The role of affective meaning, semantic associates, and orthographic neighbours in modulating the N400 in single words

The N400 has been seen to be larger for concrete thanabstract words, and for pseudowords than real words. Using a word vectoranalysis to calculate semantic associates (SA), as well as ratings foremotional arousal (EA), and a measure of orthographic neighbourhood (ON), thepresent study investigated the relation between these factors and N400 amplitudes during a lexical decision task usingSwedish word stimuli. Four noun categories differing in concreteness: specific(squirrel), general (animal) emotional (happiness) and abstract (tendency) werecompared with pseudowords (danalod). Results showed that N400 amplitudes increased in the order emotional < abstract < general < specific < pseudoword. A regression analysis showed that the amplitude ofthe N400 decreased the more semanticassociates a word had and the higher the rating for emotional arousal it had.The N400 also increased the moreorthographic neighbours a word had. Results provide support for thehierarchical organisation of concrete words assumed in lexical semantics. They also demonstrate how affectiveinformation facilitates meaning processing.