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

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Original Research

The Influence of Emotional Experience on Semantic Processing of Concrete Concepts

Authors Bai X, Feng J, Liu Y, Gao Y, Deng J, Mo L

Received 18 August 2022

Accepted for publication 20 November 2022

Published 13 March 2023 Volume 2023:16 Pages 749—759

DOI https://doi.org/10.2147/PRBM.S386743

Checked for plagiarism Yes

Review by Single anonymous peer review

Peer reviewer comments 2

Editor who approved publication: Dr Igor Elman

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Xue Bai,^{1– 4,}^* Jinqiu Feng,^{1– 4,}^* Yanchi Liu,^{1– 4} Yuan Gao,^{1– 4} Jun Deng,^{1– 4} Lei Mo^{1– 4}

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

*These authors contributed equally to this work

Correspondence: Lei Mo, School of Psychology, South China Normal University, No. 55, West of Zhongshan Avenue, Tianhe District, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China, Tel +86 20 85216892, Email [email protected]

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: embodied cognition, emotional experience, conceptual representation, explicit emotional priming, implicit emotional priming

Introduction

One of the typical characteristics of human cognition is the ability to form conceptual representation, which enables individuals to integrate external world experience with internal experience.¹ The theory of parallel distributed processing (PDP) was first put forward by Rumelhart and McClelland in 1986 on the basis of previous studies on connectionism, which explained the cognitive process of conceptual representation.² PDP theory assumes that cognitive systems consist of thousands of interconnected units, which interact and process information by weighted connections. Units and connections form the structure of the PDP network. PDP theory does not regard concepts as a set of facts or events stored in the brain but a set of relationships when events are acquired in groups or units, and what is stored is the connection established between these units. Concepts are incorporated into the cerebral cortex directly or through the hippocampal system as a change in synaptic connection strength.^3,4

According to PDP theory, every concept has a distributed representation, which may involve different knowledge fields, and different knowledge fields will activate different brain regions. The representation of concepts needs to be “consistent” among the representations of independent knowledge fields. For example, regarding the concept of animals, since much of our knowledge about animals is based on their appearance, feelings, emotions, etc., it may involve multiple brain regions, such as the visual cortex, orbitofrontal-limbic system, and frontal cortex.⁵ This view is also supported by certain studies; when we read or hear language information associated with perception or action, the brain area corresponding to perception or action will also be activated.^6,7 In contrast, when the perceptual channel associated with the concept is activated, the corresponding concept can also be partially activated, which affects the processing of the concept and produces the effect of facilitation or inhibition.^8–10 At the same time, studies on vision, hearing, touch, and other aspects also show that the sensorimotor and conceptual representation systems in the brain partially overlap, so there is a mutual influence between conceptual processing and sensorimotor channel activation.^11–15

Specifically, concrete and abstract concepts contain linguistic information and experiential information, while experiential information comes from not only the sensory-motor system but also introspective experience, especially emotion.¹⁶ Regarding the relationship between emotion and conceptual representation, some researchers used abstract emotional concepts as experimental materials, and the research results proclaimed that the processing of emotional concepts can shape individuals’ recognition of emotional faces.¹⁷ In addition, in a study by Liu et al, researchers used the emotional priming paradigm to explore whether the individual perception of emotional faces with different valences would affect abstract emotional concepts.¹⁸ The experimental results indicated that the perception of emotional faces affected the processing of abstract emotional concepts, and the relationship between them was bidirectional. However, the role of emotional experience information in concrete conceptual representation remains unknown.

Based on the above analysis, we suggest that emotional experience may influence the processing of concepts with emotional information. We intend to use an emotional priming paradigm and semantic judgment task with explicit emotional face pictures (pleasant/disgusted) or implicit emotional scenery pictures (positive/negative) as emotional priming stimuli and animal concept words as probing stimuli to explore whether explicit or implicit emotional priming has an impact on the processing of concepts with different emotional loads.^19,20 In Experiment 1, we assumed that the explicit processing of emotions would affect the conceptual processing of animals with different emotional loads. To further verify the PDP theory, in Experiment 2, we assumed that the implicit processing of emotions would also affect the conceptual processing of animals with different emotional loads. Through the above two series of studies, we jointly explore the role of emotional experience information in concrete conceptual representation.

Experiment 1

Experiment 1 explored whether and how explicit emotional priming affected the semantic processing of concrete concepts.

The experiment was conducted as follows.

Experiment 1a

Purpose of the Experiment

Experiment 1a aimed to determine whether the semantic processing of concrete concepts with different emotional loads would be affected by pleasant emotional faces.

Subjects

Thirty-six college students were randomly selected, and all subjects had corrected or uncorrected vision. Subjects volunteered to participate in the experiment and were given some remuneration at the end of the experiment. The ethics committee of the authors’ institution approved this research.

Experimental Design

A 2 (emotional priming: happy, neutral) × 2 (conceptual word: highly pleasant animals (HPA), highly disgusted animals (HDA)) within-subjects design was used in this experiment. The emotion priming paradigm and semantic judgment task were used, and the dependent variable was the reaction time of the semantic judgment task.

Experimental Materials and Procedures

The materials of Experiment 1a included conceptual words and a face picture of emotional priming.

