Concreteness in emotional words: ERP evidence from a hemifield study

Concrete and imageable words are processed faster and more accurately than abstract words. Patient and EEG data support a right hemisphere preference for concrete word processing. However, imaging studies are rather inconclusive concerning this lateralization hypothesis. Processing emotional information is also supposed to involve the right hemisphere in general, or for negative emotions in particular. Here we addressed the possibility that the two information types may interact by visually presenting words and pseudowords in a hemifield study. Participants judged the lexical status of the presented items. Valence effects (emotional vs. neutral) were found in the early P200, N300 and N400 components. Concrete words differed from abstract words in the N300 and N400. However, no interaction was found between emotionality and concreteness. Also, no specific right hemisphere involvement was found for either concrete or emotional words. The results are discussed with regard to the dual coding theory and the context availability model. Hypotheses about the early impact of emotionality on information processing are generated