Resolution of Lexical Ambiguity by Emotional State

The role of emotion in the resolution of lexical ambiguity was investigated Happy and sad subjects listened to a list of words that included homophones that had happy and neutral meanings (e g, presents-presence) and homophones that had sad and neutral meanings (e g, mourning-morning) Words were presented every 3 s, and subjects wrote down the words as they heard them (Meaning could be identified by spelling in all cases) An interaction between emotional state and homophone category was observed Sad subjects were more likely to write down sad meanings than were happy subjects Results are discussed with reference to the literatures on both emotion and lexical access