Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T02:20:24.675Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Good for you!’ Processing social emotions in L2 discourse comprehension: an ERP study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2022

Andrea González-García Aldariz Open the ORCID record for Andrea González-García Aldariz [Opens in a new window] ,
Pablo Rodríguez-Gómez ,
Carlos Romero-Rivas ,
Sara Rodríguez-Cuadrado Open the ORCID record for Sara Rodríguez-Cuadrado [Opens in a new window] ,
Alice Foucart Open the ORCID record for Alice Foucart [Opens in a new window]  and
Eva M. Moreno
Andrea González-García Aldariz
Affiliation:
Universidad Antonio de Nebrija, Madrid, Spain
Pablo Rodríguez-Gómez
Affiliation:
Cardenal Cisneros, Centro de Enseñanza Superior adscrito a la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Carlos Romero-Rivas
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Sara Rodríguez-Cuadrado
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Alice Foucart*
Affiliation:
Universidad Antonio de Nebrija, Madrid, Spain
Eva M. Moreno
Affiliation:
Universidad Antonio de Nebrija, Madrid, Spain Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
*
Author for correspondence: Alice Foucart, Universidad Nebrija Campus Berzosa, Hoyo de Manzanares, 28248 Madrid, Spain E-mail: Alfoucart@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Social factors impact sentence comprehension in a first language (L1), suggesting that semantic processing cannot be dissociated from social and moral emotions in relation to pro/antisocial individuals. Given that integrating multiple types of information and processing emotion-laden pragmatic information is costlier in a second language (L2), we investigated whether social factors would affect discourse comprehension similarly in L2. Processing the outcomes of scenarios involving pro/antisocial protagonists provoked similar neural patterns in L2 as in L1 (Rodríguez-Gómez, Martín-Loeches, Colmenares, Romero Ferreiro & Moreno, 2020), suggesting that L2 users simultaneously integrate semantic and discourse-pragmatic information during sentence comprehension.

