title: Emotion effects during reading: Influence of an emotion target word on eye movements and processing.
abstract: Recently, Scott, O'Donnell and Sereno reported that words of high valence and arousal are processed with greater ease than neutral words during sentence reading. However, this study unsystematically intermixed emotion (label a state of mind, e.g., terrified or happy) and emotion-laden words (refer to a concept that is associated with an emotional state, e.g., debt or marriage). We compared the eye-movement record while participants read sentences that contained a neutral target word (e.g., chair) or an emotion word (no emotion-laden words were included). Readers were able to process both positive (e.g., happy) and negative emotion words (e.g., distressed) faster than neutral words. This was true across a wide range of early (e.g., first fixation durations) and late (e.g., total times on the post-target region) measures. Additional analyses revealed that State Trait Anxiety Inventory scores interacted with the emotion effect and that the emotion effect was not due to arousal alone.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , University at Albany , SUNY, Albany , NY , USA.
authors.forename: Hugh
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Knickerbocker
authors.forename: Rebecca L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Jeanette
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Altarriba
mesh_terms: D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D010555:Personality Inventory; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011932:Reading
keywords: Emotion; Eye movement; Reading