FANCat: French affective norms for ten emotional categories.

The present study develops key research for French word norms that combines the predominant theories of dimensional and discrete (or categorical) emotions. As a result, we provide the database FANCat, affective norms for a set of 1031 French words on ten discrete emotion categories: fear, anger, disgust, sadness, anxiety, awe, excitement, contentment, amusement, and serenity. FANCat complements a previous word set, FAN, which provides only the dimensional norms, valence, and arousal (Monnier & Syssau, 2014). Herein, we introduce five discrete positive emotions in efforts to differentiate positive emotions at higher resolution and specificity. Although ten emotional categories were considered in FANCat norms, results showed a high degree of inter-rater reliability and a good external validity. Then, distributional analyses of words into the ten emotion categories revealed that positive words evoked mainly the emotions awe, contentment, and amusement, and principally evoked either one positive emotion only ("pure" words) or two (mixed words). This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the relationship between language, and negative and positive emotions. It is also currently the only norms database in French that analyses ten discrete emotions as well as including valence and arousal. FANCat is available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338622765_FANCat_database .

Affective norms for 720 French words rated by children and adolescents (FANchild).

FANchild (French Affective Norms for Children) provides norms of valence and arousal for a large corpus of French words (N = 720) rated by 908 French children and adolescents (ages 7, 9, 11, and 13). The ratings were made using the Self-Assessment Manikin (Lang, 1980). Because it combines evaluations of arousal and valence and includes ratings provided by 7-, 9-, 11-, and 13-year-olds, this database complements and extends existing French-language databases. Good response reliability was observed in each of the four age groups. Despite a significant level of consensus, we found age differences in both the valence and arousal ratings: Seven- and 9-year-old children gave higher mean valence and arousal ratings than did the other age groups. Moreover, the tendency to judge words positively (i.e., positive bias) decreased with age. This age- and sex-related database will enable French-speaking researchers to study how the emotional character of words influences their cognitive processing, and how this influence evolves with age. FANchild is available at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Catherine_Monnier/contributions .

Affective norms for French words (FAN).

The present study provides affective norms for a large corpus of French words (N = 1,031) that were rated on emotional valence and emotional arousal by 469 French young adults. Ratings were made using the Self-Assessment Manikin (Lang, 1980). By combining evaluations of valence and arousal, and including ratings provided by male and female young adults, this database complements and extends existing French-language databases. The response reliability for the two affective dimensions was good, and the consistency between the present and previous ratings was high. We found a strong quadratic relationship between the valence and arousal ratings. Perceptions of the affective content of a word were partly linked to sex. This new affective database (FAN) will enable French-speaking researchers to select suitable materials for studies of how the character of affective words influences their cognitive processing. FAN is available as an online supplement downloadable with this article.

[The influence of semantic richness on the visual recognition of emotional words]. / L'influence de la richesse sémantique dans la reconnaissance visuelle des mots émotionnels.

The aim of this study was to expand our knowledge of the influence of emotional valence on visual word recognition by answering two questions. The first was to examine whether the emotional valence effect is sensitive to different types of task requirements, and the second was to examine whether words polysemy can modulate the effect of emotional valence. For this purpose, we manipulated orthogonally emotional valence (negative, positive and neutral words) and polysemy (polysemous vs. non polysemous words) in two versions of the lexical-decision task (one with legal nonwords and one with illegal nonwords). Results showed an effect of task: emotional valence and polysemy influenced lexical decision latencies only in the legal version of the lexical-decision task. Furthermore, results showed that the effect of polysemy was dependant on emotional valence. We observed a facilitation of polysemy for neutral words but not for emotional ones. Finally this experiment also showed that polysemy modulates the emotional valence effect. The facilitation observed for non polysemous emotional words compared to non polysemous neutral words disappeared for polysemous words. These findings fit with other studies showing facilitation for emotional word recognition and allow conclusions concerning the role of semantics on emotional word recognition.

Children's emotional norms for 600 French words.

The present study provides a French child database containing a large corpus of words (N = 600) that were rated on emotional valence (positive, neutral, and negative) by French children differing in both age (5, 7, and 9 years old) and sex (girls and boys). Good response reliability was observed in each of the three age groups. The results showed some age differences in the children's ratings. With increasing age, the percentage of words rated positive decreased, whereas the percentage of neutral words increased and the percentage of negative words remained stable. Our study did not reveal marked differences across sex groups. The database compiled here should become a useful tool for experimental studies in which verbal material is used with children. It would be worthwhile in future research to study how children process emotional words and also to control the emotional variable in the same way as other linguistic variables in the experimental design. The norms from this study may be downloaded from brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

Semantic contribution to verbal short-term memory: are pleasant words easier to remember than neutral words in serial recall and serial recognition?

In the four experiments reported here, we examined the role of word pleasantness on immediate serial recall and immediate serial recognition. In Experiment 1, we compared verbal serial recall of pleasant and neutral words, using a limited set of items. In Experiment 2, we replicated Experiment 1 with an open set of words (i.e., new items were used on every trial). In Experiments 3 and 4, we assessed immediate serial recognition of pleasant and neutral words, using item sets from Experiments 1 and 2. Pleasantness was found to have a facilitation effect on both immediate serial recall and immediate serial recognition. This study supplies some new supporting arguments in favor of a semantic contribution to verbal short-term memory performance. The pleasantness effect observed in immediate serial recognition showed that, contrary to a number of earlier findings, performance on this task can also turn out to be dependent on semantic factors. The results are discussed in relation to nonlinguistic and psycholinguistic models of short-term memory.

