Verb imageability 3.95 (0.95) 3.85 (0.80) 1.20 183.60, p<.001]. In contrast, the new nouns were neutral with
Sentence plausibility 4.50 (0.61) 4.53 (0.63) 0.50 low arousal [means (SDs)=4.24 (0.29) and 3.01 (0.30), re-
Positive sentence valence 4.43 (0.47) 4.29 (0.46) 2.43* spectively, for the valence and arousal of the distractor new
Negative sentence valence 3.28 (0.62) 4.09 (0.38) 12.56*** nouns]. In the recognition task, a trial began with a 300-ms
Sentence arousal 4.07 (0.54) 3.67 (0.46) 8.45*** fixation cross followed by a word presented for 1,000 ms.
Sentence imageability 4.66 (0.68) 4.61 (0.65) 0.99 After the critical word disappeared, participants were asked to
judge whether or not they had read the word in the sentences
The positive and negative verbs were taken as the emotional verbs and before by pressing the F and J keys, to indicate old and
were each paired with different neutral verbs and nouns. The last five
rows reflect ratings obtained for only correct stimuli. SD, standard devi-
new, respectively.
ation. * Significant at .05 level, ** Significant at .01 level, *** Significant at We used a Latin square design to divide the 160 items (four
.001 level conditions per item) into four versions, with no repetition of
60
items within one version. Each version contained 160
sentences (40 sentences per condition). In addition, 80 filler
sentences were constructed to balance the positions of the
orthographically violated neutral nouns. Among the 80 fillers,
40 fillers contained orthographically violated words that were
located at either the beginning or the end part of the sentences.
Also, half of the 80 filler sentences contained emotional verbs.
These filler sentences were combined with each version of the
experimental lists. Then, the 240 sentences (160 experimental
sentences + 80 fillers) in each list were evenly divided into
four blocks, with each block containing 60 sentences.
Participants read the 240 sentences in a pseudorandom
order. No more than three sentences of the same condition
were presented in succession. In the comprehension task, each
block lasted about 4 min. In the word recognition task, the 480
recognition words (consisting of 80 critical emotional verbs,
80 critical neutral verbs, 80 critical neutral nouns, and 240
new words) were evenly divided into eight blocks, with each
block lasting about 3 min. Between two blocks, there was a 2-
to 3-min break. The whole experiment took about one and a
half hours, including the participants preparation, instruc-
tions, and a short practice of four trials.
EEG recording and preprocessing
EEG was recorded using 64 AgAgCl electrodes mounted on
an elastic cap with a sampling rate of 500 Hz. Impedances
were kept below 5 k. To monitor eye blinks and movements,
horizontal and vertical electrooculograms were recorded from
the left and right orbital rims and supra- and suborbital to the
left eye. During recording, the EEG data were referenced to
the right mastoid, and an electrode localized between the FPz
and Fz electrodes served as the ground. Since we were inter-
ested in the online processing of the neutral words following
the emotional or neutral verbs, and since the EEG signals
might get too noisy during the memory task due to the fatigue
of the participants after the preparation, practice, and compre-
hension task (around 1 h), EEG was only recorded during the
sentence comprehension task.
The EEG data were analyzed with Neuroscan 4.3 offline.
After correcting for eye blinks (Semlitsch, Anderer, Schuster,
& Presslich, 1986), a band-pass filter of 0.130 Hz (24 dB/oct
slope, half-power cutoff) was applied to the data. The EEG
data were segmented from 200 ms before to 1,000 ms after the
onset of the critical words (including both verbs and nouns).
Then, the data were baseline-corrected to the mean amplitude
from 200 ms before to the critical words onset. After an
automatic artifact rejection (80V) procedure, approximate-
ly 39 trials per condition remained. The ERPs were then re-
referenced offline to the algebraic average of two mastoids.
Finally, the averaged ERPs were computed in each condition
at each electrode for each participant.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci (2015) 15:5568
ERP data analysis
On the basis of the previous literatures (e.g., Len et al., 2010;
Scott et al., 2009; L. Wang et al., 2013) and visual inspection
of the waveforms, we chose the following time windows to
statistically analyze the effects of the critical verbs and nouns:
N1 (90170 ms), P2 (180280 ms), N400 (300500 ms), and
LPC (5001,000 ms). For the critical nouns, because the N400
time window of the critical verbs served as the baseline, the
baselines of the critical nouns might be significantly different
between the emotional and neutral conditions. In addition, the
correct and violating words might elicit different ERPs in the
early time windows (such as the P2 effect to the orthographic
violations in the neutral condition). Therefore, it was difficult
to dissociate the emotional effect of the verbs and that on the
following nouns using a poststimulus baseline. Moreover, we
had a strong a-priori hypothesis that neutral words would be
processed differently following emotional and neutral words.
