Reaction Time to Neural & Emotional Words of Human

Table of Contents

Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 3
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 4
Literature Review............................................................................................................................ 5
Definition of Words ........................................................................................................................ 7
Reaction Time ................................................................................................................................. 7
Purpose of the experiment .............................................................................................................. 7
Variables ......................................................................................................................................... 8
Hypothesis....................................................................................................................................... 8
Methodology ................................................................................................................................... 8
Procedure ........................................................................................................................................ 9
Result ............................................................................................................................................ 10
Discussion and Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 10
References ..................................................................................................................................... 11

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 Reaction Time to Neural & Emotional Words of Human

Abstract

The experiment is about the reaction time difference of Human towards neutral and emotional
words. The prediction was that the emotional words will take more time than neutral words. The
objective of the experiment is to find out when people are taking more time to react towards neutral
and emotional words. As the procedure of the experiment, the conversant agreement was taken
from the subject of the experiment, and the subject of the experiment was made familiar with all
the details of the experiment. The regarded rules included voluntary participation of the subject of
the experiment, leaving the psychological experiment at any time, maintenance of the
confidentiality of the report and report findings, and other relevant rules of psychological
experiments. The dependent variable is the reaction time of the subject of the experiment, whereas
the independent variables are neutral words and the emotional words. The experiment came to an
end after some calculations were completed. Based on the findings, it had developed that, people
actually take more time to respond to emotional words. Hereafter, the experiment results had
demonstrated the hypothesis to be right.

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 Reaction Time to Neural & Emotional Words of Human

Introduction

Sensation and perception are the two vital things that are crucial to this experiment. Emotions are
feelings that generally have both physiological and cognitive elements and that influence behavior1
(FELDMAN, 1986). So, we can say that emotion is a feeling that is drawn from the situations,
relationships with people, moods, etc. This feeling which is triggered in response to a particular
stimulus varies from one person to another person. For example, a teacher makes fun of something
indicating a group of students. One of them will take it seriously, another will take it as a joke, and
one other will take it like nothing. So, each of them will react differently to the joke. Thus, it can
be said that emotion, according to the given example, varies from one person to another person.

There are basically three different main functions of emotions 2. Firstly, it prepares us for action.
For instance, you see a big wave that is strong enough to wash you away from the place you are
standing at. So, a normal person will quickly move from that location and stand somewhere else.
In this case, emotion has acted as a link between the environment and that person’s response to the
situation he is in. Secondly, Emotions shape our future behavior.3 For instance, a person has
experienced something rather unpleasant in the past. If a similar situation occurs in the future, he
or she will know what do to base on what he or she has experienced in the past. Thirdly, emotion
can help us to interact more efficiently with others.4 For instance, when we talk, we make our
behaviors obvious to the observer. So, the observer can predict the future behavior of the person
who is talking. Similarly, the observer is also making his or her behaviors obvious to the person
he or she is talking to. So, in this way, we can interact with each other more efficiently. (Feldman,
1986)

Also, there are positive emotions and negative emotions. Positive emotion is that emotion in which
there is lack of negativity, whereas negative emotions is that emotion in which there is negative
feeling or the feeling of discomfort. Examples of positive emotions are joy, love, interest,
amusement, inspiration, awe, pride, hope, serenity, gratitude, etc. Suppose, a man cannot stop
staring at his wife. This is the feeling of love. Examples of negative emotions are anger, frustration,

1
Antonio, Fabio, MAtheus, & Lilian. (2017). Psychology and Neurosience.

2
1st function of emotion. (Robert S. Feldman, Understanding Psychology, 10th edition. Page 329)
3
2st function of emotion. (Robert S. Feldman, Understanding Psychology, 10th edition. Page 329)
4
2st function of emotion. (Robert S. Feldman, Understanding Psychology, 10th edition. Page 329)

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 Reaction Time to Neural & Emotional Words of Human

guilt, nervousness, and fear. Suppose, a person is afraid of a dog. This is the feeling of fear of
being bitten from a dog.

So, there are three components of emotion: Physiological, Behavioral, and Cognitive.
Physiological aspect of emotion, strong emotions can trigger bodily changes. So, in this
component, every emotion is followed by bodily changes. For example, increased heart rate as a
result of feeling excited, rise in BP as a result of being in a stressful situation, sweating as a result
of feeling nervous, etc. In the behavioral component of emotion, emotions are expressed through
body language and facial expressions. For example, when a person smiles, laughs, he or she feels
happy. We know when a person is angry, he or she pulls both of his or her eyebrows down together,
and stares at somebody with wide, glaring eyes. In the cognitive component of the emotion,
emotions involve subjective feelings that have an evaluative aspect. So, we can say that the feeling
of pain is subjective. How one person feels pain might be very different from how another person
feels pain. So, two people will evaluate pain differently. Suppose two people see a picture of
Donald Trump. In this case, two people will react very differently after seeing the photo of Donald
Trump, and they will also evaluate the photo of Donald Trump differently.

