Effect of emoji prime on the understanding of emotional words - evidence from ERPs

Emojis play an increasingly important role as nonverbal symbols in online communication, and this study investigates their effect on the processing of subsequent words. We suppose that emojis, as an aid to emotional expression and semantic comprehension, prime the cognitive processing of the textual...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBehaviour & information technology Vol. 41; no. 6; pp. 1313 - 1322
Main Authors Yang, Jiayi, Yang, Yingxi, Xiu, Lichao, Yu, Guoming
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Taylor & Francis 26.04.2022
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Amplitudes
Cognition
Comprehension
Computer mediated communication
Emoji
Emojis
Emotional icons
Emotions
Enterprise resource planning
Event-related potentials
event-related potentials (ERPs)
nonverbal symbols
Paralinguistics
Priming
Semantics
Words (language)
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Summary:Emojis play an increasingly important role as nonverbal symbols in online communication, and this study investigates their effect on the processing of subsequent words. We suppose that emojis, as an aid to emotional expression and semantic comprehension, prime the cognitive processing of the textual stimuli that follow. An affective priming experiment using ERPs was conducted, in which Semantic Relationship between the emoji and the word (Congruent, Incongruent, Non-related) was manipulated to assess their impact in an affective word categorization task. Behavioral results revealed no significant difference, while electrophysiological data showed otherwise. N1 component elicited by semantically congruent and incongruent emoji-word pairs showed greater amplitudes than those by non-related pairs. N400 elicited by incongruent pairs showed greater amplitudes than the N400 by congruent pairs. These data indicate that while emojis do not influence the outcomes of linguistic processing, emoji primes enhance attentional level, and semantically congruent contents demand fewer cognitive resources and facilitate better processing in comparison to incongruent ones. The findings point to emojis' role not only as affective primes, but also as paralanguage that is semantically processed. Implications for computer-mediated communication are discussed.
ISSN:0144-929X
1362-3001
DOI:10.1080/0144929X.2021.1874050