The influence of emotional valence on word recognition in people with aphasia

People with aphasia frequently have difficulties in understanding and producing single words, with performance affected by a range of psycholinguistic variables, including word length and frequency. This study considers the effects on lexical processing of using emotionally valenced words: words that evoke an emotion but do not directly label one (e.g. negative valence = poison, positive valence = peace). Studies of neurotypical adults have found that emotional valence may also affect lexical processing efficiency (Kousta, Vinson & Vigliocco, 2009). It is possible that emotional valence is therefore an additional psycholinguistic variable that influences performance for people with aphasia, with implications for assessment and materials used in intervention.