MOOD AND LEXICAL ACCESS OF POSITIVE, NEGATIVE, AND NEUTRAL WORDS

Two experiments based upon the Reicher task were conducted to investig ate the influence of happy, sad, and neutral moods on the processing o f positive, negative, and neutral words. In Experiment 1 participants showed least advantage in determining which of two one-letter-differen t words, in comparison with nonword controls, had been presented for w ords that were valenced in congruence with the induced mood. In Experi ment 2 mood acted as a prime that produced a detrimental effect of pre senting nontarget mood-congruent preview words on participants' perfor mance on the valenced targets. The authors contend that these effects are related to mood's altering of the baseline activation levels of co ngruently valenced word nodes in the mental lexicon as well as to mood 's narrowing of the spatial focus of attention.