Now, let’s say a psychologist is leading an experiment. The experiment includes the subject
reacting to a list of words read clearly one by one in front of participant. The subject of the
experiment will take some time to react to those words. So, we can measure this time by looking
at either the subject’s speed of responding to each word or the duration of the subject’s response
to each word. Nevertheless, several aspects can affect a particular subject’s response to the words
he or she hears. For example, the subject may be not feeling well, they may be addicted to drugs,
the subject may have issues with hearing and vision, the subject may have sustained injuries to his
or her head or maybe the subject was forced to attend the experiment etc.

Literature Review

In 2017, authors Antonio, Fabio, Matheus, and Lilian researched and found that participants were
slower to reject novel emotional words than to reject novel neutral words, whereas they exhibited
equivalent response times to emotional and neutral studied words. Quantile analysis showed that

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 Reaction Time to Neural & Emotional Words of Human

such slower rejection of emotional novel words was restricted to slower responses, suggesting
potential interactions between emotion and higher order processes during recognition. These
findings are interpreted in light of affective theories of exposure and theories of emotional
processing5. (Jaeger, 2017)

In 1990, Lang, Bradley, and Cuthbert stated that emotional processing is motivated by either
appetitive or defensive mechanisms. While appetitive mechanisms are typically engaged by
emotionally positive stimuli, defensive mechanisms are typically engaged by emotionally negative
stimuli (i.e., threats). Ac-cording to this model, the cognitive processing of emotional information
tends to be faster than the cognitive processing of neutral information, because the former is
essential to survival and/or to fight or flight responses. (JAEGER, 2017)

In 2014, Beata and Csaba researched and found that the result of the research was a significant
main effect of word type, where the negative information captured the attention for a longer period
of time than the neutral one6. (Antonio, Fabio, MAtheus, & Lilian, 2017)

In 2018, Natalie and Thomas researched and found that the NBI participants recalled more words
from the lists and content units from the paragraphs than the individuals with TBI. Both groups
recalled significantly more emotional than neutral words. NBI but not TBI participants had
significantly greater recall for information in paragraphs with emotional content7. (Natalie &
Thomas, 2018)

In 2006, Herbert et al. reported larger amplitude for emotionally valanced words than neutral words
on the P2 component (180-250 ms) over Centro-parietal sites.8 (Citron)

5
Jaeger, B. F. (2017). Response Time Effects of Novelty. Recognition of Emotional Words, n/a
6
Antonio, Fabio, MAtheus, & Lilian. (2017). Psychology and Neurosience.
7
Natalie, & Thomas. (2018). Recall of emotional and neutral words and paragraphs in traumatic brain injury.

8
A review of recent electrophysiological and hemodynamic neuroimaging studies . Germany

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 Reaction Time to Neural & Emotional Words of Human

Definition of Words

A single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone)
to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed. So, in
this experiment, we have dealt with neutral words and emotional words. A person may or may not
respond emotionally to a word he or she hears from somebody or something.

A. Neutral words: Neutral words do not evoke or draw out any kind of emotional experience.
Neutral words are the words that we tend to use on a daily basis and they do not evoke any
kind of emotional experience. Words that do not evoke emotion from a particular person
are cupboard, iron, paper, suitcase, etc.
B. Emotional words: Emotional words have high arousal values, whereas. Emotional words
can express an emotional state or elicit one. A person can react emotionally to the words,
such as, darling, joy, Eid, love, etc.

Reaction Time

It is mentioned earlier, the subject of the experiment will take a little bit of time to react to the
words he or she hears. This is the reaction time. According to the words we have dealt with in this
experiment, reaction time is simply the difference between the time taken to understand the word
and the time taken to respond to the word. So, people need time to respond to a certain stimulus.
In this experiment, the reaction time was recorded, and therefore, the ability of the subject to detect,
process, and respond to the words.

Purpose of the experiment

The main objective of this experiment is to understand whether or not individuals react differently
to a series of emotional and neutral words. The time taken by the subject of the experiment to
respond to the series of emotional words was also recorded. In addition, whether or not the time

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 Reaction Time to Neural & Emotional Words of Human

taken to respond to these words actually differs from one person to another was taken into
consideration.

