How do word valence and classes influence lexical processing? Evidence from virtual reality emotional contexts

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Emotional word processing is influenced by various factors.
• Virtual reality (VR) offers immersive environments to study emotional responses.
• Understanding how context affects cognitive processing is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of word class and valence on emotional word processing within different VR emotional contexts.
• To examine the physiological responses (galvanic skin response) to emotional stimuli in VR.
• To explore the interplay between VR context, word characteristics, and emotional perception.

Main Methods:

• 115 participants completed a modified affect labeling task.
• Participants experienced distinct virtual reality (VR) emotional scenarios.
• Galvanic skin responses were measured to assess physiological arousal.

Main Results:

• Positive words were processed more than neutral words, which were processed more than negative words (word valence effect).
• Nouns were processed more than adjectives (word class effect).
• Both positive and negative VR contexts increased positive word selection, but negative VR contexts led to more processing of negative words and higher galvanic skin response amplitudes.

Conclusions:

• VR emotional contexts significantly modulate emotional word processing and physiological responses.
• Findings align with situation-consistency and mood-consistency effects.
• Word class and inherent word features (concreteness, imageability, arousal, valence) interact with VR context to shape cognitive and affective outcomes.