[Deficit of access or storage: semantic memory processing in Alzheimer disease]. / Problème d'accès ou déficit de stockage ? Apport du niveau de complexité de la tâche à l'étude des troubles sémantiques lors du vieillissement pathologique : le cas de la maladie d'Alzheimer.

This study investigates three principal aspects of semantic memory processing in Alzheimer's disease: word finding, knowledge of the specific and generic attributes of concepts. Semantic memory is assessed by a range of verbal and visual tasks differentiated according to their level of complexity. Our hypothesis is that the processing of these types of information is modulated by the degree of effortful processing required by the tasks. The AD patients show more important difficulties on the tasks of high level of complexity. Nevertheless, although their performances improve when the level of complexity decreases, they significantly remain lower than those of the normal older subjects. These results are discussed with regard to the models of semantic memory, with particular reference to the debate in terms of a deficit of access or storage of this system in Alzheimer disease.

[Forgetting: a product of memory]. / L'oubli: un produit de la mémoire.

If someone asks you what your children talk about at breakfast this morning, it is likely that you not able to tell him. This forgetting will not appear like a mark of memory disorder. But if it concerns a 80 years old people! Over the last decade, it has been claimed that aging induces reduced inhibitory processing and this has been put forward to explain forgetting. However, several experiments have proposed that non inhibitory mechanisms can account for the pattern of results. So, aging doesn't involve inhibitory deficit. Recently, a procedure known as the "retrieval practice paradigm," claimed to give a good measure of inhibitory processing whose goal is to suppress competing traces during an episodic retrieval. In this paradigm, participants study exemplars from taxonomic categories (e.g., fruit-orange, fruit-banana, drink-scotch) and then practice retrieving half of the exemplars from half of the categories by recalling those studied items given a category and letter stem as cue (e.g., fruit-or _). Each item is tested several times. After a delay, subjects are tested on all items. Practice impairs recall of the remaining non practiced exemplars of the practiced categories, phenomenon known as "retrieval-induced forgetting". In the present experiment, we would to determine whether retrieving an item from semantic memory inhibits other concepts that compete with it during retrieval. Indeed, studies of lexical ambiguity resolution provide evidence for inhibition in semantic retrieval. For that, we use homographs because their natural characteristic involves inhibiting one of their two meanings. We expected that if participants practice a word related to a homograph's subordinate meaning, word related to its dominant meaning would need to be inhibited. Results show that old people showed normal levels of inhibition. Moreover, results show an interaction between practiced-unpracticed items and homograph's polarity. These results suggest that a deficit in inhibitory process can not explain forgetting.

[Connection between the evaluation of positive or negative valence and verbal responses to a lexical decision making task]. / Etude du lien entre l'evaluation de la valence et les réponses verbales dans une tâche de décision lexicale: les réponses oui et non sont-elles des réponses affectives?

Evaluation of the positive or negative valence of a stimulus is an activity that is part of any emotional experience that has been mostly studied using the affective priming paradigm. When the prime and the target have the same valence (e.g. positive prime and positive target), the target response is facilitated as a function of opposing valence conditions (e.g. negative prime and positive target). These studies show that this evaluation is automatic but depends on the nature of the task's implied response because the priming effects are only observed for positive responses, not for negative responses. This result was explained in automatic judgmental tendency model put forth by Abelson and Rosenberg (1958) and Klauer and Stern (1992). In this model, affective priming assumes there is an overlap between both responses, the first response taking precedence as a function of the prime-target valence, and the second response one that is required by the task. We are assuming that another type of response was not foreseen under this model. In fact, upon activating the valence for each of the prime-target elements, two preliminary responses would be activated before the response on the prime-target valence relationship. These responses are directly linked to the prime and target evaluation independently of the prime-target relationship. This hypothesis can be linked to the larger hypothesis whereby the evaluative process is related to two distinct motivational systems corresponding to approach and avoidance behaviour responses (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1990; Neuman & Strack, 2000; Cacciopo, Piester & Bernston, 1993). In this study, we use the hypothesis that when a word leads to a positive valence evaluation, this favours a positive verbal response and inversely, a negative valence word favours a negative response. We are testing this hypothesis outside the affective priming paradigm to study to what extent evaluating a word, even when it is not primed, activates both motivational systems and consequently, positive verbal responses for approach and negative responses for avoidance. To validate this hypothesis, we are re-using both versions of the lexical decision task proposed by Wentura (2000). The classic version leads participants to a positive response for words, and the modified version leads to a no response. This experiment, carried out with thirty-two participants, measures the influence on response time of two experimental factors, the intrasubject valence of words (positive and negative) and the inter-subject factor (yes and no responses to words). Results show an interaction between the type of response and word valence. It is temporally more onerous to give a no response to positive words than to negative words. This result confirms that there is a direct relation between the evaluation of a valence stimulus and the response to this stimulus, a relation that had up to now been essentially observed with motor behaviours, and more rarely with verbal responses. We propose integrating the existence of this link between evaluation and verbal response (yes and no) in interpreting the effects of affective priming.