Skip to content Skip to navigation
University of Warwick
  • Study
  • |
  • Research
  • |
  • Business
  • |
  • Alumni
  • |
  • News
  • |
  • About

University of Warwick
Publications service & WRAP

Highlight your research

  • WRAP
    • Home
    • Search WRAP
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse WRAP by Year
    • Browse WRAP by Subject
    • Browse WRAP by Department
    • Browse WRAP by Funder
    • Browse Theses by Department
  • Publications Service
    • Home
    • Search Publications Service
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse Publications service by Year
    • Browse Publications service by Subject
    • Browse Publications service by Department
    • Browse Publications service by Funder
  • Help & Advice
University of Warwick

The Library

  • Login
  • Admin

Automatic vigilance for negative words in lexical decision and naming : comment on Larsen, Mercer, and Balota (2006)

Tools
- Tools
+ Tools

Estes, Zachary and Adelman, James S. (2008) Automatic vigilance for negative words in lexical decision and naming : comment on Larsen, Mercer, and Balota (2006). Emotion, Vol.8 (No.4). pp. 441-444. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.8.4.441

[img]
Preview
PDF
WRAP_Estes_Estes_Adelman_2.pdf - Draft Version - Requires a PDF viewer.

Download (132Kb)
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.8.4.441

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

An automatic vigilance hypothesis states that humans preferentially attend to negative stimuli, and this attention to negative valence disrupts the processing of other stimulus properties. Thus, negative words typically elicit slower color naming, word naming, and lexical decisions than neutral or positive words. Larsen, Mercer, and Balota (see record 2006-04603-006) analyzed the stimuli from 32 published studies, and they found that word valence was confounded with several lexical factors known to affect word recognition. Indeed, with these lexical factors covaried out, Larsen et al. found no evidence of automatic vigilance. The authors report a more sensitive analysis of 1011 words. Results revealed a small but reliable valence effect, such that negative words (e.g., "shark") elicit slower lexical decisions and naming than positive words (e.g., "beach"). Moreover, the relation between valence and recognition was categorical rather than linear; the extremity of a word's valence did not affect its recognition. This valence effect was not attributable to word length, frequency, orthographic neighborhood size, contextual diversity, first phoneme, or arousal. Thus, the present analysis provides the most powerful demonstration of automatic vigilance to date.

Item Type: Journal Article
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Divisions: Faculty of Science > Psychology
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): Dependency grammar, Lexical grammar, Apperception
Journal or Publication Title: Emotion
Publisher: American Psychological Association
ISSN: 1528-3542
Official Date: August 2008
Dates:
DateEvent
August 2008Published
Volume: Vol.8
Number: No.4
Page Range: pp. 441-444
DOI: 10.1037/1528-3542.8.4.441
Status: Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version: Open Access

Data sourced from Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics

twitter

Email us: wrap@warwick.ac.uk
Contact Details
About Us