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Updated: Mar 26, 2026

Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effect of Induced Emotion on Grammar Learning
Published on: January 29, 2020
The dynamic influence of emotional words on sentence comprehension: An ERP study
Jinfeng Ding1,2, Lin Wang3,4, Yufang Yang5,6
1Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chaoyang District, Lincui Road 16, Beijing, 100101, China.
Abstract:
In the present study, we explored the influence of emotional words on the semantic integration of their following neutral nouns during sentence comprehension. We manipulated the emotionality of verbs and the semantic congruity of their following (neutral) object nouns in sentences. Event-related potentials were recorded to the verbs, which were either negative or neutral, and to the object nouns, which were either semantically congruent or incongruent relative to the preceding contexts. We found an N400 and a P600 effect in response to the semantic congruity of the nouns when they followed the neutral verbs. However, the P600 (but not the N400) semantic congruity effect may have been attenuated when the nouns followed the negative verbs. Meanwhile, the negative verbs elicited a larger P2 and N400 than did the neutral verbs. The results indicate that the attention captured by emotional words impaired reanalysis of the following incongruent information, demonstrating a dynamic influence of emotional words on the semantic processing of following information during sentence comprehension.
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