ABSTRACT
Previous studies have found that sweet perception affects the subjective evaluation of interpersonal intimacy and romantic semantic processing. However, the cognitive processes involved in this effect are unclear. The aim of the current study was to investigate the sweet-love embodied effect in semantic processing and its underlying mechanism by Event-Related potentials technique. Participants were randomly exposed to sweet-taste or tasteless conditions, during which they performed a lexical decision-task that involved romantic and non-romantic words. The results showed an enhanced N400 for romantic words compared to non-romantic words in the sweet-taste condition, and a larger P200 for romantic words relative to non-romantic words. The results demonstrate that taste sensations can cross-modally facilitate the semantic processing of romance. These findings support the embodied effect of sweet-love and are discussed from the perspective of embodied cognition with knowledge activation of concept and semantic richness.
ABSTRACT
A number of studies have found a concreteness effect and an abstractness effect in word processing. The triple-component hypothesis proposed that the emotional aspect of words, such as the valence of words, contributes to the abstractness effect. Although there is no direct evidence for the role of affective characteristics of individuals in the abstractness effect, some studies have found a negative bias of highly neurotic individuals. The current study was designed to examine the abstractness effect of words for individuals who were highly neurotic. The event-related potential results showed that highly neurotic individuals exhibited an abstractness effect for negative words on the P300, which was evoked by emotion information, and a concreteness effect for negative words on the N400, which was activated by semantic processing. These results are discussed from the perspective of triple-component hypothesis.
