lecture 9 - lang & emotions

Question 1

context effects

Answer 1

emotion words are not expressed as fixed patterns of facial behavs
in everyday life, the structural info is more variable & ambiguous
language serves to reduce ambiguity

Question 2

the basic emotion approach

Answer 2

certain emotion categories are universal biological states that are: triggered by evolutionary preserved neural circuits (or affect programs); expressed as clear bio-behavioural signals
everyone is born with 5 or 6 perceptually grounded emotion categories

Question 3

emotion paradox

Answer 3

conflicting evidence: facial behvs viewed in isolation can be ambiguous

Question 4

emotion as nominal categories

Answer 4

one solution to paradox = emotions are manmade categories (not biological) - thus they’re constrained by language

Question 5

language as a context for emotion

Answer 5

emotion perception is shaped by external context that surrounds the facial expression & by internal context in our minds

Question 6

face with blend of all emotions labelled ________

Answer 6

angrier when have to explain why it is angry

Question 7

harder to identify emotion in others when relevant emotion words are semantically satiated

Answer 7

found by Linquist et al

Question 8

processing of emotions: aphasic patients who have lost language could still

Answer 8

swear or utter emotional words e.g patient EC (damage to left hem)
right hem = emotion, especially negative
Pinker specifically proposes involvement of right basal ganglia - impulse control & motor functions

Question 9

tourettes = abnormalities in

Answer 9

basal ganglia

Question 10

stroke in right basal ganglia (Speedie et al)

Answer 10

conversed fluently but could not sing, pray or swear

Question 11

aphasic patients with unilateral lesions in left hem:

Answer 11

reading & writing peformance for emotional over non-emotional words had advantage

Question 12

emotional words presented to right and left visual fields in healthy pps

Answer 12

responded to emotion words with greater accuracy when presented to left visual field (right hem), but no difference between processing of emotional and non-emotional words when presented to right visual field

Question 13

ERPs

Answer 13

emotional words were associated with enhanced brain reponses 200-300ms after presentation (just before full inegration of word processing at 400ms) - catch reader’s attention

Question 14

emotional stroop

Answer 14

emotional words = longer response latencies
taboo words have same slowing effect
english speakers = sig higher skin conductance levels to neg and taboo words compared to neutral and positive - difference not observed in non-native speakers (social learning and personal experiences)

Question 15

prosody =

Answer 15

patterns of stress and intonation in lang - can portray emotion
oscillogram - more peaks of happy

Question 16

prosody and sex differences

Answer 16

women more accurate than men in recognising emotions in faces, gestures & voices
women but not men show an N400 effect & activity in left inferior frontal gyrus to words with incongruous prosody when only one of the 2 types of info is task-relevant
BUT if task is to judge congruence between prosody and word meaning, processing in men and women is comparable - differ in how automatically they process and integrate emotional-prosodic info into lang processing

Question 17

natural-kind model of emotion

Answer 17

emotions are expresed as a recognisable signature consisting of behav and physiolgical outputs coordinated in time and intensity - these patterns allow ppl to know an emption when they see it

stimulus > affect program > feeling; facial movements; vocal accoustics; peripheral NS; behav

Xu et al: emotion words anchor and direct a child’s acquisition of emotion categories (& in pre-language infants)