Electrodermal and behavioral response to emotional Spanish words in native speakers

The present study aimed to validate a Spanish-word database that elicits different levels of emotional response. To control subjects' engagement to the stimuli, an emotional Stroop task was administered to Spanish-speaking population. In order to assess to which extent valence and emotionality are automatically processed when reading a word, participants' reaction time was recorded as a complement of their electrodermal response. These measurements were used to rank the words into two different lists, conforming the set of Spanish-words. The reaction time to negative words were only significantly slower to reaction times of positive ones (and not to the neutral ones). We found that words with a negative emotional content elicited higher skin conductance responses (SCR) and longer reaction time than those with neutral and positive emotional content. These findings are consistent with previous literature and therefore supports word's emotionality of the implemented database.