Priming of emotion recognition.
Four experiments investigated priming of emotion recognition using a range of emotional stimuli, including facial expressions, words, pictures, and nonverbal sounds. In each experiment, a prime-target paradigm was used with related, neutral, and unrelated pairs. In Experiment 1, facial expression primes preceded word targets in an emotion classification task. A pattern of priming of emotional word targets by related primes with no inhibition of unrelated primes was found. Experiment 2 reversed these primes and targets and found the same pattern of results, demonstrating bidirectional priming between facial expressions and words. Experiment 2 also found priming of facial expression targets by picture primes. Experiment 3 demonstrated that priming occurs not just between pairs of stimuli that have a high co-occurrence in the environment (for example, nonverbal sounds and facial expressions), but with stimuli that co-occur less frequently and are linked mainly by their emotional category (for example, nonverbal sounds and printed words). This shows the importance of the prime and target sharing a common emotional category, rather than their previous co-occurrence. Experiment 4 extended the findings by showing that there are category-based effects as well as valence effects in emotional priming, supporting a categorical view of emotion recognition.
Carroll
Naomi C
NC
University of York, York, UK. N.Carroll@bham.ac.uk
Young
Andrew W
AW
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009633:Nonverbal Communication; D011930:Reaction Time; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D014825:Vocabulary