Article Dans Une Revue School Psychology International Année : 2025

Effect of Emotional Valence on Text Comprehension by French Fourth and Fifth Graders

Résumé

Background: Emotional valence can be used to describe the pleasant or unpleasant nature of information such as images, words, sentences, or texts. The possible existence of a bias favoring the comprehension of positive versus negative information remains a controversial subject. The aim of the present study was to explore whether the emotional valence of a text influences its comprehension by students in the fourth or fifth grade. Methods: To this end, 55 French students with a mean age of 10.11 years answered surface, semantic, and inferential questions after reading texts with a positive, negative, or neutral valence. Results: The results showed that surface comprehension scores were higher for texts with a positive or negative valence, rather than a neutral one. They also showed that semantic comprehension scores were lower for negatively valenced texts. Conclusion: These observations suggest that emotional valence influences text comprehension in young readers. The existence of a positivity bias in children’s reading comprehension and the educational implications in the classroom are discussed.

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hal-05108124 , version 1 (11-06-2025)

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Ugo Ballenghein, Léa Lachaud, Xavier Aparicio, Denis Alamargot. Effect of Emotional Valence on Text Comprehension by French Fourth and Fifth Graders. School Psychology International, 2025, 7 (1), pp.4. ⟨10.3390/psycholint7010004⟩. ⟨hal-05108124⟩
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