Keywords

BilingualismDiscourse processingEvent-related potentialsN400Social feeling
Type
Research Notes
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , March 2023 , pp. 440 - 445
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bayer, M, Sommer, W and Schacht, A (2010) Reading emotional words within sentences: The impact of arousal and valence on event-related potentials. International Journal of Psychophysiology 78, 299–307. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2010.09.004CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caldwell-Harris, CL, Tong, J, Lung, W and Poo, S (2011) Physiological reactivity to emotional phrases in Mandarin-English bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingualism 15, 329–352. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006910379262CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conrad, M, Recio, G and Jacobs, AM (2011) The time course of emotion effects in first and second language processing: A cross cultural ERP study with German-Spanish bilinguals. Frontiers in Psychology 2(DEC). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00351CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Costa, A, Foucart, A, Arnon, I, Aparici, M and Apesteguia, J (2014) “Piensa” twice: On the foreign language effect in decision making. In Cognition (Vol. 130, Issue 2). Elsevier Science, pp. 236–254. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.11.010Google ScholarPubMed
Dewaele, JM (2004) The emotional force of swearwords and taboo words in the speech of multilinguals. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 25, 204–222. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434630408666529CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dragojevic, M and Giles, H (2016) I Don't Like You Because You're Hard to Understand: The Role of Processing Fluency in the Language Attitudes Process. Human Communication Research 42, 396–420. https://doi.org/10.1111/hcre.12079CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faul, F, Erdfelder, E, Lang, AG and Buchner, A (2007) G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. In Behavior Research Methods (Vol. 39, Issue 2), pp. 175–191. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193146Google Scholar
Foucart, A, Garcia, X, Ayguasanosa, M, Thierry, G, Martin, C and Costa, A (2015b) Does the speaker matter? Online processing of semantic and pragmatic information in L2 speech comprehension. Neuropsychologia 75, 291–303. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.06.027CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Foucart, A and Brouwer, S (2021) Is there a foreign accent effect on moral judgement? Brain Sciences https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11121631CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucart, A and Hartsuiker, RJ (2021) Are foreign-accented speakers that ‘incredible’? The impact of the speaker's indexical properties on sentence processing. Neuropsychologia 158(May), 107902. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107902CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Foucart, A, Moreno, EM, Martin, CD and Costa, A (2015a) Integration of moral values during L2 sentence processing. Acta Psychologica 162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2015.09.009CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Foucart, A, Romero-Rivas, C, Gort, L and Costa, A (2016) Discourse comprehension in L2: Making sense of what is not explicitly said. Brain and Language 163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2016.09.001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gratton, G, Coles, MGH and Donchin, E (1983) A new method for off-line removal of ocular artifact. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 55, 468–484.Google ScholarPubMed
Hagoort, P (2003) Interplay between syntax and semantics during sentence comprehension: ERP effects of combining syntactic and semantic violations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 15, 883–899. https://doi.org/10.1162/089892903322370807CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hagoort, P, Hald, L, Bastiaansen, M and Petersson, KM (2004) Integration of Word Meaning and World Knowledge in Language Comprehension. Science 304, 438–441. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1095455CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hernández-Gutiérrez, D, Muñoz, F, Sánchez-García, J, Sommer, W, Abdel Rahman, R, Casado, P, Jiménez-Ortega, L, Espuny, J, Fondevila, S and Martín-Loeches, M (2021) Situating language in a minimal social context: how seeing a picture of the speaker's face affects language comprehension. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 16, 502–511. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsab009CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holt, DJ, Lynn, SK and Kuperberg, GR (2009) Neurophysiological Correlates of Comprehending Emotional Meaning in Context. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2245–2262.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hyunwoo, K and Grüter, T (2020) Predictive Processing of Implicit Causality in a Second Language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 43, 133–154. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263120000443Google Scholar
Izura, C, Cuetos, F and Brysbaert, M (2014) Lextale-Esp: A test to rapidly and efficiently assess the Spanish vocabulary size. Psicológica 35, 49–66.Google Scholar
Jasper, HH (1958) The 10/20 international electrode system. In Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology (Vol. 10, Issue 2), pp. 370–375.Google Scholar
Jiang, X, Gossack-Keenan, K and Pell, MD (2020) To believe or not to believe? How voice and accent information in speech alter listener impressions of trust. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 73, 55–79. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021819865833CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jończyk, R, Korolczuk, I, Balatsou, E and Thierry, G (2019) Keep calm and carry on Electrophysiological evaluation of emotional anticipation in the second language. Forbes 202, 71. https://doi.org/10.30965/26664275-02301008Google Scholar
Kaplan, E, Goodglass, H, Weintraub, S and Segal, O (1983) Boston Naming Test. Philadelphia, PA: Lea, & Febiger.Google Scholar
Kissler, J, Herbert, C, Winkler, I and Junghofer, M (2009) Emotion and attention in visual word processing-An ERP study. Biological Psychology 80, 75–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2008.03.004CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kotz, SA and Paulmann, S (2007) When emotional prosody and semantics dance cheek to cheek: ERP evidence. Brain Research 1151, 107–118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2007.03.015CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kutas, M and Federmeier, KD (2011) Thirty years and counting: Finding meaning in the N400 component of the event related brain potential (ERP). Annual Review of Psychology, 29–32. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.131123Google ScholarPubMed
Leuthold, H, Kunkel, A, Mackenzie, IG and Filik, R (2015) Online processing of moral transgressions: ERP evidence for spontaneous evaluation. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 10, 1021–1029. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsu151CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moreno, EM and Kutas, M (2005) Processing semantic anomalies in two languages: An electrophysiological exploration in both languages of Spanish-English bilinguals. Cognitive Brain Research 22, 205–220. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogbrainres.2004.08.010CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Newman, AJ, Tremblay, A, Nichols, ES, Neville, HJ and Ullman, MT (2012) The influence of language proficiency on lexical semantic processing in native and late learners of English. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 24, 1205–1223. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00143CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paulmann, S and Kotz, SA (2008) An ERP investigation on the temporal dynamics of emotional prosody and emotional semantics in pseudo- and lexical-sentence context. Brain and Language 105, 59–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2007.11.005CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pavlenko, A (2005) Emotions and multilingualism. Sociolinguistic Studies 1. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v1i2.327Google Scholar
Pavlenko, A (2012) Affective processing in bilingual speakers: Disembodied cognition? International Journal of Psychology 47, 405–428. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207594.2012.743665CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rodríguez-Gómez, P, Martín-Loeches, M, Colmenares, F, Romero Ferreiro, MV and Moreno, EM (2020) He had it Comin’: ERPs Reveal a Facilitation for the Processing of Misfortunes to Antisocial Characters. Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-020-00773-wCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Romero-Rivas, C, Corey, JD, Garcia, X, Thierry, G, Martin, CD and Costa, A (2016) World knowledge and novel information integration during L2 speech comprehension. Bilingualism 20, 576–587. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728915000905CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schindler, S, Schettino, A and Pourtois, G (2018) Electrophysiological correlates of the interplay between low-level visual features and emotional content during word reading. Scientific Reports 8, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-30701-5CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sutton, TM, Altarriba, J, Gianico, JL and Basnight-Brown, DM (2007) The automatic access of emotion: Emotional Stroop effects in Spanish-English bilingual speakers. Cognition and Emotion 21, 1077–1090. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930601054133CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Berkum, JJA, Brink, D. Van Den, Tesink, CMJY, Kos, M and Hagoort, P (2008) The Neural Integration of Speaker and Message. 580–591.Google ScholarPubMed
Van Berkum, JJA, Holleman, B, Nieuwland, M, Otten, M and Murre, J (2009) Right or wrong? The brain's fast response to morally objectionable statements. Psychological Science 20, 1092–1099. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02411.xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wu, YJ and Thierry, G (2012) How reading in a second language protects your heart. Journal of Neuroscience 32, 6485–6489. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6119-11.2012CrossRefGoogle Scholar