Gobin, P. 1 , Faïta-Aïnseba, F. 2 & Mathey, S. 1
1 Université Bordeaux Segalen, Laboratoire de Psychologie Santé et Qualité de Vie, EA4139
2 Université Bordeaux Segalen, Laboratoire Cognition et Facteurs Humains, EA 487
The aim of the study was to investigate whether the time course of the orthographic priming effect depends on the emotional valence of the orthographic neighbour and on prime duration. Target words were presented in a primed lexical decision task in which event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The neutral targets (e.g., GICLER [squirt], TINTER [ring]) had only one higher-frequency orthographic neighbour. This neighbour was negative for half of the targets (e.g., gifler [slap]) and neutral for the other half (e.g., tenter [tempt]). Target words were preceded by their neighbour or by a non-alphabetic control prime. Two prime durations of 66 ms (Experiment 1) and 166 ms (Experiment 2) were used. In Experiment 1, the results showed an orthographic priming effect on three ERP components (P150, N200 and N400), modulated by the negative valence of the orthographic neighbour. In Experiment 2, the same components were influenced by the orthographic priming effect but their latency was shorter and their amplitude increased. Moreover, the emotional valence of the neighbour no longer influenced the time course of the orthographic priming effect. Taken together, these results suggest early activation of the affective system whose involvement decreases during word processing.