Parafoveal-on-Foveal Effects of Emotional Word Semantics in Reading Chinese Sentences: Evidence From Eye Movements
- Despite the well-known influence of emotional meaning on cognition, relatively less is known about its effects on reading behavior. We investigated whether fixation behavior during the reading of Chinese sentences is influenced by emotional word meaning in the parafovea. Two-character target words embedded into the same sentence frames provided emotionally positive, negative, or neutral contents. Fixation durations on neutral pretarget words were prolonged for positive parafoveal words and for highly frequent negative parafoveal words. In addition, fixation durations on foveal emotional words were shorter than those on neutral words. We also found that the role of emotional words varied as a function of their valence during foveal and parafoveal processing. These findings suggest a processing advantage for emotional words relative to emotionally neutral stimuli in foveal and parafoveal vision. We discuss implications for the notion of attention attraction due to emotional content.
Author details: | Ming YanORCiDGND, Werner Sommer |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000095 |
ISSN: | 0278-7393 |
ISSN: | 1939-1285 |
Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25581226 |
Title of parent work (English): | Journal of experimental psychology : Learning, memory, and cognition |
Publisher: | American Psychological Association |
Place of publishing: | Washington |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of first publication: | 2015 |
Publication year: | 2015 |
Release date: | 2017/03/27 |
Tag: | Chinese; emotion; parafoveal vision; reading |
Volume: | 41 |
Issue: | 4 |
Number of pages: | 7 |
First page: | 1237 |
Last Page: | 1243 |
Funding institution: | Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [KL 955/18] |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Psychologie |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Institution name at the time of the publication: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Psychologie |