Contrast and Congruence Effects in Affective Priming of Words and Melodies

• Authors: Zehra F. Peynircioğlu , James D. March , Aimée M. Surprenant , Ian Neath
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

We examined possible congruence and contrast effects during affective priming of linguistic and musical stimuli. In Experiment 1, when two words were presented auditorily, participants judged the affective content of the second item (happy or sad) faster when the affects matched (congruency), as expected. In Experiment 2, however, a contrast effect was observed with melodies, with slower responses in the matched conditions. In Experiment 3, two words, two melodies, or one of each were presented. A congruency effect was observed when the target was a musical stimulus (regardless of the prime type) but a contrast effect was observed when the target was a linguistic stimulus (again, regardless of the prime type). The results show that affective properties can influence the priming in both music and language. However, such priming is sensitive to the type of task, and strategic/expectancy effects play a large role when stimulus types are mixed.

Keywords

EN

language and music; affect communication; affective priming; auditory priming; emotion and priming; congruency effects; contrast effects

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Psychology of Language and Communication
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 17
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-15

Dates

published

2013-06-01

online

2013-06-01

Contributors

author

Zehra F. Peynircioğlu

• American University, Washington

author

James D. March

• Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s

author

Aimée M. Surprenant

• Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s

author

Ian Neath

• Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s

References

• Anderson, J. & Bower, G. (1973). Human associative memory. Oxford: V. H. Winston & Sons.
• Berner, M.P. & Maier, M.A. (2004). The Direction of Affective Priming as a Function of Trait Anxiety When Naming Target Words With Regular and Irregular Pronunciation. Experimental Psychology, 51, 180-190.
• Bharucha, J. &Stoeckig, K. (1987). Priming of chords: Spreading activation or overlapping frequency spectra? Perception & Psychophysics, 41, 519-524.
• Bigand, E.E. & Poulin-Charronnat, B.B. (2006). Are we ‘experienced listeners’? A review of the musical capacities that do not depend on formal musical training. Cognition, 100, 100-130.[PubMed]
• Bigand, E., Poulin, B., Tillmann, B., Madurell, F., & D’Adamo, D.A. (2003). Sensory versus cognitive components in harmonic priming. Journal of ExperimentalPsychology: Human Perception and Performance, 29, 159-171.
• Blair, K., Richell, R., Mitchell, D., Leonard, A., Morton, J., & Blair, R. (2006). They know the words, but not the music: Affective and semantic priming in individuals with psychopathy. Biological Psychology, 73, 114-123.
• Bradley, M.M. & Lang, P.J. (1999). Affective norms for English words (ANEW): Instruction manual and affective ratings. Technical Report C-1, The Center forResearch in Psychophysiology, University of Florida.
• Collins, A.M. & Loftus, E.F. (1975). A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Review, 82, 407-428.[Crossref]
• Curtis, M.E. & Bharucha, J.J. (2010). The minor third communicates sadness in speech, mirroring its use in music. Emotion, 10, 335-348.[WoS]
• Daltrozzo, J. & Schön, D. (2009). Conceptual processing in music as revealed by N400 effects on words and musical targets. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21, 1882-1892.[WoS]
• Dolese, M., Zellner, D.A., Vasserman, M., & Parker, S. (2005). Categorization affects hedonic contrast in the visual arts. Bulletin of Psychology & the Arts, 5, 21-25.
• Fazio, R.H. (2001). On the automatic activation of associated evaluations: An overview. Cognition and Emotion, 15, 115-141.
• Fazio, R.H., Sanbonmatsu, D.M., Powell, M.C., & Kardes, F.R. (1986). On the automatic activation of attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 229-238.[WoS]
• Hermans, D., Spruyt, A., & Eelen, P. (2003). Automatic affective priming of recently acquired stimulus valence: Priming at SOA 300 but not at SOA 1000. Cognitionand Emotion, 17, 83-99.
• Klauer, K. (1998). Affective priming. In M. Wolfgang & M. Hewstone (Eds.), EuropeanReview of Social Psychology, Vol. 8 (pp. 67-103). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
• Klauer, K., Teige-Mocigemba, S., & Spruyt, A. (2009). Contrast effects in spontaneous evaluations: A psychophysical account. Journal of Personality and SocialPsychology, 96, 265-287.[WoS]
• Klinger, M.R., Burton, P.C., & Pitts, G. (2000). Mechanisms of unconscious priming: I. Response competition, not spreading activation. Journal of ExperimentalPsychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 441-455.
• Koelsch, S., Kasper, E., Sammler, D., Schulze, K., Gunter, T., & Friederici, A.D. (2004). Music, language and meaning: Brain signatures of semantic processing. NatureNeuroscience, 7, 302-307.
• Painter, J.G. & Koelsch, S. (2011). Can out-of-context musical sounds convey meaning? An ERP study on the processing of meaning in music. Psychophysiology, 48, 645-655.[WoS][PubMed][Crossref]
• Parker, S., Bascom, J., Rabinovitz, B., & Zellner, D. (2008). Positive and negative hedonic contrast with musical stimuli. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity,and the Arts, 2, 171-174.
• Russell, J.A. (1980). A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and SocialPsychology, 39, 1161-1178.
• Schmitz, M. & Wentura, D. (2012). Evaluative priming of naming and semantic categorization responses revisited: A mutual facilitation explanation. Journalof Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 38, 984-1000.
• Sollberger, B., Reber, R., & Eckstein, D. (2003). Musical chords as affective priming context in a word-evaluation task. Music Perception, 20, 263-282.[Crossref]
• Steinbeis, N. & Koelsch, S. (2010). Affective priming effects of musical sounds on the processing of word meaning. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 604-621.[WoS]
• Sumner, M. & Samuel, A.G. (2007). Lexical inhibition and sublexical facilitation are surprisingly long lasting. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning,Memory, and Cognition, 33, 769-790.[WoS]
• Tillmann, B., Bigand, E., Escoffier, N., & Lalitte, P. (2006). The influence of musical relatedness on timbre discrimination. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 18, 343-358.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/plc-2013-0001