title: On pleasure and thrill: the interplay between arousal and valence during visual word recognition.
abstract: We investigated the interplay between arousal and valence in the early processing of affective words. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read words organized in an orthogonal design with the factors valence (positive, negative, neutral) and arousal (low, medium, high) in a lexical decision task. We observed faster reaction times for words of positive valence and for those of high arousal. Data from ERPs showed increased early posterior negativity (EPN) suggesting improved visual processing of these conditions. Valence effects appeared for medium and low arousal and were absent for high arousal. Arousal effects were obtained for neutral and negative words but were absent for positive words. These results suggest independent contributions of arousal and valence at early attentional stages of processing. Arousal effects preceded valence effects in the ERP data suggesting that arousal serves as an early alert system preparing a subsequent evaluation in terms of valence.
authors.affiliation: Universität Hamburg, Department of Psychology, Von-Melle-Park 5, Room 4004, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany. Electronic address: guillermo.recio@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Guillermo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Recio
authors.affiliation: Freie Universität Berlin, Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, D-14195 Berlin, Germany; Universidad de La Laguna, Cognitive Neuroscience & Psycholinguistics Lab, Campus de Guajara, E-38205 La Laguna, S.C. de Tenerife, Spain.
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Conrad
authors.affiliation: Universidad de Granada, Department of Experimental Psychology, Campus de Cartuja s/n, E-18071 Granada, Spain.
authors.forename: Laura B
authors.initials: LB
authors.lastname: Hansen
authors.affiliation: Freie Universität Berlin, Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, D-14195 Berlin, Germany; Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion (DINE), Habelschwerdter Allee 45, D-14195 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Arthur M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Jacobs
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology*; D001288:Attention; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D057181:Pleasure / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Arousal; Emotion; Event-related potentials; Lexical decision; Valence