Abstract: The affective priming effect is a hot research field of psychology and many studies have confirmed the existence of this effect in recent decades. Researchers found that if the emotional valences of the prime words and the target words are same, the cognitive processing of the second stimulus will be sped up. This is named congruent effect of affective priming. In recent years, several researches find the existence of the reversal effect of affective priming, namely the response time becomes faster when the target word’s emotional valence is contrary to the prime word’s valence. Most of the existing studies focus on judging the target words’ emotional valence. Under this task paradigm, the consistent emotional valence of the prime and target word, especially of the high-frequency words, may tend to occur a conflict of reaction. However, the reversal effect is instability and is influenced by this task paradigm, characteristics of stimuli , performance instruction, word’s length, word’s frequency, presentation parameter, etc. In order to further test the cognitive mechanism of the affective priming effect and the response competing model, the present study tries to explore the differences between emotional valence categorization task and lexical decision task of Chinese character’s affective priming effect. The two experiments were both adopted words-words affective priming paradigms. Exp.1 was to perform the emotional valence categorization task in which subjects were asked to judge whether the target Chinese character was positive or negative by pressing button. As the volunteers, 20 college students participated in Exp.1, which used 2(prime word emotional valence: positive and negative)*2(target word emotional valence: positive and negative)*2(target word frequency: high-frequency and low-frequency) three factors’ within subject design. The same design was used in Exp.2, but changed to the lexical decision task. Other 20 college students were asked to determine whether the target Chinese character was a real character or a pseudo-character by pressing button. The results of Exp.1 showed that high-frequency target word revealed reversing effect of affective priming. Consistent condition’s RTs were significant longer than inconsistent (positive-negative or negative-positive) condition’s RTs. Moreover, inconsistent condition evoked higher P200 and more positive N400 than consistent condition. In contrast, low-frequency target word revealed the affective-congruent effect. Consistent condition’s RTs were significant shorter than inconsistent condition’s RTs. The differences also manifested in the changes of the mean amplitude of the early attention ERP component, namely P200, as same as several late components, for instances the N400. In Exp. 2 the results showed that both high-frequency target words and low-frequency target words revealed the affective-congruent effect. The RTs of consistent condition were significant shorter than those of inconsistent condition, especially in low-frequency target words. Besides the behavioral data, those effects also displayed in the differences of the N400 component’s mean amplitude values of high-frequency positive words. Integrating the above results it can be confirmed that the reversal effect of affective priming comes from the Top-Down attention guidance (eg. emotional valence categorization task) and the easy accessible stimuli (eg. high-frequency word). The reversal effect derived from the response competition between priming stimuli and probe stimuli.

Key words: affective priming, task paradigm, word frequency, P200, N400

摘要： 本研究使用ERP技术对比了效价判断与真假字判断两种任务形式下的汉字情绪启动效应。结果发现，在效价判断任务中高频目标字出现情绪启动的反转效应，效价不一致比一致条件下反应时短，诱发了较大的P200；低频目标字出现情绪启动的一致性效应，效价一致比不一致条件下反应时短，诱发了较大的P200与N400。真假字判断任务中高频和低频目标字均出现情绪启动的一致性效应。情绪启动的反转效应依赖于刺激材料的可通达性与注意导向，启动字与目标字的反应竞争关系导致了情绪启动的反转效应。

关键词: 情绪启动效应, 任务形式, 字频, P200, N400