| The processing of words is the cornerstone of verbal representation.The cognitive processing mechanisms of emotional words,which are dual-meaning,with both affective and conceptual connotations,have attracted the global attention of researchers in the fields of linguistics,psychology,and neuroscience.The distinction between emotion-label and emotion-laden words has been a breakthrough in the field of emotional word processing.Researchers have reached inconsistent conclusions regarding the time course and neural activation of emotion-label and emotion-laden word processing.The reason for this inconsistency could be due to that more attention was needed when participants processed the meanings of emotion-laden words.However,the important role of attention in the processing of emotion-label and emotion-laden words was overlooked in previous studies.Thus,the present study adopted the high-resolution event-related potential（ERP）technology to examine the neurocognitive mechanisms of emotion-label and emotion-laden words.On this basis,this study investigated how attentional resources allocated to the emotional information of words and the emotional valence of words modulate the processing of emotion-label and emotion-laden words.Three experiments were conducted to this end.Experiment 1 used a silent reading task to examine the valence effect on neurocognitive mechanisms of Chinese emotionlabel and emotion-laden word processing under the condition of moderate attentional resources allocated to the emotional information of words.The results were as follows:In the stage of the perceptual processing of emotion-label and emotion-laden words,individuals showed a negative bias.Negative words elicited enhanced P1 and P2 than positive or neutral words and negative emotion-laden words produced more augmented N170 than positive emotion-laden words in the left hemisphere.In the semantic processing stage,emotion-laden words had richer semantic information and induced larger early posterior negativity（EPN）than emotion-label and neutral words.In the elaborative processing stage,there was no significant difference in the late positive complex（LPC）induced by positive emotion-label,positive emotion-laden,negative emotion-label,and negative emotion-laden words.Nevertheless,positive emotion-laden and negative emotion-label words attracted more attention,were elaboratively processed and evoked enhanced LPC compared to neutral words.These findings indicated a neurocognitive dissociation between emotion-label and emotionladen words and the dissociation was modulated by the emotional valence of words.Experiment 2 modulated the attentional resources allocated to the emotional information of words by adopting an emotional categorization task and an emotional Stroop task,where the emotional information was task-relevant and task-irrelevant.It further investigated how attentional resources and the emotional valence of words modulate the processing of emotion-label and emotion-laden words.The behavioral data showed that when the attentional resources were sufficient,emotional word type and valence interactively modulated emotional word processing.Emotion-label words were responded faster than emotion-laden words during positive word processing,while emotion-laden words were responded faster than emotion-label words during negative word processing.When the attentional resources were limited,negative words were associated with longer reaction times than positive words.The ERP results were as follows:In the stage of the perceptual processing of emotion-label and emotion-laden words,individuals showed a negative bias.Negative words elicited enhanced N170 than positive ones.Negative emotion-laden words elicited larger P2 than positive emotion-laden words.In the semantic processing stage,attentional resources and emotional valence interactively modulated the processing of emotionlabel and emotion-laden words.Emotion-laden words had richer semantic information and elicited enhanced EPN than emotion-label words,and this effect was more robust during negative word processing.Emotion-label words elicited stronger emotional cognitive conflict and evoked larger N400 than emotion-laden words and this effect was more robust when participants responded to the color of words.In the elaborative processing stage,attentional resources and emotional valence modulated the processing of emotion-label and emotion-laden words.When the attentional resources were sufficient,individuals further elaboratively processed the emotional cognitive conflict and emotion-label words elicited larger early LPC than emotion-laden words.Negative words evoked larger late LPC than positive words.When attentional resources were limited,we found no significant difference between these four types of emotional words.The findings of Experiment 2 indicated that attentional resources modulated by the task relevance of the emotional information and emotional valence interactively modulated emotion-label and emotion-laden word processing.Experiment 3 used a dot-probe task to explore the neurocognitive mechanisms of individuals’ attentional bias toward emotion-label and emotion-laden words under the condition of competition for attentional resources.Behavioral data analysis adopted both modified and response-based scores.The modified scores were better than the response-based scores in terms of sensitivity and explanatory power.The modified scores showed that the attentional bias mechanisms of emotional words were modulated by emotional word type and valence,and this bias originated from the difficulty in disengaging from those words.Participants had difficulty disengaging from positive emotion-laden words and the attentional bias toward negative emotionlabel words was larger than that toward positive emotion-label words.The ERP results for the word pairs were as follows:In the stage of the perceptual processing of emotional word pairs,positive emotion-laden word pairs elicited larger P1 amplitudes in the left hemisphere than in the right hemisphere,indicating an early attentional bias towards positive emotion-laden words.Under the condition of competition for attentional resources,individuals did not access the meaning of words,nor did they access the elaborative processing of words.In general,the current study finds a neurocognitive dissociation between emotion-label and emotion-laden words.This dissociation is modulated by attentional resources and emotional valence.Under the conditions of sufficient,moderate,limited,and competing for attentional resources,the emotional valence effect on the processing mechanisms of emotion-label and emotion-laden words differs in the stages of perceptual processing,semantic processing,and elaborative processing.Based on these and previous studies,this research tentatively constructs an attention-oriented neurocognitive model for the processing of emotion-label and emotion-laden words to reveal the important role of attention in the processing of emotion-label and emotionladen words.This study has theoretical,empirical,and methodological implications.Theoretically,the current study proposes an attention-oriented neurocognitive model for the processing of emotion-label and emotion-laden words,contributing to the development of affective neurolinguistics.Empirically,this study investigated the interaction between language,emotion,and attention during individuals’ processing of emotional words,contributing to the construction of the emotional word processing norm of healthy individuals.Thus,it provides certain data for mental health research.In addition,this study found the significance of the embodiment of language,which might contribute to the teaching of words.Methodologically,this study found that the modified scores of dot-probe tasks were more suitable than the response-based scores for investigating attentional bias toward different types of emotional words. |
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