Does the Semantic Integration of Emotion Words Depend on Emotional Empathy? N400, P600 and Localization Effects for Intentional and Proprioceptive Emotion Words in Sentence Contexts

Empathy with other persons' emotions has been suggested to root in a simulation process involving brain regions that play a crucial role in the production of one's own emotions.The current ERP study combines this approach with an embodiedsimulative view of semantics.This view implies that those very brain regions should also be involved in the semantic memory and linguistic comprehension of intentional and proprioceptive emotion words.The relation between cognitive empathy measured by the MET test and the size of the N400 effect occurring when semantic emotions words violate semantic expectations is investigated.