Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-sjtt6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-15T14:11:23.259Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The nature of lexical associations in a foreign language: valence, arousal and concreteness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2024

Clara Planchuelo
Affiliation:
Centro de Investigación Nebrija en Cognición (CINC), Universidad Nebrija, Madrid, Spain Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
José Antonio Hinojosa
Affiliation:
Centro de Investigación Nebrija en Cognición (CINC), Universidad Nebrija, Madrid, Spain Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Jon Andoni Duñabeitia*
Affiliation:
Centro de Investigación Nebrija en Cognición (CINC), Universidad Nebrija, Madrid, Spain UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
*
Corresponding author: Jon Andoni Duñabeitia; Email: jdunabeitia@nebrija.es

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that similarity in emotional features and concreteness are critical cues underlying word association in native speakers. However, the lexical organization of a foreign language is less understood. This study aims to examine the structure of word associations within the mental lexicon of a foreign (English) and a native language. To this end, 145 native Spanish-speakers produced three lexical associates to cue words in both the foreign and native language. We observed that the associates were more neutrally valenced in the foreign language. Moreover, as cue words increased in their arousal, the produced associates were less arousing in the foreign language. Thus, the structure of these lexical associations could account for prior evidence of emotional detachment in foreign languages. Finally, as cues were more abstract, the foreign language associates were more abstract. Our findings revealed that the linguistic context modulated the lexical associations.

Type
Research Article
Open Practices
Open data
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. 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.)

Footnotes

This article has earned badges for transparent research practices: Open Data. For details see the Data Availability Statement.

