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

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.