Therefore, repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs)
were conducted with Orthographic Correctness (correct, vio-
lated), Laterality (left, midline, right), and Anteriority (anteri-
or, central, posterior) as within-subjects factors in the emo-
tional and neutral conditions separately. For the critical verbs,
Emotionality (emotional, neutral), Laterality (left, midline,
right), and Anteriority (anterior, central, posterior) served as
within-subjects factors. Fig. 1 shows the selected electrodes
and the division. Any (marginally) significant interactions
with emotionality or orthographic correctness were followed
by simple-effects tests. When Mauchlys test of sphericity was
significant, the GreenhouseGeisser correction was applied,
and in these cases the original degrees of freedom are reported
with corrected p values. In addition, the F values of some
nonsignificant results are shown when the comparison was
critical to our manipulation.
Results
Behavioral results
We found that the recognition accuracies of the verbs and the
nouns were significantly higher than chance level [as indicat-
ed by one-sample t tests against .50: mean (SD)=.63 (.14),
t(19)=4.26, p<.001, for the emotional verbs; mean (SD)=.66
(.17), t(19) = 4.30, p < .001, for the neutral verbs; mean
(SD)=.63 (.15), t(19)=3.97, p=.001, for the object nouns
following the emotional verbs; and mean (SD)=.59 (.14),
t(19)=2.83, p=.011, for the object nouns following the neutral
verbs], but no significant difference was apparent be-
tween the emotional and neutral verbs [t(19) = 1.69,
p = .107]. Nor was the difference between the object
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci (2015) 15:5568
Fig. 1 Electrode layout on the scalp. Nine representative electrodes,
circled with thicker lines, were selected for displaying grand average
waveforms. The electrodes chosen for the statistical analysis are grouped
into nine regions: left anterior, left central, left posterior, middle anterior,
middle central, middle posterior, right anterior, right central, and right
posterior
nouns following the emotional and neutral verbs signif-
icant [t(19)=1.52, p=.145].
ERP results
Figures 2 and 3 show the grand average waveforms elicited by
the critical nouns at nine representative electrodes (F3/C3/P3,
Fz/Cz/Pz, and F4/C4/P4, circled in Fig. 1) in the neutral and
emotional conditions, respectively. The waveforms elicited by
the emotional and neutral verbs are presented in Fig. 4. Since
the focus of the present study was the influence of emotional
words on the processing of following information, we first
present the emotionality influence on the processing of the
nouns, then that on the verbs.
Orthographic effects of the nouns in the neutral and emotional
contexts In the time window of 90170 ms, no significant
effect of orthographic correctness emerged in either the emo-
tional or the neutral condition.
In the time window of 180280 ms, we found a significant
interaction between orthographic correctness and anteriority
in the neutral condition [F(2, 38)=8.29, p=.003, p2 =.304].
Simple-effects tests showed that the orthographically violated
words elicited a smaller P2 than did the correct words over the
posterior region [F(1, 19)=9.18, p=.007, p2 =.326], but not
61
over the anterior and central regions [F(1, 19)=0.11, p=.743,
p2 =.006; F(1, 19)=1.53, p=.231, p2 =.075]. No significant
orthographic correctness effect was found in the emotional
condition.
The statistical analysis of the N400 component in the
neutral condition revealed a significant main effect of ortho-
graphic correctness [F(1, 19)=5.38, p=.032, p2 =.221],
showing a larger N400 for the orthographically violated words
than for the correct words. We also observed a significant
interaction between orthographic correctness and laterality
[F(2, 38)=3.54, p=.039, p2 =.157]. Simple-effects tests re-
vealed that the orthographically violated words elicited a
larger N400 than did the correct words over the left hemi-
sphere [F(1, 19)=5.31, p=.033, p2 =.219] and midline [F(1,
19)=6.50, p=.020, p2 =.255], but not over the right hemi-
sphere [F(1, 19)=2.86, p=.107, p2 =.131]. However, no sig-
nificant effect in response to orthographic correctness was
found in the emotional condition.