Variables

There are basically wo types of variables were dealt with in this experiment. One is
Independent variable. The other one is the dependent variable.

a) Independent Variable: Independent variables are the variables that can be manipulated
by the conductor of the experiment in order to observe the effect on dependent variable. In
this experiment, the independent variables are emotional words and neutral words.
b) Dependent Variables: Dependent variables are the variables that are tested in an
experiment. In this experiment, the dependent variable is the reaction time of the subject
of the experiment.

Hypothesis

A hypothesis is simply a predictive statement about the relationship between two or more
variables. The hypothesis of this experiment whether or not the time taken to respond to the
emotional words is greater than the time taken to respond to the neutral words. (FELDMAN,
Understanding Psychology)

Methodology

Informed consent was taken from a subject who agreed with us in participating in the psychological
experiment. The subject is male, aged 24, and an undergraduate student of North South University.
Before the conduction of the actual experiment, some materials were gathered to ensure the smooth
running of the experiment. The materials used in this psychological experiment were, some papers

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 Reaction Time to Neural & Emotional Words of Human

containing the contents of the experiment, a smartphone with built in stopwatch, a pen, and a
scientific calculator9. (FELDMAN, understanding Psychology)

Procedure

In this experiment, at first informed consent of the subject of the experiment was taken. The subject
of the experiment accepted to perform in this experiment willingly. Then the subject of the
experiment accepted to come to the classroom, where the psychological experiment was
conducted. Some papers, containing the details of the psychological experiment, were handed over
to the subject of the experiment. The subject was told that his participation in the experiment is
not forceful, and that he may voluntarily take part in the experiment, and that he may leave the
experiment according to his own will. The subject was also instructed that a series of words will
be read aloud in front of him. All he had to response to the words with words which immediately
came to his mind. Each response was recorded with the help of a smartphone with built in
stopwatch. Each time taken to respond to a particular word was recorded on a paper with a pen.
After recording the time taken to each and every word, we calculated the total time taken to respond
to all words, then we divided the total reaction time by the total number of words to find out the
average time taken. We have also calculated, the total time taken and the average time taken, to
respond to neutral words and also for emotional words separately.

9
FELDMAN, S. (n.d.). Understanding Psychology. McGrow Hill,page:42

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 Reaction Time to Neural & Emotional Words of Human

Result

Words Total time (in seconds) Mean Time (in seconds)

Figure: Results reaction time for Emotional words and Neutral words.

The result shows that the participant took more time to respond for emotional words than neutral
words. Here, 35.016 seconds were taken for all the emotional words and 21.817 seconds were
taken for neutral words. The total time taken by the participant including to respond to both
emotional and neutral words is 55.833 seconds. The total average time taken to respond to all
words is 1.8611 seconds. The average time taken by the subject to respond to emotional words is
8.883 seconds per emotional word. On the other hand, the average time taken by the subject to
respond to neutral words is 1.454 seconds per neutral word. The participant took 7.439 seconds
more on average to respond to emotional words. The subject of the experiment took 13.19 seconds
more in total to respond to emotional words. So, the result matched with our hypothesis and that’s
true. As, the participant actually took less time for neutral words and more time to respond to
emotional words.

Discussion and Conclusion

This experiment is demonstrating that people actually take more time to respond to emotional
words than neutral words. Results have proven our hypothesis to be true. The participant actually
took more time to respond to emotional words. Many prior experiments by psychologists mirrors

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 Reaction Time to Neural & Emotional Words of Human

our experiment. Emotional words have the ability to suggest intense emotion in a different or
certain person. On that time, it actually resembles to the person’s feelings. So, an individual think
for a longer period of time. However, neutral words do not stir any emotional experience, and so,
people do not take much time to respond to neutral words. It has been mentioned already that,
many factors can have an impact on the psychological experiment. For example, drugs, lack of
sleep, head injury, etc. So, our experiment results could have been different, and the test results
could have proven the hypothesis to be false.

References
Antonio, Fabio, MAtheus, & Lilian. (2017). Psychology and Neurosience.

Citron, M. (n.d.). A review of recent electrophysiological and hemodynamic neuroimaging studies .

Feldman, S. (1986). The Functions of Emotions. New-York: McGraw-Hill College.

FELDMAN, S. (1986). Understanding Emotional Experiences. New York: McGraw-Hill College.

FELDMAN, S. (n.d.). understanding Psychology. Mcgrow hill.

FELDMAN, S. (n.d.). Understanding Psychology. McGrow Hill.

Jaeger, B. F. (2017). Response Time Effects of Novelty. Recognition of Emotional Words, n/a.

JAEGER, B. S. (2017). Response Time Effects of Novelty. Recognition of Emotional Words, n/a.

Natalie, & Thomas. (2018). Recall of emotional and neutral words and paragraphs in traumatic brain
injury.

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