Abstract
Emotionally valenced words have thus far not been empirically examined in a bilingual population with the emotional face–word Stroop paradigm. Chinese-English bilinguals were asked to identify the facial expressions of emotion with their first (L1) or second (L2) language task-irrelevant emotion words superimposed on the face pictures. We attempted to examine how the emotional content of words modulated behavioral performance and cerebral functioning in the bilinguals’ two languages. The results indicated that there were significant congruency effects for both L1 and L2 emotion words, and that identifiable differences in the magnitude of the Stroop effect between the two languages were also observed, suggesting L1 is more capable of activating the emotional response to word stimuli. For event-related potentials data, an N350–550 effect was observed only in the L1 task with greater negativity for incongruent than congruent trials. The size of the N350–550 effect differed across languages, whereas no identifiable language distinction was observed in the effect of conflict slow potential (conflict SP). Finally, more pronounced negative amplitude at 230–330 ms was observed in L1 than in L2, but only for incongruent trials. This negativity, likened to an orthographic decoding N250, may reflect the extent of attention to emotion word processing at word-form level, while the N350–550 reflects a complicated set of processes in the conflict processing. Overall, the face–word congruency effect has reflected identifiable language distinction at 230–330 and 350-550 ms, which provides supporting evidence for the theoretical proposals assuming attenuated emotionality of L2 processing.
Highlights
The relationship between affective processing and bilingualism is complex (Kazanas and Altarriba, 2016, p. 396; Pavlenko, 2012)
Response times that exceeded 3 SD above or below the mean for each participant were removed from data analysis of event-related potential (ERP) data
Conrad et al (2011) investigated the neural correlates of emotion effects in L1 and L2 emotion word processing with visual lexical decision task among German−Spanish bilinguals; the results suggested that the amplitudes for respective effects of L1 and L2 emotion words did not qualitatively differ, though early posterior negativity (EPN) emotion effects shifted across L1 and L2 processing about 50−100 ms
Summary
The relationship between affective processing and bilingualism is complex (Kazanas and Altarriba, 2016, p. 396; Pavlenko, 2012). The relationship between affective processing and bilingualism is complex A majority of studies have pointed to an assumption that L2 affective processing may be characterized by attenuated emotionality compared to L1 (Pavlenko, 2012, for a review). Some studies have revealed identifiable differences between the processing of L1 and L2 emotional information (e.g., Anooshian and Hertel, 1994; Altarriba, 2003; Harris et al, 2003). Other researchers have found that emotionally charged entries elicited similar skin conductance levels (SCLs) in L1 and L2 for early bilinguals, and that similar patterns of activation were observed for all the other categories of emotion words except reprimands for late bilinguals (Harris et al, 2006). Researchers have found that late German−Greek bilinguals were capable of automatically activating motor response to emotion word stimuli in the two languages even when bilinguals acquired their L2 rather late in life (age > 11 years old) (Dudschig et al, 2014)
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