Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

People learn new words in narrative contexts. Little is known about the influence of the emotional valence of the text on word learning. In a pre-registered experiment, we investigated whether emotional narrative context shapes word learning. English adults (N = 76) read 30 novel adjectives embedded in 60 short narratives (20 positive, 20 negative, and 20 neutral valence). Post-tests assessed learning (immediate and 24 hours later) and examined whether the valence of the novel words can be inferred from contextual valence. Compared to the neutral context, emotional contexts (both positive and negative) facilitated word form learning in the immediate post-tests, but only negative emotion words were recognized better 24 hours later. Furthermore, the valence of the context was reflected in the word meanings participants generated for each novel word. These findings are discussed with reference to theories of affective embodiment and its implications for supporting the learning of abstract concepts.