This study aimed at examining the contribution of affective content to the organization of words in the lexicon. Based on existing free association norms and on a series of questionnaires we developed, we examined the characteristics of the words produced as associates to 840 Spanish cue words. Half of them were affective words and the other half were neutral (non-affective) words. Among the affective cue words, some words directly labeled an emotion (emotion words, EM) and others did not label an emotion but could elicit it (emotion-laden words, EL). The words produced as associates were also classified according to this distinction. Furthermore, we examined the relationship between the lexico-semantic and affective properties of the cue words and the associated words. The results revealed that EM, EL, and neutral associated words were elicited to a greater extent by cue words of the same type than by other types of cue words. Furthermore, the degree of correspondence between the affective properties of the cues and their associates was higher than that of lexico-semantic variables. These results have methodological implications for research on semantic memory and are of interest for applied studies focused on affective word organization in specific populations.

本研究旨在检验情感内容对词典中单词组织的贡献。根据现有的自由联想规范和我们开发的一系列调查问卷，我们检查了与 840 个西班牙语提示词关联的单词的特征。其中一半是情感词，另一半是中性（非情感）词。在情感提示词中，有些词直接标记情感（情感词，EM），而另一些词则没有标记情感，但可以引发情感（情感负载词，EL）。作为关联产生的单词也根据这种区别进行分类。此外，我们还研究了提示词和相关词的词汇语义和情感属性之间的关系。结果表明，与其他类型的提示词相比，相同类型的提示词更能引发 EM、EL 和中性关联词。此外，线索的情感属性及其关联之间的对应程度高于词汇语义变量。这些结果对语义记忆研究具有方法论意义，并且对关注特定人群情感词组织的应用研究很有意义。