Memory for emotional words in bilinguals: Do words have the same emotional intensity in the first and in the second language?

Abstract

Emotionally charged words are usually better remembered than neutral words. In the current study we focused on memory for emotional words in bilinguals and examined the influence of some variables that might modulate the effect of emotionality of second-language words on recall. We tested memory for positive, negative and neutral words of two groups of proficient bilinguals of Spanish and Catalan who had acquired the second language early in life in an immersion context and who differed in their language dominance. We also tested a group of proficient Spanish–English bilinguals who had learned the second language later in life in an instruction setting. The three groups showed a superiority in recall for emotional words that was of the same magnitude in their first as in their second language. These results suggest that neither language dominance, nor the type of context, the age of second language acquisition, or the similarity between languages, seem to have any effect on memory for emotional words in the second language. They also indicate that, at least in proficient bilinguals, and when memory tasks are used, words seem to have the same emotional intensity in the first and in the second language.

Keywords:

• Emotional words
• Memory
• Bilinguals
• Dominance
• Age of acquisition
• Context of acquisition

Acknowledgements

This research has been supported by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (SEJ2006–11955/PSIC).

We wish to thank the lecturers and students from St Louis University (Madrid Campus) and from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, who participated in the study.