Norms for emotional words in Spanish: Preliminary findings from an Argentinian adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words

SARLI, L.; JUSTEL, N.

Cordoba

Congreso; XXXIV Reunión Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias; 2019

Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias

The Affective Norms for English Words (Bradley & Lang, 1999) are a normative set of verbal material rated by a sample from the United States on valence, arousal, and dominance. The aim of this study was to adapt this set and provide a normative pool of emotional words for Argentina. The 1034 words from ANEW were translated and adapted to Rioplatense Spanish by three bilingual judges, until reaching complete agreement. Then, all 1034 translated words were randomly divided into 6 lists. Two-hundred volunteers (166 women, range: 18 ? 52 years) from the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Region received one word-list and they were instructed to assess each item according to its valence, arousal and dominance, through the Self-Assessment Manikin. The results indicated that valence and arousal conformed to a quadratic distribution similar to the one found on the original sample. Regression analysis showed a significant relationship between valence and arousal, which explained 26.5% of the variance. Furthermore, there were no differences in the valence ratings between the US and the Argentinian sample; however, the latter showed higher ratings for arousal and dominance. While normative scores for emotional stimuli are widely used in neuroscientific research, culturally-specific instruments are not always available. The results from this study represent a first step towards reliable and valid instruments to assess the verbal aspects of emotion in Argentinian populations.