Semantic satiation of emotional words impedes facial expression processing in two stages

Zhao Li; Kewei Li; Ying Liu; Mingliang Gong; Junchen Shang; Wen Liu; Yangtao Liu; Zhongqing Jiang

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e18341

Semantic satiation of emotional words impedes facial expression processing in two stages

Heliyon. 2023 Jul 14;9(7):e18341. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e18341. eCollection 2023 Jul.

Authors

Zhao Li¹, Kewei Li², Ying Liu¹, Mingliang Gong³, Junchen Shang⁴, Wen Liu¹, Yangtao Liu¹, Zhongqing Jiang¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China.
² Tianjin Vocational College of Sports, Tianjin, China.
³ School of Psychology, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, China.
⁴ School of Humanities, Southeast University, Nanjing, China.

Abstract

To explore the mechanism of emotional words semantic satiation effect on facial expression processing, participants were asked to judge the facial expression (happiness or sadness) after an emotional word ((cry) or (smile)) or a neutral word ((Ah), baseline condition) was presented for 20 s. The results revealed that participants were slower in judging valence-congruent facial expressions and reported a more enlarged (Experiment 1) and prolonged (Experiment 2) N170 component than the baseline condition. No significant difference in behavior and N170 appeared between the valence-incongruent and the baseline condition. However, the amplitude of LPC (Late Positive Complex) under both valence-congruent/incongruent conditions was smaller than the baseline condition. It indicates that, in the early stage, the impeding effect of satiated emotional words is specifically constrained to facial expressions with the same emotional valence; in the late stage, such an impeding effect might spread to facial expressions with the opposite valence of the satiated emotional word.

Keywords: Facial expression; LPC; N170; Semantic satiation.