Abstract
Previous research suggests that labels shape the categorization of emotional stimuli such as facial configurations, yet the strongest evidence of labels’ influence on category learning comes from work on object categories. In particular, Lupyan et al. (Psychol Sci 18(12):1077–1083, 2007) found that novel categories of aliens were learned faster by participants provided with nonsense labels during feedback. We summarize a series of five studies in which we examined whether this word-enhancement effect on learning would extend to novel categories of emotion. These studies were conceptual replications of the paradigm used by Lupyan et al. (Psychol Sci 18(12):1077–1083, 2007) designed so that participants would associate novel expressive behaviors with situated experiences. We hypothesized that participants would learn to categorize exemplars of novel emotion categories over the duration of the task, and that categorization would be facilitated for participants who were presented with category labels during learning. We simultaneously analyzed data from all five studies in an integrative data analysis, allowing us to test the effects of learning over time and label condition with increased statistical power. Across all five studies, we found that, while participant performance did improve over time, in no case was it facilitated by including emotion labels at feedback. These results join others in suggesting that the effect of labels on emotion categorization may be more context-dependent than previously supposed—varying by the type of category learning task as well as the specific categories being learned and their relationship to previously acquired knowledge—such that there may be multiple pathways for emotion category learning.
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19 March 2022
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-022-00104-x
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Austin Fernandez, Leighanne Wang, Chaojie Li, and Dr. Jiahe Zhang for assisting with this research and Dr. Gary Lupyan for reviewing a previous version of this manuscript.
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This work was supported by an NIH NRSA fellowship (5F32MH105052) awarded to M.G. as well as the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (W911NF-15-1-0647) awarded to M.G. and L.F.B. The views, opinions, and/or findings contained in this paper are those of the authors and shall not be construed as an official Department of the Army position, policy, or decision, unless so designated by other documents. This research was further supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC31170982) and Royal Society (IE121122) International Cooperation and Exchanges NSFC (31311130123) awarded to Drs. Qiang Liu and Debi Roberson, and extended to M.G.
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The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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Data and analytic code for all studies are available at: https://osf.io/87bvy/.
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All authors developed the study designs. K.H. and M.G. developed the stimuli, programmed the tasks, and analyzed the data. K.H. drafted the manuscript. All authors provided revisions and approved the final version of the manuscript.
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These studies were conducted in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Institutional Review Board at Northeastern University (IRB#s 13-03-16, 16-11-32).
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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
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Handling Editor: Seth D. Pollak
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Hoemann, K., Gendron, M. & Barrett, L.F. Assessing the Power of Words to Facilitate Emotion Category Learning. Affec Sci 3, 69–80 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00084-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00084-4