Bigger words – literally those printed in larger font size – elicit stronger emotional brain responses, reports a study published May 9 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. The researchers, led by Mareike Bayer of the Humboldt University of Berlin in Germany, showed 25 participants 72 different words, categorized either as positive, neutral, or negative, in varying font sizes, and found that reading the larger font sizes produced emotion effects in event-related potentials that began earlier and lasted longer than those resulting from reading smaller font sizes.
Citation: Bayer M, Sommer W, Schacht A (2012) Font Size Matters—Emotion and Attention in Cortical Responses to Written Words. PLoS ONE 7(5): e36042.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036042
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Financial Disclosure: This research was supported by the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and by the Geman Initiative of Excellence. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interest: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
PLEASE LINK TO THE SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT (URL goes live after the embargo ends): http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0036042
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PLoS ONE