Age Influence on the Effect of Emojis on Affective Vocabulary Items: A Priming Approach

Abstract

This exploratory study investigated whether younger and older people differ in the extent to which their comprehension of emojis activates associated affective content based on the priming effects of the participants in an affective emoji-word priming experiment. No notable priming effect on accuracy and reaction time (RT) was observed in the emoji-word priming experiment among the two age groups, suggesting that emojis do not significantly influence the results of linguistic processing among people in different generations. However, several limitations in the research method, experiment design, and procedure were identified. Future research on age and emojis with comprehensive approaches is encouraged.