Abstract Emoji are vastly becoming an integral part of everyday communication, yet little is understood about the extent to which these are processed emotionally. Previous research shows that there is a processing advantage for emotionally-valenced words over neutral ones, therefore if emoji are indeed emotional, one could expect an equivalent processing advantage. In the Pilot Study, participants (N = 44) completed a lexical decision task to explore accuracy and response latency of word, face and emoji stimuli. This stimuli varied in emotional valence (positive vs. neutral). Main effects were found for stimuli type and valence on both accuracy and latency, although the interaction for accuracy was not significant. That is, there were processing advantages of positively-valenced stimuli over neutral ones, across all stimuli types. Also, faces and emoji were processed significantly more quickly than words, and latencies between face and emoji stimuli, irrespective of valence were largely equivalent. The Main Study recruited 33 participants to undertake a modified and extended version of the lexical decision task, which included three valence conditions (positive, negative and neutral) per stimuli type. Although no main effects were found for accuracy, there was a significant main effect found for stimuli but not for valence on latency. Namely, that word stimuli irrespective of valence were processed significantly more slowly than face or emoji stimuli. There was not a significant interaction between stimuli and valence, however. Therefore, overall although there was partial support for a processing advantage of emoji stimuli, this was not replicated across the studies reported here, suggesting additional work may be needed to corroborate further evidence.

中文翻译：

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emoji 有多情绪化？：探索情绪效价对 emoji 刺激处理的影响

摘要 表情符号正在大大成为日常交流中不可或缺的一部分，但人们对这些表情在情感上的处理程度知之甚少。先前的研究表明，情感化的词比中性词有加工优势，因此，如果表情符号确实是情感化的，人们可以期待同等的加工优势。在试点研究中，参与者 (N = 44) 完成了一项词汇决策任务，以探索单词、面部和表情符号刺激的准确性和响应延迟。这种刺激的情绪效价各不相同（积极与中性）。发现刺激类型和效价对准确性和延迟的主要影响，尽管准确性的交互作用不显着。也就是说，在所有刺激类型中，正价刺激比中性刺激具有加工优势。还，面部和表情符号的处理速度明显快于文字，面部和表情符号刺激之间的延迟（无论效价如何）基本相同。主要研究招募了 33 名参与者进行词汇决策任务的修改和扩展版本，其中包括每种刺激类型的三个效价条件（正面、负面和中性）。虽然没有发现准确性的主效应，但发现刺激有显着的主效应，但没有发现对延迟的效价。也就是说，不管效价如何，这个词刺激的处理速度明显慢于面部或表情符号刺激。然而，刺激和效价之间没有显着的相互作用。因此，总体而言，虽然部分支持表情符号刺激的处理优势，