AN AFFECTIVE VARIANT OF THE SIMON PARADIGM

In this paper, we introduce an affective variant of the Simon paradigm . Three experiments are reported in which nouns and adjectives with a positive, negative, or neutral affective meaning were used as stimuli. Depending on the grammatical category of the presented word (i.e. nou n or adjective), participants had to respond as fast as possible by sa ying a predetermined positive or negative word. In Experiments I and 2 , the words POSITIVE and NEGATIVE were required as responses, in Exper iment 3, FLOWER and CANCER were used as response words. Despite the fa ct that participants were explicitly instructed to ignore the affectiv e meaning of the presented words, reaction times were faster when the affective connotation of the presented word and the correct response w as the same than when it differed. The results lend further support to the hypothesis that stimulus valence can be processed automatically. We also argue that the affective Simon paradigm can be used as a flexi ble tool for the study of affective-processing and discuss how other v ariants of the Simon paradigm can be developed to stimulate research o n other aspects of information-processing.