The embodiment of emotional words in a second language: An eye-movement study

Abstract

The hypothesis that word representations are emotionally impoverished in a second language (L2) has variable support. However, this hypothesis has only been tested using tasks that present words in isolation or that require laboratory-specific decisions. Here, we recorded eye movements for 34 bilinguals who read sentences in their L2 with no goal other than comprehension, and compared them to 43 first language readers taken from our prior study. Positive words were read more quickly than neutral words in the L2 across first-pass reading time measures. However, this emotional advantage was absent for negative words for the earliest measures. Moreover, negative words but not positive words were influenced by concreteness, frequency and L2 proficiency in a manner similar to neutral words. Taken together, the findings suggest that only negative words are at risk of emotional disembodiment during L2 reading, perhaps because a positivity bias in L2 experiences ensures that positive words are emotionally grounded.

Keywords:

• Emotion
• Second language
• Embodied cognition
• Proficiency
• Eye-movement measures of reading

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Dr. Gabriella Vigliocco for providing us with stimuli normed by her lab.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

¹ Average age for the L1 readers (M = 24.14, SD = 5.14) did not differ from L2 readers. We also verified that there were no differences in total alexithymia scores (Bagby, Parker, & Taylor, 1994) between L1 readers (M = 43, SD = 11.26) and L2 readers (M = 40, SD = 9.73), because emotional word processing by the L1 readers was modulated by individual differences in alexithymia (Sheikh & Titone, 2013).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [grant number 261769], Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 410-2011-1806] and a doctoral scholarship from Le Fonds de recherche du Québec-Nature et technologies.