Valence without meaning: Investigating form and semantic components in pseudowords valence.

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Psychology
• Computational Linguistics

Background:

• Valence is a key semantic dimension linked to approach-avoidance behaviors.
• Existing words' valence can be predicted from surface and semantic features.
• Novel stimuli like pseudowords may carry meaning through subword information.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate if humans reliably assign valence to pseudowords.
• Identify factors influencing pseudoword valence judgments.
• Extend understanding of how novel stimuli acquire meaning.

Main Methods:

• Trained models to predict valence for existing words using form and meaning.
• Extended models to predict valence for pseudowords in data-driven procedures.
• Evaluated models based on surface-level and orthographic neighbor information.

Main Results:

• The best-performing model for pseudoword valence incorporated letter composition and orthographic neighbors.
• This indicates pseudoword valence is traceable to basic surface-level features.
• Findings support the nonarbitrary nature of language and novel stimulus processing.

Conclusions:

• Humans can reliably assign valence to pseudowords.
• Pseudoword valence is influenced by their orthographic properties.
• Language's nonarbitrary nature extends to how we perceive novel words.