Syntactic structural parallelisms influence processing of positive stimuli evidence from cross-modal ERP priming
- Language can strongly influence the emotional state of the recipient. In contrast to the broad body of experimental and neuroscientific research on semantic information and prosodic speech, the emotional impact of grammatical structure has rarely been investigated. One reason for this might be, that measuring effects of syntactic structure involves the use of complex stimuli, for which the emotional impact of grammar is difficult to isolate. In the present experiment we examined the emotional impact of structural parallelisms, that is, repetitions of syntactic features, on the emotion-sensitive "late positive potential" (LPP) with a cross-modal priming paradigm. Primes were auditory presented nonsense sentences which included grammatical-syntactic parallelisms. Visual targets were positive, neutral, and negative faces, to be classified as emotional or non-emotional by the participants. Electrophysiology revealed diminished LPP amplitudes for positive faces following parallel primes. Thus, our findings suggest that grammaticalLanguage can strongly influence the emotional state of the recipient. In contrast to the broad body of experimental and neuroscientific research on semantic information and prosodic speech, the emotional impact of grammatical structure has rarely been investigated. One reason for this might be, that measuring effects of syntactic structure involves the use of complex stimuli, for which the emotional impact of grammar is difficult to isolate. In the present experiment we examined the emotional impact of structural parallelisms, that is, repetitions of syntactic features, on the emotion-sensitive "late positive potential" (LPP) with a cross-modal priming paradigm. Primes were auditory presented nonsense sentences which included grammatical-syntactic parallelisms. Visual targets were positive, neutral, and negative faces, to be classified as emotional or non-emotional by the participants. Electrophysiology revealed diminished LPP amplitudes for positive faces following parallel primes. Thus, our findings suggest that grammatical structure creates an emotional context that facilitates processing of positive emotional information.…
Author details: | Beate Czerwon, Annette Hohlfeld, Heike WieseGND, Katja WerheidGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2012.10.014 |
ISSN: | 0167-8760 |
ISSN: | 1872-7697 |
Title of parent work (English): | International journal of psychophysiology |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Place of publishing: | Amsterdam |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of first publication: | 2013 |
Publication year: | 2013 |
Release date: | 2017/03/26 |
Tag: | ERP; Emotion; Language; Late positive potential; Priming; Structural parallelisms |
Volume: | 87 |
Issue: | 1 |
Number of pages: | 7 |
First page: | 28 |
Last Page: | 34 |
Funding institution: | Cluster of Excellence "Languages of Emotion" at Freie Universitat Berlin; German Excellence Initiative; Sonnenfeld-Stiftung |
Organizational units: | Philosophische Fakultät / Institut für Germanistik |
Peer review: | Referiert |