Abstract
The development of Embodied Philosophy and Embodied Cognition has evoked a new conception which emphasizes the importance of individual experience in language comprehension. This conception, named Views of Embodied Language Comprehension argues that language is built upon perception and action and the process of language comprehension is a simulation of the scenario described by language.
Word is the basic unit of language, and emotional words are different from neutral words for they have different emotional valences. Emotions are closely related to the evolution of mankind. Negative emotions remind people stay away from stimulus while positive emotions can push people toward stimulus. Can the perceptive experience which approach advantages and avoid disadvantages be reflected in cognitive process of word valence? Research shows that word valence and pull-push reaction have congruent effect. For positive word, pull reaction time is significantly shorter than push reaction time; however, for negative word, push reaction time is significantly shorter than pull reaction time. Therefore, the “approach-advantage and avoid-disadvantage” has a psychological reality.
On the basis of previous studies, this research continues to investigate the impact of simulation degree and concreteness on emotional words ’embodied representation. Experiment 1 adopted valence decision task to explore the emotional words ’ space representation and the impact of concreteness on this characterization. The result showed that there was an interaction between valence and body-respond button distance, but congruent effect was just found in sensitive negative words, and the concreteness had no impact of this interaction. Experiment 2 used prime processing task to explore the emotional words’ approach-avoid action representation and the impact of concreteness of this characterization. It was found that there was some interaction between word’s valence and pull-push action speed. Words concreteness affected the congruent effect and concrete words’ congruent effect was greater than abstract words.
In conclusion, the result of the experiment results shows that both simulation degree and concreteness could affect the embodied representation of word’s valence.
Key words
simulation degree /
Concreteness /
word valance /
embodied cognition
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zhang yuzhi.
The impact of Simulation Degree and Concreteness on the representation of Word Valence[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2015, 38(3): 538-542
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