Syntactic structural parallelisms influence processing of positive stimuli: Evidence from cross-modal ERP priming

Language can strongly influence the emotional state of the recipient. In contrast to the broad body of experimental and neuroscientific research on semantic information and prosodic speech, the emotional impact of grammatical structure has rarely been investigated. One reason for this might be, that measuring effects of syntactic structure involves the use of complex stimuli, for which the emotional impact of grammar is difficult to isolate.In the present experiment we examined the emotional impact of structural parallelisms, that is, repetitions of syntactic features, on the emotion-sensitive “late positive potential” (LPP) with a cross-modal priming paradigm. Primes were auditory presented nonsense sentences which included grammatical–syntactic parallelisms. Visual targets were positive, neutral, and negative faces, to be classified as emotional or non-emotional by the participants. Electrophysiology revealed diminished LPP amplitudes for positive faces following parallel primes. Thus, our findings suggest that grammatical structure creates an emotional context that facilitates processing of positive emotional information.

► We examined the emotional impact of verbal structural parallelisms.
► A cross-modal priming task was administered.
► Auditory primes including parallelisms and emotional face targets were used.
► The LPP was diminished on positive targets after parallel primes.
► Parallels create a positive context facilitating the processing of positive stimuli.