Mood Shapes Reliance on Syntactic and Semantic Cues in Sentence Comprehension

TL;DR

This study explores how mood affects how people use grammar and meaning when understanding sentences.

Contribution

The study reveals how mood modulates reliance on syntactic and semantic cues during comprehension.

Findings

Negative moods show an interaction between syntactic consistency and semantic plausibility.

Positive moods exhibit more independent use of syntactic and semantic cues.

Inhibitory control moderates cue interactions in negative moods but not in positive ones.

Abstract

The linguistic system relies on both syntactic and semantic cues to derive the meaning of sentences. Although this process is shaped by cognitive factors, little is known about how mood influences reliance on these cues and whether such effects are moderated by cognitive control. This study examined how positive and negative mood influence the use of syntactic and semantic information and whether inhibitory control and working memory moderate these effects. A sentence judgement task was administered among participants with high and low valence. The semantic plausibility and syntactic consistency of the experimental stimuli were manipulated. The results revealed a significant interaction between syntactic consistency and semantic plausibility in negative moods. In positive moods, cue use was more independent. Inhibitory control was found to influence the interaction between syntactic consistency and semantic plausibility in negative moods but not in positive moods. Working memory had no significant influence on syntactic consistency or plausibility in either mood condition. These findings provide valuable insights into the interplay between affect and cognition in shaping sentence comprehension.

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