Emotional content of verbal material affects the speed of visual wordrecognition in various cognitive tasks, independently of lexico-semanticvariables. However, little is known about how the dimensions ofemotional arousal and valence interact with the lexico-semanticproperties of words such as age of acquisition (AoA), familiarity andimageability, that determine word recognition performance. This studyaimed to examine these relationships using English ratings for affectiveand lexico-semantic features. Eighty-two native English speakers rated300 words for emotional valence, arousal, familiarity, AoA andimageability. Although both dimensions of emotion were correlated withlexico-semantic variables, a unique emotion cluster produced thestrongest quadratic relationship. This finding suggests that emotionshould be included in models of word recognition as it is likely to makean independent contribution.Norms available at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjYRk2lc9g6jdHRlNXRlVW5DTlMwU3NiYnd5M3RiZFE&hl=en_GB#gid=0