How emotion is learned: Semantic learning of novel words in emotional contexts

The present paper addresses two under-studied dimensions of novel word learning. We ask (a) whether originally meaningless novel words can acquire emotional connotations from their linguistic contexts, and (b) whether these acquired connotations can affect the quality of orthographic and semantic word learning and its retention over time. In five experiments using three stimuli sets, L1 speakers of English learned nine novel words embedded in...