The Influence of Emotional Experience on Semantic Processing of Concrete Concepts

Xue Bai; Jinqiu Feng; Yanchi Liu; Yuan Gao; Jun Deng; Lei Mo

doi:10.2147/PRBM.S386743

The Influence of Emotional Experience on Semantic Processing of Concrete Concepts

Psychol Res Behav Manag. 2023 Mar 13:16:749-759. doi: 10.2147/PRBM.S386743. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Xue Bai^#^{1

2

3

4}, Jinqiu Feng^#^{1

2

3

4}, Yanchi Liu^{1

2

3

4}, Yuan Gao^{1

2

3

4}, Jun Deng^{1

2

3

4}, Lei Mo^{1

2

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.
² Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, (South China Normal University), Ministry of Education, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.
³ School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.
⁴ School of Psychology, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Introduction: Parallel distributed processing theory (PDP theory) holds that all brain regions involved in conceptual representation perform a series of activities at the same time. However, the role of emotional experience information in concrete conceptual representation is still unknown. This study further explores whether the emotional experience will also affect the semantic processing of concrete concept representations.

Methods: This study used the emotion priming paradigm and semantic judgment task to explore whether emotion priming impacts the processing of animal concepts with different emotional experiences through two experiments. In Experiments 1a and 1b, pleasant or disgusted faces were used as emotional priming stimuli to explore whether the explicit processing of emotions would affect the semantic processing of animal concepts. Experiments 2a and 2b used positive or negative scenery pictures as emotional priming stimuli to explore whether the implicit processing of emotions would affect the semantic processing of animal concepts.

Results: The Experiment 1 results showed that the perception of faces promotes the processing of animal words, showing the "word-emotion congruence effect". Experiment 2a did not show the expected results, while Experiment 2b showed that the general negative perception of scenery pictures could significantly promote the processing of disgusted animal words. The results further proved the "word-emotion congruence effect" shown in the results of Experiment 1 from the perspective of implicit emotion processing. Combining the results of two experiments, it can be proven that emotional experience affects the semantic processing process of concrete concepts.

Discussion: Both Experiment 1 and Experiment 2b of this study show the "word-emotion congruence effect". PDP theory believes that conceptual representation is represented by the activity patterns of billions of neurons distributed in many areas of the brain, and related semantic processing and sensory processing will occur simultaneously. The results of this experiment well support PDP theory.

Keywords: conceptual representation; embodied cognition; emotional experience; explicit emotional priming; implicit emotional priming.