Keep calm and carry on: Electrophysiological evaluation for reduced emotional anticipation stress in the second language
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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- 2019 Keep calm and carry on
Accepted author manuscript, 1.42 MB, PDF document
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DOI
Investigations of the so-called 'foreign language effect' have shown that emotional experience is language-dependent in bilingual individuals. Response to negative experiences, in particular, appears attenuated in the second language (L2). However, the human brain is not only reactive, but it also builds on past experiences to anticipate future events. Here, we investigated affective anticipation in immersed Polish-English bilinguals using a priming paradigm in which a verbal cue of controlled affective valence allowed making predictions about a subsequent picture target. As expected, native word cues with a negative valence increased the amplitude of the stimulus preceding negativity, an electrophysiological marker of affective anticipation, as compared with neutral ones. This effect was observed in Polish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals alike. The contrast was non-significant when Polish participants were tested in English, suggesting a possible reduction in affective sensitivity in L2. However, this reduction was not validated by a critical language × valence interaction in the bilingual group, possibly because they were highly fluent in English and because the affective stimuli used in the present study were particularly mild. These results, which are neither fully consistent nor inconsistent with the foreign language effect, provide initial insights into the electrophysiology of affective anticipation in bilingualism.
Keywords
- anticipation, bilingualism, emotion, foreign language effect, stimulus preceding negativity (SPN)
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 885-898 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience |
Volume | 14 |
Issue number | 8 |
Early online date | 11 Sept 2019 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 11 Sept 2019 |
Research outputs (1)
- Published
Erratum to: Keep calm and carry on: electrophysiological evaluation of emotional anticipation in the second language
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review