Abstract
There recently has been an upsurge in studies that have shown the influences of emotional mood on a variety of cognitions. Few studies, however, have demonstrated successfully this influence on perception. This study measured tachistoscopic recognition thresholds of two groups of subjects, a depressed-mood-induced group and a neutral group, for words that were either depres-sively congruent or neutral. The results revealed that recognition thresholds for depressively congruent words were lower for depressively induced subjects than for neutral subjects. These results are discussed in relation to current cognitive theories of emotion.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, J. R. (1976). Language, memory, and thought. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Anderson, J. R., & Bower, G. H. (1973). Human associative memory. Washington, DC: Winston.
Bargh, J. A. (1982). Attention and automaticity in the processing of self-relevant information. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 3, 425–436.
Bower, G. H. (1981). Mood and memory. American Psychologist, 36, 129–148.
Bower, G. H., Monteiro, K. P., & Gilligan, S. G. (1978). Emotional mood as a context of learning and recall. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 17, 573–585.
Dahl, H., & Stengel, B. (1978). Classification of emotional words. Psychoanalysis & Contemporary Thought, 1, 269–312.
Ellis, H. C., Thomas, R. L., & Rodriguez, I. A. (1984). Emotional mood states and memory: Elaborative encoding, semantic processing, and cognitive effort. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 10, 470–482.
Erdelyi, M. H. (1974). A new look at the new look: Perceptual defense and vigilance. Psychological Review, 81, 1–24.
Gerrig, R. J., & Bower, G. H. (1982). Emotional influences on word recognition. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 19, 197–200.
Hale, W. D., & Strickland, B. R. (1976). Induction of mood states and their effect on cognitive and social behavior. Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology, 44, 155.
Kucera, H., & Francis, W. N. (1967). Computational analysis of presentday American English. Providence, RI: Brown University Press.
Leight, K. A., & Ellis, H. C. (1981). Emotional mood states, strategies, and state-dependency in memory. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 20, 251–266.
Shapiro, S. I., & Palermo, D. S. (1970). Conceptual organization and class membership: Normative data for representatives of 100 categories. Psychonomic Monograph Supplements, 3, 107–127.
Velten, E. (1968). A laboratory task for induction for mood states. Behavior Research & Therapy, 6, 473–482.
Zajonc, R. (1980). Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist, 35, 151–175.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This research was performed as a final project for a laboratory course in human cognition. I thank Professor Joan Gay Snodgrass for her valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Small, S.A. The effect of mood on word recognition. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 23, 453–455 (1985). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329850
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329850