We first selected 80 animal words from the Caiqing Word Stock and then randomly selected 31 subjects who did not participate in the formal experiment to rate the 80 words on a 7-point scale.²¹ In the pleasure rating scale, we asked participants, “How much does this animal make you feel pleasant? (on a scale from 1 (almost none) to 7 (very much))”. Similarly, in the disgust rating scale, we asked participants, “How much does this animal make you feel disgusted?” (on a scale from 1 (almost none) to 7 (very much)). We only keep the data between the two upper and lower standard deviations to eliminate the extreme values. Finally, according to the pleasure rating scale, 25 animal words with the highest scores were selected as highly pleasant animals (or HPA for short). According to the disgust rating scale, 25 animal words with the highest scores were selected as the highly disgusted animals (or HDA for short). Table 1 shows the mean and deviation of word scoring results. The pleasure degree of the two types of words was analyzed by a related sample t-test, and the results showed that there was a significant difference between them (p < 0.001). The same results were found for the disgust degree (p < 0.001). According to Cai Qing’s word frequency standard, the word frequencies of the two kinds of animal words were calculated (HPA: M = 1.98; SD = 0.60; HDA: M = 1.95; SD = 0.56).²¹ After that, the word frequencies of the two types of words were analyzed by t-test, and the results showed no significant difference (p = 0.869). At the same time, 50 common neutral words were selected from the same word stock (word frequency: M = 2.43; SD = 0.18) as irrelevant materials to balance the experiment. Neutral words are words that rate low on the pleasant and disgust scales and arousal scales. Therefore, the semantic judgment task of this experiment contained 100 words, which included 25 HPA, 25 HDA, and 50 common neutral words.

Table 1 Mean and Standard Deviation of Word Scoring

The method of selecting face pictures for emotional priming was as follows: first, 16 happy face pictures (faces expressing happiness) were selected from the Chinese Affective Face Picture System (CAFPS), in which men and women are equally divided. The average recognition rate index corresponding to each emotional picture refers to the percentage of the raters who think that the picture belongs to this emotional type in the total number of raters. The average intensity refers to the raters’ rating of the emotional intensity of pictures (7-point rating). According to the existing data in the system, the results showed that the average recognition rate of pictures was 99.15 (SD = 0.93), and the average intensity was 6.75 (SD = 0.34). Then, 16 neutral emotional face pictures were selected, in which men and women were equally divided. According to the existing database in the system, the results showed that the average recognition rate of pictures was 87.13 (SD = 10.54), and the average intensity was 5.86 (SD = 0.17).

In this experiment, E-prime 2.0 was used to compile and present the experimental program. The whole experiment was divided into 8 blocks (4 A blocks, 4 B blocks) and there were 25 trails in each block. In each block, happy face pictures or neutral face pictures were used as emotional priming pictures. ABBA design was used in the experiment to balance the order of emotional pictures. After happy emotional priming and neutral emotional priming, each subject had to perform semantic judgment tasks on Chinese words.

As shown in Figure 1, a fixed point was first presented on the screen for 500 ms in each trial, and then an emotional face was randomly presented for 200 ms. A blank screen would appear for 100 ms after the face was presented. After that, the stimulus words in the semantic judgment task were randomly presented, and the subjects had to judge whether the words were animal words or non animal words within 2 seconds. If “Yes”, the “F” key was pressed; if “No”, the “J” key was pressed. The target stimulus appeared until the subjects responded or disappeared after 2000 ms. There was a 500 ms buffer after word presentation. All subjects had to practice before the formal experiment. The practice block included 12 trials, and the materials used in the practice process did not appear in the formal experiment. To make the subjects carefully observe the pictures and ensure the success of emotional priming, after each block, the subjects would answer a question unrelated to the experiment: “Do you think there were more male faces or more female faces in the series of face pictures that just appeared?” After the subjects made the corresponding judgment, they entered the next block. After the experiment, we collected only the data with the correct responses.

Figure 1 Flow chart of single trial in Experiment 1.

Results and Analysis

Data with more than a 70% correct response rate were considered valid data.¹⁸ All the data were analyzed by IBM SPSS Statistics 25 using ANOVA. The reaction time of semantic judgment tasks is shown in Table 2.

Table 2 Mean and Standard Deviation of Reaction Time of Semantic Judgment Task in Experiment 1a

Repeated measures ANOVA of response time in the semantic judgment task showed that the main effect of priming type was not significant [F (1, 35) = 0.025, p = 0.876], and the main effect of word types was not significant [F (1, 35) = 0.617, p = 0.438]. The interaction between priming types and word types was significant [F (1, 35) = 12.24, p = 0.0012, η_p² = 0.26].

After that, simple effect analysis for happy emotional priming showed that the reaction time of HPA was significantly faster than that of HDA [F (1, 35) = 13.35, p = 0.001, η_p² = 0.28]. However, under the condition of neutral emotional priming, there was no significant difference between the reaction times of HPA and HDA [F (1, 35) = 2.75, p = 0.11]. The above results indicated that happy emotional priming speeded the response to HPAs relative to HDAs.

The results of Experiment 1a showed that happy emotional priming could promote semantic processing of concrete concepts with consistent emotional information more effectively than semantic processing of concrete concepts with conflicting emotional information.

Repeated measures ANOVA of the accuracy data of each block in Experiment 1a showed no significant difference in the response accuracy of each block (p > 0.05), which indicated no trade-off phenomenon of speed-accuracy in semantic judgment tasks in Experiment 1a.

Experiment 1b

The results of Experiment 1a proved the influence of explicit positive emotional priming on the semantic processing of concrete concepts. To further verify the assumption of this study, Experiment 1b changed the happy emotional faces into disgusted emotional faces. If the explicit emotional experience can affect the semantic processing of concrete concepts, then Experiment 1b should have similar results to Experiment 1a.