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Font Size Matters—Emotion and Attention in Cortical Responses to Written Words

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  • Mareike Bayer
  • Werner Sommer
  • Annekathrin Schacht

Abstract

For emotional pictures with fear-, disgust-, or sex-related contents, stimulus size has been shown to increase emotion effects in attention-related event-related potentials (ERPs), presumably reflecting the enhanced biological impact of larger emotion-inducing pictures. If this is true, size should not enhance emotion effects for written words with symbolic and acquired meaning. Here, we investigated ERP effects of font size for emotional and neutral words. While P1 and N1 amplitudes were not affected by emotion, the early posterior negativity started earlier and lasted longer for large relative to small words. These results suggest that emotion-driven facilitation of attention is not necessarily based on biological relevance, but might generalize to stimuli with arbitrary perceptual features. This finding points to the high relevance of written language in today's society as an important source of emotional meaning.

Suggested Citation

  • Mareike Bayer & Werner Sommer & Annekathrin Schacht, 2012. "Font Size Matters—Emotion and Attention in Cortical Responses to Written Words," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(5), pages 1-6, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0036042
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0036042
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    Cited by:

    1. Rui Chen & Haolan Yan, 2023. "Effects of Knowledge Anxiety and Cognitive Processing Bias on Brand Avoidance during COVID-19: The Mediating Role of Attachment Anxiety and Herd Mentality," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-20, April.
    2. Baboo, Shabanaz & Nunkoo, Robin & Kock, Florian, 2022. "Social media attachment: Conceptualization and formative index construction," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 437-447.

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