Research ReportEvaluative conditioning of positive and negative valence affects P1 and N1 in verbal processing

•Evaluative conditioning of positive and negative valence alters pseudoword processing.•Conditioned valence of verbal stimuli modulate early ERPs.•Early emotional ERP modulations correlate with evaluative conditioning awareness.•Early emotional ERP differences are modulated by medio-frontal brain regions.•Supports the associative learning hypothesis in emotion word recognition.

The present study examined the effect of contextual learning on the neural processing of previously meaningless pseudowords. During an evaluative conditioning session on 5 consecutive days, participants learned to associate 120 pseudowords with either positive, neutral or negative pictures. In a second session, participants were presented all conditioned pseudowords again together with 40 new pseudowords in a recognition memory task while their event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The behavioral data confirm successful learning of pseudoword valence. At the neural level, early modulations of the ERPs are visible at the P1 and the N1 components discriminating between positively and negatively conditioned pseudowords. Differences to new pseudowords were visible at later processing stages as indicated by modulations of the LPC. These results support a contextual learning hypothesis that is able to explain very early emotional ERP modulations in visual word recognition. Source localization indicates a role of medial-frontal brain regions as a likely origin of these early valence discrimination signals which are discussed to promote top-down signals to sensory processing.