10. Language And Emotion Flashcards
Basic emotion approach
Emotions are views as universal biological states
Innate neurological circuits
Expressed as clear facial expressions
Everyone is born with 5-6 categories
Emotion paradox
Some studies have found that not all emotion categories look, feel or have the same neurophysiological signature
Facial expressions viewed in isolation can be ambihuous
Facial info is important but not sufficient for emotion perception
Emotions as nominal categories
They are man made categories that are imposed on us
Part of our conceptual knowledge (conceptual knowledge depends on language)
Autism and emotion
Struggle to recognise emotions as they do not have the language capability to assign these man made categories from conceptual knowledge
Language as context hypothesis
Looking at cartoon emotions, accuracy of identification improves when a list of labels are provided when compared to fee recall.
Suggests that emotion words constrain perceptual choices
Emotion words cause a shift in the was faces are seen…. Similar to lexical identification shift. Provide context of emotion and it is recognised sooner
Semantic satiation
When a word is repeated many times it loses its meaning
Semantic satiation and emotion cues
Effect of semantic satiation should increase the identification time between the repeated word and emotion as there is less meaning assigned to it.
If language is not involved in emotion then the repetition effect should have no effect on assigning a category to an emotion
Processing emotion words
Emotion words are processed more in the right hemisphere
EVIDENCE
L hemi strike patients have aphasia but can still swear. Also show an advantage for processing of emotional words
Basal ganglia may be involved which implicated Tourette’s and Parkinson’s and explains expletive language
R hemi stroke patient could speak sentences but sound not sweat, sing or pray
In normal patients. If an emotional word is presented in the LVF, is benefits from being processed in the R hemi
Electrical response to emotional words
Earlier ERPs when the words were negative compared to neutral
Emotional words have enhanced response at P200-300
Words with learned emotional significance have enhanced processing
Reason for enhanced processing and recall of emotional words
Evolutionary response- emotional words may indicate danger so much be processed fast!
Attention grabbing- demonstrated by early enhanced cortical response
Emotional recall
Enhanced recall of emotional compared to neutral words
Emotional stroop
Delayed identification of the colour of emotional compared to neutral words because the emotion word jumps out to be processed first then has to be blocked.
Effect only found for NEGATIVE words
Taboo stroop
Same as emotional stroop, but negative words replaced with taboo words
Similar slowing effects
Very replicable
Bilingual taboo stroop
Interference for negative and taboo words was recorded for both English and foreign people
Amount of interference was equal in native and non native language
Same threat response
Higher skin conductance recorded ONLY in the native speakers (increased emotional arousal in natives)
Possibly linked to social learning and personal experience?
Emotional prosody
Refers to the patterns of stress and intonation in language
Used to communicate emotional state
Voice can betray our feelings as it is affected by physiological parameters which change depending on emotional state
Eg sarcasm (?frontal lobe)
“It’s not what you said it’s how you said it”
