The role of valence in processing COVID-19-related words and texts: Evidence from eye-tracking studies

Valence plays a significant role in communication, influencing the perception, processing, and retention of verbal stimuli. Research in cognitive linguistics indicates that the emotional tone of verbal stimuli affects cognitive processing and reading behavior. For example, words with strong valence — both positive and negative — increase visual attention, as reflected in longer fixation durations. This phenomenon, known as the emotional salience effect, is based on the theory of aversive attention and suggests that emotional words demand greater cognitive resources, thereby influencing reading speed and text comprehension. In contrast, neutral words are processed more quickly and with lower cognitive effort. Empirical data further support valence-dependent information processing, which may be driven by two motivational systems: the approach system, associated with positive verbal stimuli, and the withdrawal system, linked to negative ones. However, there remains a significant research gap regarding the impact of emotional valence on the perception of texts as complex verbal stimuli. This study presents findings from two laboratory experiments investigating the influence of emotional valence on the perception of words (Experiment 1, N = 30, 29,156 observations) and texts (Experiment 2, N = 30 participants, N = 55,448 observations). The key factors considered are the valence of stimuli (positive/negative/neutral) and the valence of participants' attitudes toward the topic. The results demonstrate that stimulus valence significantly affects visual attention and cognitive processing of words, as measured by total fixation duration. Specifically, negatively valenced words increased processing time compared to neutral and positive words, supporting the concept of negativity bias in emotional word processing. Additionally, positively valenced words were processed significantly faster than neutral words. However, no such effect was found for texts: there were no statistically significant differences in processing time (measured as total fixation duration) between positive, negative, and neutral texts. Instead, text processing was significantly influenced by the valence of participants' attitudes toward the topic, whereas this factor had no effect on word processing.