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The contribution of affective content to cue-response correspondence in a word association task: Focus on emotion words and emotion-laden words

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2023

Ángel-Armando Betancourt ,
Marc Guasch  and
Pilar Ferré Open the ORCID record for Pilar Ferré [Opens in a new window]
Ángel-Armando Betancourt
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and CRAMC, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
Marc Guasch
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and CRAMC, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
Pilar Ferré*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and CRAMC, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
*
Corresponding author: Pilar Ferré; Email: mariadelpilar.ferre@urv.cat
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

affective contentassortativityemotion-laden wordsemotion wordsmental lexiconword association
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 44 , Issue 6 , November 2023 , pp. 991 - 1011
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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