The adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) for European Portuguese

Ana Paula Soares 0 1 Montserrat Comesaa 0 1 Ana P. Pinheiro 0 1 Alberto Simes 0 1 Carla Sofia Frade 0 1 0 A. Simes Computer Science and Technology Center, University of Minho , Braga, Portugal 1 A. P. Pinheiro Neuropsychophysiology Lab , CIPsi, University of Minho , Braga, Portugal 2 ) Department of Basic Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Minho , Campus de Gualtar, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal 3 Viana do Castelo, Braga, Vila Real, Bragana, Porto, Aveiro, Viseu, Guarda, Coimbra, Leiria, Castelo Branco, Santarm, Portalegre, Lisboa, Setbal, vora, Beja e Faro 4 University of Minho, University of Beira Interior, University of Porto, University of Aveiro, University of Coimbra, University of Lisboa, University of vora, University of Algarve; University of Madeira, University Lusfona, University Fernando Pessoa , Univer- sity Aberta, University Catlica Portuguesa, Porto Polytechnic Institute and Viseu Polytechnic Institute This study presents the adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW; Bradley & Lang, 1999a) for European Portuguese (EP). The EP adaptation of the ANEW was based on the affective ratings made by 958 college students who were EP native speakers. Subjects assessed about 60 words by considering the affective dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance, using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) in either a paper-and-pencil or a Web survey procedure. Results of the adaptation of the ANEW for EP are presented. Furthermore, the differences between EP, American (Bradley & Lang, 1999a), and Spanish (Redondo, Fraga, Padrn, & Comesaa, Behavior Research Methods, 39, 600-605, 2007) standardizations were explored. Results showed that the ANEW words were understood in a similar way by EP, American, and Spanish subjects, although some sex and cross-cultural differences were observed. The EP adaptation of the ANEW is shown to be a valid and useful tool that will allow researchers to control and/or manipulate the affective properties of stimuli, as well as to develop cross-linguistic studies. The normative values of EP adaptation of the ANEW can be downloaded at http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental. - Emotion has a pervasive influence on human cognition. In the last decades, a considerable amount of research has focused on assessing how the processing of emotional evocative stimuli (words, pictures, sounds, odors, and film clips) differs from that of neutral stimuli at the behavioral and brain levels. The increasing interest in this research area has revitalized the emotioncognition debate in unprecedented ways, allowing this line of research to gain strength and autonomy within the international literature. However, despite the growing interest in emotion research, the definition and operationalization of emotion is still controversial (see, e.g., Mauss & Robinson, 2009, or Scherer, 2005, for a review). In fact, although most researchers agree that emotions are dispositions for action elicited by stimuli perceived as significant by the organism, they disagree about which components are considered intrinsic to emotion (e.g., cognitions, behavioral responses, or neurophysiological processes) and how these different components interact with each other during emotional experience (e.g., do neurophysiological processes precede or follow cognitive processes?; see Moors, 2009, for a review). For example, discrete emotion theories state that emotions are better conceptualized as a set of discrete sensorymotor programs, with each of these programs consisting of a coherent brain circuit that elicits and links together cognitions and somatic responses into a single neural system (e.g., Ekman, 1992; LeDoux, 1996; hman & Wiens, 2004). In turn, dimensional theories argue that, rather than consisting of discrete motor programs, emotions are simply cognitive labels that we apply to physiological activation, characterized by few basic dimensions (e.g., valence and arousal), and suggest that it is the assessment of each of these dimensions that underlies emotional responses (e.g., Bradley & Lang, 2000; Russell, 2003). This dimensional perspective, dominant in current accounts of emotion, has its historical roots in Wundts (1896) work. However, it is the work developed by Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum (1957) that has consolidated this perspective and allowed its measurement. Using the semantic differential method, Osgood et al. performed factorial analyses over a large number of verbal judgments of a wide variety of stimuli (paintings, words, sounds) and observed that most of the variance of subjects responses could be explained by two major affective dimensions: valence, which represents the way a subject judges a situation, from unpleasant to pleasant, and arousal, which expresses the degree of excitement or activation a subject can feel toward a given stimulus, varying from calm to exciting. They have also identified a third dimension, which is called dominance and reflects the degree of control a subject feels over a specific stimulus, varying from in control to out of control. Following this original work, Bradley and Lang (1994) developed a nonverbal pictographic self-report measure, the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM; see Fig. 1), to assess the valence, arousal, and dominance dimensions. As was pointed out by Mauss and Robinson (2009), even though not all individuals may be aware of and/or capable of reporting their momentary emotional states, the self-report of emotion seems to be a reliable measure for assessing emotions, correlating strongly with different peripheral physiological measures such as skin conductance responses (e.g., Bradley & Lang, 2000; Codispoti, Ferrari, & Bradley, 2006), startle response (e.g., Bradley, Cuthbert, & Lang, 1999; Bradley, Miccoli, Escrig, & Lang, 2008), and, although less consistently, the heart rate response (e.g., Bradley & Lang, 2000). On the basis of this pictographic measure, Lang and colleagues developed different sets of emotional stimuli that are internationally available and that provide normative ratings of valence, arousal, and dominance for words (the Affective Norms for English Words [ANEW]; Bradley & Lang, 1999a), pictures (the International Affective Picture System [IAPS]; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1999), and sounds (the International Affective Digitized Sounds [IADS]; Bradley & Lang, 1999b). In the present, these data sets represent fundamental tools for research on the neural correlates of emotional processing (e.g., Anders, Eippert, Weiskpf, & Veit, 2008; Junghfer, Schupp, Stark, & Vaitl, 2005; Kensinger & Schacter, 2006; Lewis, Critchley, Rotshtein, & Dolan, 2007), as well as for the development of studies that aim at exploring the influence of emotion in cognitive processes such as attention (e.g., Fox, Griggs, & Mouchlianitis, 2007; Schimmack, 2005; Schupp et al., 2007), memory (e.g., Bradley, Greenwald, Petry, & Lang, 1992; Mickley & Kensinger, 2008), and language (e.g., Scott, (...truncated)