It's all in your head - how anticipating evaluation affects the processing of emotional trait adjectives

Abstract

Language has an intrinsically evaluative and communicative function. Words can serve to describe emotional traits and states in others and communicate evaluations. Using electroencephalography (EEG), we investigate how the cerebral processing of emotional trait adjectives is modulated by their perceived communicative sender in anticipation of an evaluation. 16 students were videotaped while they described themselves. They were told that a stranger would evaluate their personality based on this recording by endorsing trait adjectives. In a control condition a computer program supposedly randomly selected the adjectives. Actually, both conditions were random. A larger parietal N1 was found for adjectives in the supposedly human-generated condition. This indicates that more visual attention is allocated to the presented adjectives when putatively interacting with a human. Between 400 and 700 ms a fronto-central main effect of emotion was found. Positive, and in tendency also negative adjectives, led to a larger late positive potential (LPP) compared to neutral adjectives. A centro-parietal interaction in the LPP-window was due to larger LPP amplitudes for negative compared to neutral adjectives within the 'human sender' condition. Larger LPP amplitudes are related to stimulus elaboration and memory consolidation. Participants responded more to emotional content particularly when presented in a meaningful 'human' context. This was first observed in the early posterior negativity window (210-260 ms). But the significant interaction between sender and emotion reached only trend-level on post hoc tests. Our results specify differential effects of even implied communicative partners on emotional language processing. They show that anticipating evaluation by a communicative partner alone is sufficient to increase the relevance of particularly emotional adjectives, given a seemingly realistic interactive setting.

Keywords: EEG/ERP; communicative context; emotion; feedback anticipation; language; social feedback.

FIGURE 1

Trial presentation using the fictitious interactive software. Each trial started with a presented trait adjective.

FIGURE 2

Selected electrode clusters for the early time windows. Selected electrodes are highlighted by color.

FIGURE 3

Selected electrode clusters for the late time window. Selected electrodes are highlighted by color.

FIGURE 4

Results for the main effect of communicative source at the N1. (A) Difference topographies. Blue color indicates more negativity and red color more positivity in the ‘human sender’ condition. (B) Selected electrodes CPPz, displaying the time course over parietal sites.

FIGURE 5

Main effect for the emotional content in the late positive potential time window. (A) Head Models for the post hoc comparisons within the respective emotion. Blue color indicates more negativity and red color more positivity for the respective difference. (B) Selected electrode FCz showing the enhanced positivity for positive and as a trend also for negative adjectives compared to neutral adjectives.

FIGURE 6

Interaction between communicative sender and emotional content in the late positive potential time window. (A) Head Models for the post hoc comparisons within the respective communicative sender. Blue color indicates more negativity and red color more positivity for the respective difference. (B) Selected electrode CCPz showing the larger positivity for negative compared to neutral adjectives within the ‘human sender’ and small differences between emotional and neutral adjectives within the ‘computer sender.’