In the 500- to 1,000-ms time window, we found that the
orthographically violated words yielded a larger positivity
than did the correct words [main effect of orthographic cor-
rectness, F(1, 19)=9.79, p=.006, p2 =.340] in the emotional
condition, but not in the neutral condition [main effect of
orthographic correctness, F(1, 19) = 0.004, p = .952, p2
<.001].
Overall, in the neutral sentence contexts, the orthographi-
cally violated words elicited a smaller P2 over the posterior
region and a larger N400 over the left and middle regions (as is
shown in the scalp topographies in Fig. 2b) than did the
correct words. However, in the emotional sentence contexts,
the orthographically violated words elicited a larger LPC than
did the correct words over broad regions (as is shown in the
scalp topographies in Fig. 3b).
Emotionality effects of the verbs In the time window of 90
170 ms, we found a significant three-way interaction among
emotionality, laterality, and anteriority [F(4, 76) = 3.43,
p = .025, p2 = .153]. We then performed three two-way
ANOVAs (EmotionalityLaterality) for the anterior, central,
and posterior regions separately. Only one significant interac-
tion between the two factors was found over the anterior
region [F(2, 38)=4.99, p=.012, p2 =.208; F(2, 38)=2.00,
p=.149, p2 =.095; and F(2, 38)=0.53, p=.593, p2 =.027,
respectively, for the anterior, central, and posterior regions].
Simple-effects tests showed that the emotional verbs elicited a
larger negativity than did the neutral verbs over the left
anterior region [F(1, 19)=4.63, p=.044, p2 =.196], but
not over the middle and right anterior regions [F(1,
19) = 0.66, p = .426, p 2 = .034, and F(1, 19) = 0.01,
p=.921, p2 <.001, respectively, for the middle and right
anterior regions].
In the time window of 180280 ms, we found a significant
interaction between emotionality and anteriority [F(2, 38)=
62
Fig. 2 Orthographic correctness effects of the critical nouns in the neutral
condition. (a) Grand average event-related potential (ERP) waveforms
evoked by the critical nouns in the neutral condition at nine representative
electrodes. The solid lines represent correct words, and the dotted lines
12.46, p=.050, p2 =.187]. Simple-effects tests revealed that
the emotional verbs yielded a larger P2 than did the neutral
verbs over the anterior region [F(1, 19) =4.37, p =.050,
p2 =.187], but not over the central and posterior regions
[F(1, 19)= 1.30, p = .269, p2 = .064, and F(1, 19)= 1.01,
p=.327, p2 =.050, respectively].
In the time window of 300500 ms, we found a significant
main effect of emotionality [F(1, 19) = 11.63, p = .003,
p2 =.380], showing a larger N400 for the emotional than for
the neutral verbs. We also found a significant three-way
interaction between emotionality, laterality, and anteriority
[F(4, 76)=4.20, p=.004, p2 =.181]. The following two-way
ANOVAs revealed a significant interaction between emotion-
ality and laterality in the anterior region [F(2, 38)=5.79,
p=.013, p2 =.234; F(2, 38)=2.32, p=.112, p2 =.109; and
F(2, 38)=1.60, p=.215, p2 =.078, respectively, for the ante-
rior, central, and posterior regions]. Simple-effects tests indi-
cated that the emotional verbs yielded a larger N400 than did
the neutral verbs over the left anterior region [F(1, 19)=9.02,
p=.007, p2 =.322], but not over the middle and right anterior
regions [F(1, 19)=1.55, p=.228, p2 =.076, and F(1, 19)<
0.001, p=.960, p2 <.001]. The main effect of emotionality
and the lack of an interaction between emotionality and
laterality over the central and posterior regions suggested that
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci (2015) 15:5568
represent orthographically violated words. (b) Topographies showing the
average amplitude voltage differences between the orthographically vio-
lated and correct words
the emotional verbs yielded a larger N400 than did the neutral
verbs over bilateral central and posterior regions.
In the time window of 5001,000 ms, we did not find any
significant effect of emotionality or any other interaction.
Overall, as compared with the neutral verbs, the emotional
verbs yielded a larger N1 over the left anterior region, a larger
P2 over the anterior region, and a larger N400 over the left
anterior, bilateral central, and posterior regions (as is shown in
the scalp topographies in Fig. 4b).
