ABSTRACTNESS MODULATES THE VALENCE-AROUSAL INTERACTION: A CHINESE MEGASTUDY ON THE ROLE OF ABSTRACTNESS, VALENCE AND AROUSAL IN LEXICAL DECISION PERFORMANCE

Abstract

The role of abstractness, valence and arousal has not been well-researched within Chinese. To investigate the role of these three variables on Chinese lexical decision performance, hierarchical and multiple regression analysis was conducted on megastudy data of both the CLP and MELD-SCH. The first analysis examined the unique item-level variance explained by the affective variables. Affective variables accounted for further variance above and beyond the control variables, suggesting that valence and arousal play important parts in Chinese word processing. The second analysis focused on the interactive effects between abstractness, valence and arousal. Results showed that an insignificant valence-arousal interaction but a significant 3-way interaction. For concrete words, participants recognize high-arousal words more quickly than low-arousal words, with this effect being stronger within negative words. For abstract words, participants also recognize high-arousal words more quickly than low-arousal words, however, this effect is now stronger within positive words. The enhanced arousal effect within concrete negative words is speculated to be due to higher threat ratings while the enhanced arousal effect within abstract positive words is speculated on the account of the Density hypothesis. The abstractness, valence and arousal interaction is a new trend to be further investigated in Chinese word processing.