A familiar font drives early emotional effects in word recognition

• Published in: Brain and language 2014-10, Vol.137, p.142-147
• Main Authors: Kuchinke, Lars, Krause, Beatrix, Fritsch, Nathalie, Briesemeister, Benny B.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Analysis of Variance; Arousal - physiology; Attention - physiology; Brain Mapping; Electroencephalography; Emotions - physiology; Event-related potentials; Evoked Potentials; Familiarity; Female; Font; Humans; Language; Male; Printing - instrumentation; Reaction Time - physiology; Reading; Recognition (Psychology) - physiology; Reference Values; Semantics; Valence; Visual Perception - physiology; Visual word recognition
• ISSN: 0093-934X; 1090-2155
• DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2014.08.007

•High-arousing negative words modulate very early and late ERPs components.•This effect is modulated by the familiarity of the font.•Words of familiar font only elicit very early emotional ERP effects (∼100ms).•Comparable effects at the LPP for familiar and unfamiliar word fonts.•For words with familiar font the early ERP effects predict behavioral data. The emotional connotation of a word is known to shift the process of word recognition. Using the electroencephalographic event-related potentials (ERPs) approach it has been documented that early attentional processing of high-arousing negative words is shifted at a stage of processing where a presented word cannot have been fully identified. Contextual learning has been discussed to contribute to these effects. The present study shows that a manipulation of the familiarity with a word’s shape interferes with these earliest emotional ERP effects. Presenting high-arousing negative and neutral words in a familiar or an unfamiliar font results in very early emotion differences only in case of familiar shapes, whereas later processing stages reveal similar emotional effects in both font conditions. Because these early emotion-related differences predict later behavioral differences, it is suggested that contextual learning of emotional valence comprises more visual features than previously expected to guide early visual-sensory processing.