Discussion
In this study, we aimed to examine the dynamic influence of
the emotionality of verbs on the orthographic analysis of their
following nouns during sentence comprehension. In
sentences, object nouns followed emotional or neutral verbs
and were orthographically correct or violated. We found that
the orthographically violated nouns elicited a smaller P2 and a
larger N400 than did the correct nouns when they followed the
neutral verbs, whereas a late positive effect (5001,000 ms)
was observed when they followed the emotional verbs. In
addition, the emotional verbs elicited larger N1s, P2s, and
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci (2015) 15:5568
Fig. 3 Orthographic correctness effect of the critical nouns in the emo-
tional condition. (a) Grand average event-related potential (ERP) wave-
forms evoked by the critical nouns in the emotional condition at nine
representative electrodes. The solid lines represent correct words, and the
N400s than did the neutral verbs. However, we found no
difference between the emotional and neutral verbs or nouns
in a subsequent incidental memory test.
Emotionality modulated the orthographic processing
of following words
In the neutral sentence contexts, the orthographically violated
words yielded a smaller P2 and a larger N400 than did the
correct words. The P2 is generally related to orthographic and
phonological information processing (Barnea & Breznitz,
1998; Luck & Hillyard, 1994; Sereno et al., 1998), whereas
the N400 is a well-established component that associates with
lexico-semantic processing (Kutas & Federmeier, 2011). Our
results are consistent with those of a previous study (Meng
et al., 2007), in which the researchers replaced the second
characters in Chinese compounds with homophones [i.e.,
(pronounced feng1jing3, meaning scene) was replaced with
(pronounced feng1jing3, no meaning)] and were able
to report both a P2 and an N400 effect. The P2 effect indicates
that the orthographic features were processed early in sentence
comprehension, whereas the N400 effect indicates that the
orthographic violation affected the lexico-semantic processing
of the violated words. Similarly, Vissers et al. (2006) and Van
de Meerendonk, Indefrey, Chwilla, and Kolk (2011) reported
63
dotted lines represent orthographically violated words. (b) Topographies
showing the average amplitude voltage differences between the ortho-
graphically violated and correct words
a larger N400 in response to pseudohomophones (e.g., bouks
vs. books). The observed P2 and N400 effects in the present
study suggest that the orthographic violation caused process-
ing difficulty at an early stage, which in turn had a conse-
quence on the lexico-semantic analysis of the words.
On the contrary, the orthographic violation elicited a late
positive effect in the emotional sentence contexts. The ab-
sence of early ERP effects in the emotional condition indicates
impaired orthographic analysis of the neutral nouns following
emotional verbs, due to limited processing resources. In the
context of the present study, the LPC effect might reflect
reanalysis of the orthographic feature. The LPC effect might
not be orthographic-specific, given that previous studies have
also found such an LPC effect in response to syntactic viola-
tions (Hagoort, Brown, & Groothusen, 1993; Osterhout &
Holcomb, 1995) and semantic violations (Kuperberg, 2007;
Nieuwland & Van Berkum, 2005). Therefore, the late positive
effect was taken as a reflection of general reanalysis of the
inputs (Vissers et al., 2006). This reprocess could occur at the
phonological, lexical, conceptual, or syntactic level.
Nevertheless, the orthographic violation elicited both a P2
and an N400 effect in the neutral condition, and these were
taken as reflecting enhanced orthographic analysis and the
increased difficulty of integrating such violating words into
sentences, respectively. However, it is important to note that
64
Fig. 4 Emotionality effects of the critical verbs (regardless of the cor-
rectness of the following nouns). (a) Grand average event-related poten-
tial (ERP) waveforms evoked by the critical verbs at nine representative
electrodes. The waveforms were averaged across the correct and violated
this interpretation does not necessarily imply that reanalysis
does not occur if the violation has caused processing difficulty
at earlier stages of orthographic processing. In agreement with
Van de Meerendonk et al. (2011), the observed effect in
response to orthographic violations could be related to the
resources available for processing the representational con-
flicts between an expected orthographically correct word and
the input of an orthographically violated word.
