Schedule 80. StuTS

Databases of affective norms aim to provide information on the affective properties of selected stimuli. Affective databases with verbal stimuli exist for a number of Indo-European languages, such as English (Bradley and Lang 1999), Italian (Montefinese et al. 2014), German (Lahl et al. 2009), or Dutch (Dimitrova et al. 2022). Few also exist for non-Indo-European languages, such as Mandarin Chinese (Ying et al. 2024) or Indonesian (Sianipar et al. 2016). However, there is a clear lack of data on non-WEIRD cultures, leading to a strong bias towards Western cultures and considerable limitations concerning the generalizability of affective properties of emotion words (Gerges et al. 2025). This is probably partly owed to the fact that, in order to ensure large participant samples, researchers usually rely on online crowdsourcing for recruitment, which some underrepresented non-WEIRD populations do not have access to.
We conducted a pilot study aimed towards the creation of a database of affective norms for pain words in Bolivian Quechua. We collected affective and psycholinguistic ratings from 17 native speakers of Quechua for two subsamples of 15 pain-related nouns (e.g. uma nanay ‘headache’), verbs (e.g. ñak'ariy ‘suffer’), adjectives (e.g. llakisqa ‘sad’), and interjections (e.g. ¡atatáw! ‘ouch!’). On the affective rating scale, we included valence and arousal, while on psycholinguistic scale, we included familiarity, concreteness, pain relatedness, pain intensity, pain unpleasantness, pain duration, location of pain, and pain cause. The word ratings were collected in person, using visual 5-point and 3-point scales represented by circle sizes (inspired by Wnuk and Majid 2014). Instructions (adapted from Borelli et al. 2018) and stimuli were presented orally only, which allowed us to collect data from both literate and illiterate speakers. The specific subdomain of pain words had been chosen in order to facilitate future collaboration with medical practitioners. For example, a database of affective norms for pain words in Bolivian Quechua could aid in the creation of a Quechua version of the McGill Pain Questionnaire (Melzack 1975), which until today does not exist.
In this presentation we will briefly discuss the results of this pilot study and reflect on our chosen approach to adapt previous methodology for collecting affective word ratings to the Quechua people of Bolivia. For instance, some of the traditional rating dimensions used in previous affectivity studies do not always translate well to non-Western contexts, like arousal, familiarity or concreteness. Andean indigenous cultures are generally highly grounded in nature and the directly perceivable (see Bolin 1998), and as such, the Quechua language often lacks direct one-word translations for highly abstract concepts. Instead, we have paraphrased them using metaphors (e.g. sunqu ukhunchispi t’impurichin/thañirichin ‘makes our hearts boil/calm down on the inside’ for arousal scale) and used examples that the average Quechua person can relate to well (e.g. sara ‘corn’ for high familiarity, jamp’ara ‘counter’ for low familiarity). Furthermore, our conclusions could also provide valuable insights for similar studies that aim to collect affective word ratings with (potentially illiterate) non-WEIRD populations.

References:
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Borelli, Eleonora, Davide Crepaldi, Carlo Adolfo Porro & Cristina Cacciari. 2018. The psycholinguistic and affective structure of words conveying pain. PLOS ONE 13(6). e0199658.
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Dimitrova, L. I., E. M. Vissia, H. Geugies, H. Hofstetter, S. Chalavi & Aats Reinders. 2022. No Self Without Salience: Affective and Self-relevance Ratings of 552 Emotionally Valenced and Neutral Dutch Words. J Psycholinguist Res 51(1). 17-32.
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