-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: The present study aims to explore the influence of emotional context on word evaluation. Participants were asked to read an "adjective + noun" phrase, where the adjective could be a positive or negative word, and the noun could be a positive, neutral or negative word, and then to make an emotional evaluation on the emotional tone of the target noun based on a 9-point Likert scale. In a control condition, an isolated noun was presented with no context. Results showed that positive context made the evaluation of target words bias toward positive tone, while negative context shaped the evaluation of target words toward negative tone. The modulatory effect of negative context was greater than that of positive context in shaping evaluation of emotional words with opposite valence. Moreover, the modulatory effect of emotional context was constrained by the inherent meaning of target word. The present study demonstrated the flexibility as well as the relative stability of emotional meaning of word.
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 06/2012; · 0.59 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) clinically exhibit a deficit in positive emotional processing and are often distracted by especially negative emotional stimuli. Such emotional-cognitive interference in turn hampers the cognitive abilities of patients in their ongoing task. While the psychological correlates of such emotional conflict have been well identified in healthy subjects, possible alterations of emotional conflict in depressed patients remain to be investigated. We conducted an exploratory psychological study to investigate emotional conflict in MDD. We also distinguished depression-related stimuli from negative stimuli in order to check whether the depression-related distractors will induce enhanced conflict in MDD.
A typical word-face Stroop paradigm was adopted. In order to account for valence-specificities in MDD, we included positive and general negative as well as depression-related words in the study.
MDD patients demonstrated a specific pattern of emotional conflict clearly distinguishable from the healthy control group. In MDD, the positive distractor words did not significantly interrupt the processing of the negative target faces, while they did in healthy subjects. On the other hand, the depression-related distractor words induced significant emotional conflict to the positive target faces in MDD patients but not in the healthy control group.
Our findings demonstrated for the first time an altered valence-specific pattern in emotional conflict in MDD patients. The study sheds a novel and specific light on the affective mechanisms underlying the abnormal emotional-cognitive interference in MDD. Such emotional conflict bears important clinical relevance since it may trigger the widespread cognitive dysfunctions frequently observed in MDD. The present findings may have important clinical implications in both prediction and psychotherapy of MDD.
PLoS ONE 01/2012; 7(2):e31983. · 4.09 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Effective literacy education in deaf students calls for psycholinguistic research revealing the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying their written language processing. When learning a written language, deaf students are often instructed to sign out printed text. The present fMRI study was intended to reveal the neural substrates associated with word signing by comparing it with picture signing. Native deaf signers were asked to overtly sign in Chinese Sign Language (CSL) common objects indicated with written words or presented as pictures. Except in left inferior frontal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule where word signing elicited greater activation than picture signing, the two tasks engaged a highly overlapping set of brain regions previously implicated in sign production. The results suggest that word signing in the deaf signers relies on meaning activation from printed visual forms, followed by similar production processes from meaning to signs as in picture signing. The present study also documents the basic brain activation pattern for sign production in CSL and supports the notion of a universal core neural network for sign production across different sign languages.
Brain and Language 02/2011; 116(2):64-70. · 3.12 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: The present study investigated the neural overlap and dissociation underlying overt word production in the first language (L1) and second language (L2). Twenty-four Chinese-English bilinguals named pictures in either L1 or L2 while being scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). When comparing picture naming in L2 to naming in L1, increased activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral supplementary motor areas (SMA), left precentral gyrus, left lingual gyrus, left cuneus, bilateral putamen, bilateral globus pallidus, bilateral caudate and bilateral cerebellum were observed. This suggested that word production in L2 is less automatic and needs to recruit more neural resources for lexical retrieval, articulatory processing and cognitive control than in L1. In contrast, picture naming in L1 relative to picture naming in L2 revealed increased activity in the right putamen and right globus pallidus probably due to different phonological features between Chinese and English. In addition, the conjunction analysis, for the first time, revealed the common neural correlates underlying picture naming in L1 and L2.
Brain research 12/2009; 1316:75-82. · 2.46 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: The brain activity associated with automatic semantic priming has been extensively studied. Thus far there has been no prior study that directly contrasts the neural mechanisms of semantic and affective priming. The present study employed event-related fMRI to examine the common and distinct neural bases underlying conceptual and affective priming with a lexical decision task. A special type of emotional word, a dual-meaning word containing both conceptual meaning and affective meaning, was adopted as target. Short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) (50 ms) was used to emphasize automatic processing. Fifteen participants were scanned in the present study. We found that the left middle/superior temporal gyrus was the brain region involved in both automatic conceptual and affective priming effects, suggesting general lexical-semantic processing that share in the two types of priming. The left inferior frontal gyrus and right superior temporal gyrus were found to be the conceptual-specific areas in automatic priming effect, consistent with the role of these areas in more extensive within-category semantic processes. The results also revealed that the left fusiform gyrus and left insula were the affective-specific regions in automatic priming effect, demonstrating the involvement of the left fusiform gyrus in automatic affective priming effect, and clarifying the role of the insula in emotional processing rather than conceptual processing. Despite comparable behavioral effects of automatic conceptual priming and affective priming, the present study revealed a neural dissociation of the two types of priming, as well as the shared neural bases.
Brain and Language 12/2009; 112(2):121-8. · 3.12 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Learning through repetition is a fundamental form and also an effective method of language learning critical for achieving proficient and automatic language use. Massive repetition priming as a common research paradigm taps into the dynamic processes involved in repetition learning. Research with this paradigm has so far used only emotionally neutral materials and ignored emotional factors, which seems inappropriate given the well-documented impact of emotion on cognitive processing. The present study used massive repetition priming to investigate whether the emotional valence of learning materials affects implicit language learning. Participants read a list of Chinese words and made speeded perceptual judgments about the spatial configuration of the two characters in a word. Each word was repeated 15 times in the whole learning session. There were three types of words, negative, positive, or neutral in their emotional valence, presented in separate blocks. Although similar levels of asymptotic performance were reached for different valence conditions showing comparable total effects of learning, learning of the positive words was found to be associated with fewer plateaus of shorter durations and to reach saturation earlier, compared with neutral and negative words. The results showed for the first time that the emotional valence of learning materials has significant effects on the time course of learning so that positive materials are learned faster and more efficiently, relative to negative and neutral materials. The study indicates the importance to explicitly consider the role of emotional factors in implicit language learning research.
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 11/2009; 39(3):199-211. · 0.59 Impact Factor
-
[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: A novel neural model for emotional modulation of word reading is proposed. This model has four principal hypotheses: the dominant
activation region hypothesis, the emotional modulation hypothesis, the attentional level hypothesis, and the interaction hypothesis.
Four lines of research were reviewed to provide evidence for these hypotheses: (1) neuro-cognitive studies on the mechanisms
of word reading (i.e., neural networks for reading); (2) studies on the influence of words’ emotional valence on word reading;
(3) studies of the effect of attention on word reading; and (4) studies on emotional modulation of word reading under different
attentional levels.
Chinese Science Bulletin 01/2006; 51(4):377-384. · 1.32 Impact Factor