The distinct ERP effects evoked by the orthographic vio-
lations in the emotional and neutral contexts indicate a dy-
namic influence of the emotionality of words on the process-
ing of following words at the perceptual and lexico-semantic
levels. The results are in line with data obtained from a well-
known phenomenon called the attentional blink (AB). The
AB is a phenomenon in which the report accuracy of the
second target is low when it is presented less than 500 ms
after the first target in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP)
streams. In particular, the deficit of report accuracy to the
second target was bigger when the first target was a high-
arousing emotional word relative to neutral word (Arnell,
Killman, & Fijavz, 2004; Barnard, Ramponi, Battye, &
Mackintosh, 2005; Mathewson, Arnell, & Mansfield, 2008),
even when these high-arousing emotional words served as
distracters prior to the target (Arnell, Killman, & Fijavz,
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci (2015) 15:5568
conditions. The solid lines represent emotional verbs, and the dotted lines
represent neutral verbs. (b) Topographies showing the average amplitude
voltage differences between the emotional and neutral verbs
2007; Barnard et al., 2005). Using the AB paradigm,
Batterink, Karns, Yamada, and Neville (2010) found that
semantically unrelated and syntactically incorrect targets with-
in the AB period elicited a reduced and no effect, respectively.
A resource depletion account states that resources should in
large part be allocated to the first target at the expense of the
second (Di Lollo, Kawahara, Ghorashi, & Enns, 2005;
Shapiro, Raymond, & Arnell, 1994; Ward, Duncan, &
Shapiro, 1996). In the present study, the emotional words
captured and held more attentional resources than did the
neutral words. When the orthographic violations occurred
following the emotional words, the attentional resources oc-
cupied by the previous emotional words cannot be released
immediately, so orthographic analysis was diminished (as
indicated by the absence of the early ERP effects) and led to
a reanalysis of the orthographic features in the later time
window (as indicated by the LPC effect).
In the present study, the sentences were presented in a
word-by-word manner with an interstimulus interval of
200 ms. The short interstimulus interval may have resulted
in our lack of ERP effects of orthographic correctness.
However, the absence of an early effect to the orthographic
violation in the emotional sentences could not be solely at-
tributed to the stimulus presenting mode, because the early
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci (2015) 15:5568
effect was observed in the neutral sentences with a similar
presenting mode. Therefore, the LPC effect in response to the
orthographic violations in the emotional condition reflects
repaired processing of the orthography due to the salience of
the preceding emotional words, which narrowed the attention
allocated to the subsequent neutral words.
Nevertheless, different results have been reported in previ-
ous studies regarding the influence of preceding information
on the processing of the following words. Moreno and
Vzquez (2011) investigated the effect of negatively and
positively biased sentence frames on the semantic analysis
of following neutral information. They reported similar N400
effects in response to nonsense words in both negative and
positive conditions. The lack of emotional modulation might
have been due to the high expectation of the contexts. In the
study of Fischler and Bradley (2006), participants were asked
to comprehend adjectivenoun word pairs as a phrase and to
make a coherence judgment. Fischler and Bradley failed to
find any emotional effects for either the first adjectives (pleas-
ant, neutral, and unpleasant) or the second neutral nouns.
However, Hinojosa et al. (2012) reported larger N1 and LPC
amplitudes to neutral words preceded by positive words that
were high as compared to low in arousal. The enhancement
effects might be attributed to the more visual attention devoted
to the highly arousing stimuli. In the present study, we found
that the orthographically violated nouns elicited smaller P2
and larger N400 amplitudes than the correct nouns when they
followed the neutral verbs, but larger LPC amplitudes when
they followed the emotional verbs. The discrepancies could be
due to a number of important differences between the present
study and previous studies, such as the stimuli (the present
study using emotional and neutral conditions vs. Hinojosa et al.
using positive and negative conditions; the present study using
sentences vs. Fishler & Bradley using word pairs), tasks (the
present study using comprehension vs. Fishler & Bradley using
coherence decision), as well as paradigms (the present study
using sentence reading vs. Hinojosa et al. using priming).
Emotional words processing in sentence contexts
Emotional verbs elicited a larger N1 over the left anterior
region and a larger P2 over the anterior region than did neutral
verbs. These effects are consistent with previous studies on
isolated emotional-words processing (Hofmann et al., 2009;
Schapkin, Gusev, & Kuhl, 2000). When emotional words
were presented in contexts, two studies also reported N1/P2
effects in response to emotional salience (Len et al., 2010; L.
