Emotions in word and face processing: Early and late cortical responses

• Published in: Brain and cognition Vol. 69; no. 3; pp. 538 - 550
• Main Authors: Schacht, Annekathrin, Sommer, Werner
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier Inc 01.04.2009; Elsevier
• Subjects: Analysis of Variance; Behavioral psychophysiology; Biological and medical sciences; Brain; Brain - physiology; Cognitive Processes; Electroencephalography; Electrophysiology; Emotion; Emotions; Event Related Potentials; Evoked Potentials; Face; Face recognition; Facial Expression; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; German; Humans; Language Processing; Male; Nonverbal Communication; Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology; Pseudowords; Psycholinguistics; Psychological Patterns; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reaction Time; Reading; Task Performance and Analysis; Verbs; Vocabulary; Word processing; Word Recognition; Young Adult; Word processing; Event-related potentials; Emotion; Face recognition; Human; Affect affectivity; Word; Central nervous system; Electrophysiology; Cognition; Emotion emotionality; Encephalon; Language; Information processing; Face; Event evoked potential; Recognition
• ISSN: 0278-2626; 1090-2147; 1090-2147
• DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2008.11.005

Recent research suggests that emotion effects in word processing resemble those in other stimulus domains such as pictures or faces. The present study aims to provide more direct evidence for this notion by comparing emotion effects in word and face processing in a within-subject design. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded as participants made decisions on the lexicality of emotionally positive, negative, and neutral German verbs or pseudowords, and on the integrity of intact happy, angry, and neutral faces or slightly distorted faces. Relative to neutral and negative stimuli both positive verbs and happy faces elicited posterior ERP negativities that were indistinguishable in scalp distribution and resembled the early posterior negativities reported by others. Importantly, these ERP modulations appeared at very different latencies. Therefore, it appears that similar brain systems reflect the decoding of both biological and symbolic emotional signals of positive valence, differing mainly in the speed of meaning access, which is more direct and faster for facial expressions than for words.