Wang et al., 2013). The N1 effect suggests that emotion affects
early visual perception of the stimuli. In order to account for
such an early emotional effect, a pathway between amygdala
and visual cortex has been proposed (Morris et al., 1998;
Pessoa, McKenna, Gutierrez, & Ungerleider, 2002;
Sabatinelli, Bradley, Fitzsimmons, & Lang, 2005). The N1
65
effect might be attributed to the top-down control of amygdala
on cortical pathways (Vuilleumier, 2005). The anterior P2
effect has temporal latencies similar to those of another well-
established emotional ERP effectthe EPN effect in single
emotional-word processing. Although they are both taken as
reflections of automatic attention orientation to emotional
stimuli during early stages of meaning encoding or of the
conscious processing of affective content (for a review, see
Citron, 2012), the EPN effect usually has a bilateral temporal
occipital scalp distribution. In addition, studies exploring
emotionality effects in sentences have rarely reported an
EPN effect in response to emotional words, which might be
related to the use of re-reference channels (average reference
vs. linked mastoid reference; Junghfer, Peyk, Flaisch, &
Schupp, 2006) or the presentation mode of words (e.g., short
vs. long interstimulus intervals; Herbert et al., 2008; Herbert
et al., 2006).
In addition to the early N1 and P2 effects, the emotional
words also elicited a larger N400 than the neutral words did.
The present result is in line with the study of Holt et al. (2009),
who explained that the emotional words in the neutral contexts
differed in their neural representations, relative to the neutral
words in the neutral contexts. As a result, the integration of the
emotional words into neutral contexts was more difficult than
integration of the neutral words, resulting in a larger N400 for
the emotional words. In addition, Bayer et al. (2010) reported
a larger N400 for high-arousal than for low-arousal words of
the same valence. However, Kanske and Kotz (2007) and L.
Wang et al. (2013) reported smaller N400s for positive than
for negative words. Therefore, the observed N400 effects
seem to relate to both emotional valence and arousal.
In the present study, we did not observe any late positive
effect in response to emotional words. The LPC effect has
been related to emotional evaluation (Citron, 2012) and is task
relevant (Fischler & Bradley, 2006). When the task did not
involve emotional evaluation (e.g., a structural decision task),
the late positive effect was found to be attenuated or eliminat-
ed (Schacht & Sommer, 2009b). In our study, participants
were told to comprehend the sentences, so no explicit emo-
tional evaluation of the verbs was necessary. Moreover, the
occasionally occurring orthographic violations might have
even distracted their attention away from emotional evalua-
tion. All of these might be reasons why we did not observe a
late positive effect. It should be noted that the emotionality of
the words manipulated in the present study represented both
emotional valence and arousal, so further studies will be
required to specify the roles of emotional valence and arousal
in modulating word processing in contexts.
No emotional memory effect
The recognition accuracy of the emotional words was not
significantly higher than that of the neutral words in our study.
66
Previous studies have found that people recognize or recall
emotional words at a higher accuracy rate than neutral words
in both word lists (Kensinger & Corkin, 2003; Phelps et al.,
1997) and sentences (Brierley et al., 2007; Guillet & Arndt,
2009). One might argue that the presentation of words in
sentences would increase memory for the words. In retrospect,
most of previous studies using isolated words as stimuli
(Doerksen & Shimamura, 2001; Kensinger et al., 2002;
Phelps et al., 1997) have employed a free recall task. The
recall accuracy was lower than the recognition accuracy found
in the present study. However, the recognition accuracy of
isolated words in another study (Maratos et al., 2000) was
found to be higher (86 %, on average) than that of the present
study (60 %, on average). Moreover, some studies that have
presented words in sentences (Brierley et al., 2007; Medford
et al., 2005) also obtained higher recognition accuracy than
the present study. Therefore, the presentation of words in
sentences did not increase the recognition accuracy, and the
low recognition accuracy in the present study could be due to
the incidental recognition task and the number of items. In our
study, the participants were instructed to carefully compre-
hend sentences, so no particular efforts were made to memo-
rize the words in the sentences. Also, the participants had 240
old and 240 new words to judge in the incidental recognition
task, which might have caused a floor effect (as indicated by
the low accuracies in all conditions).
Conclusions
The orthographic violations of object nouns elicited P2 and
N400 effects when they followed neutral verbs, whereas a late
positive effect was found when the violations followed emo-
tional verbs. Therefore, the emotionality of words modulates
at least the perceptual analysis of the following words. The
findings support the attention-narrowing hypothesis in the
context of language comprehension. In addition, the emotion-
al verbs elicited both early (N1 and P2) and late (N400) effects
relative to the neutral verbs during sentence comprehension,
indicating influences of emotionality on both early perceptual
analysis and the subsequent semantic integration of the words.
Taken together, emotional words have a dynamic influence on
sentence processing.
Author note This research was supported by awards from the National
Natural Science Foundation of China to Y.Y. [Grant No. 31070989] and
to L.W. [Grant No. 31200849].
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