References

Altarriba, J. (2008). Expressions of emotion as mediated by context. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11(2), 165167. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728908003295Google Scholar
Anwyl-Irvine, A. L., Massonnié, J., Flitton, A., Kirkham, N., & Evershed, J. K. (2020). Gorilla in our midst: An online behavioral experiment builder. Behavior Research Methods, 52(1), 388407. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-019-01237-xGoogle Scholar
Arbesman, S., Strogatz, S. H., & Vitevitch, M. S. (2010). The structure of phonological networks across multiple languages. International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, 20, 679685. https://doi.org/10.1142/S021812741002596XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Auguštin, M. (2020). Word Associations in English as L1 and L2 (Doctoral dissertation, University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Department of English language and literature).Google Scholar
Barber, H. A., Otten, L. J., Kousta, S. T., & Vigliocco, G. (2013). Concreteness in word processing: ERP and behavioral effects in a lexical decision task. Brain and Language, 125(1), 4753. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2013.01.005CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartoń, K. (2013). MuMIn: Multi-model inference. In R package version 1.10.0. (Vol. 1).Google Scholar
Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 148. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01.Google Scholar
Białek, M., Muda, R., Stewart, K., Niszczota, P., & Pieńkosz, D. (2020). Thinking in a foreign language distorts allocation of cognitive effort: Evidence from reasoning. Cognition, 205, 104420.Google Scholar
Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (1999). Affective norms for English words (ANEW): Stimuli, instruction manual and affective ratings. Technical report, The Center for Research in Psychophysiology, University of Florida.Google Scholar
Brysbaert, M., Stevens, M., De Deyne, S., Voorspoels, W., & Storms, G. (2014a). Norms of age of acquisition and concreteness for 30,000 Dutch words. Acta Psychologica, 150, 8084. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2014.04.010Google Scholar
Brysbaert, M., Warriner, A. B., & Kuperman, V. (2014b). Concreteness ratings for 40 thousand generally known English word lemmas. Behavior Research Methods, 46(3), 904911. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13428-013-0403-5CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brysbaert, M., Mandera, P., McCormick, S. F., & Keuleers, E. (2019). Word prevalence norms for 62,000 English lemmas. Behavior Research Methods, 51(2), 467479. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-018-1077-9Google Scholar
Buades-Sitjar, F., Planchuelo, C., & Duñabeitia, A. (2021). Valence, arousal and concreteness mediate word association. Psicothema, 33(4), 602609. https://doi.org/10.7334/psicothema2020.484Google ScholarPubMed
Casaponsa, A., Antón, E., Pérez, A., & Duñabeitia, J. A. (2015). Foreign language comprehension achievement: insights from the cognate facilitation effect. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 588. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00588Google Scholar
Chaouch-Orozco, A., González Alonso, J., Duñabeitia, J. A., & Rothman, J. (2023). Are translation equivalents really equivalent? Evidence from concreteness effects in translation priming. International Journal of Bilingualism, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069221146641Google Scholar
Chaudhari, D., Damani, O. P., & Laxman, S. (2010). Lexical co-occurrence, statistical significance, and word association. arXiv preprint arXiv :1008.5287. https://arxiv.org/abs/1008.5287Google Scholar
Collins, A. M., & Loftus, E. F. (1975). A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Review, 82(6), 407.Google Scholar
Collins, A. M., & Quillian, M. R. (1969). Retrieval time from semantic memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 8(2), 240247.Google Scholar
Costa, A., Corey, J. D., Hayakawa, S., Aparici, M., Vives, M. L., & Keysar, B. (2019a). The role of intentions and outcomes in the foreign language effect on moral judgements. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72(1), 817. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021817738409Google Scholar
Costa, A., Duñabeitia, J. A., & Keysar, B. (2019b). Language context and decision-making: Challenges and advances. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72(1), 12. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021818789799CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crutch, S. J. (2006). Qualitatively different semantic representations for abstract and concrete words: further evidence from the semantic reading errors of deep dyslexic patients. Neurocase, 12(2), 9197. https://doi.org/10.1080/13554790500507172CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crutch, S. J., & Warrington, E. K. (2005). Abstract and concrete concepts have structurally different representational frameworks. Brain, 128(3), 615627. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awh349CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
De Deyne, S., & Storms, G. (2015). Word associations. In Taylor, John R (ed.), The Oxford handbook of the word. Oxford academic. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199641604.013.018Google Scholar
De Deyne, S., Navarro, D. J., & Storms, G. (2013). Better explanations of lexical and semantic cognition using networks derived from continued rather than single-word associations. Behavior Research Methods, 45(2), 480498. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-012-0260-7Google Scholar
De Deyne, S., Navarro, D. J., Perfors, A., Brysbaert, M., & Storms, G. (2019). The “Small World of Words” English word association norms for over 12,000 cue words. Behavior Research Methods, 51(3), 9871006. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-018-1115-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Degner, J., Doycheva, C., & Wentura, D. (2012). It matters how much you talk: On the automaticity of affective connotations of first and second language words. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15(1), 181189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Groot, A. M. (1992). Bilingual lexical representation: A closer look at conceptual representations. Advances in Psychology, 94, 389412. North-Holland.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Groot, A. M., & Nas, G. L. (1991). Lexical representation of cognates and noncognates in compound bilinguals. Journal of Memory and Language, 30(1), 90123.Google Scholar
Dehaene-Lambertz, G., Montavont, A., Jobert, A., Allirol, L., Dubois, J., Hertz-Pannier, L., & Dehaene, S. (2010). Language or music, mother or Mozart? Structural and environmental influences on infants’ language networks. Brain and Language, 114(2), 5365. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2009.09.003Google Scholar
Deutsch, A., Frost, R., & Forster, K. I. (1998). Verbs and nouns are organized and accessed differently in the mental lexicon: evidence from Hebrew. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24(5), 12381255. https://doi.org/10.1037//0278-7393.24.5.1238Google Scholar
Dewaele, J. M. (2004). The emotional force of swearwords and taboo words in the speech of multilinguals. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 25(2-3), 204222. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434630408666529Google Scholar
Duchon, A., Perea, M., Sebastián-Gallés, N., Martí, A., & Carreiras, M. (2013). EsPal: One-stop shopping for Spanish word properties. Behavior Research Methods, 45(4), 12461258. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-013-0326-1CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Duñabeitia, J. A., Avilés, A., Afonso, O., Scheepers, C., & Carreiras, M. (2009). Qualitative differences in the representation of abstract versus concrete words: Evidence from the visual-world paradigm. Cognition, 110(2), 284292. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2008.11.012Google Scholar
Fernández, A., Díez, E., & Alonso, M. A. (2018). University of Salamanca Spanish Free Association Norms. https://iblues-inico.usal.es/iblues/nalc_home.phpGoogle Scholar
Fitzpatrick, T. (2006). Habits and rabbits: Word associations and the L2 lexicon. EUROSLA yearbook, 6(1), 121145. https://doi.org/10.1075/eurosla.6.09fitGoogle Scholar
Fitzpatrick, T., & Izura, C. (2011). Word association in L1 and L2: An exploratory study of response types, response times, and interlingual mediation. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33(3), 373398. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263111000027CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, R. (1970). Synonymy and linguistic analysis. University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies (United Kingdom).Google Scholar
Hayakawa, S., Costa, A., Foucart, A., & Keysar, B. (2016). Using a foreign language changes our choices. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(11), 791793. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.08.004Google Scholar
Hinojosa, J. A., Moreno, E. M., & Ferré, P. (2020), Affective neurolinguistics: towards a framework for reconciling language and emotion. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 35(7), 813839, https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2019.1620957Google Scholar
Hopp, H., Troy, A. S., & Mauss, I. B. (2011). The unconscious pursuit of emotion regulation: implications for psychological health. Cognition & Emotion, 25(3), 532545. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2010.532606CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hsu, C. T., Jacobs, A. M., Citron, F. M., & Conrad, M. (2015). The emotion potential of words and passages in reading Harry Potter–An fMRI study. Brain and Language, 142, 96114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2015.01.011CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Iacozza, S., Costa, A., & Duñabeitia, J. A. (2017). What do your eyes reveal about your foreign language? Reading emotional sentences in a native and foreign language. PLoS ONE, 12(10), e0186027. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186027Google Scholar
Ivaz, L., Costa, A., & Duñabeitia, J. A. (2016). The emotional impact of being myself: Emotions and foreign-language processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42(3), 489496. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000179Google Scholar
Ivaz, L., Griffin, K. L., & Duñabeitia, J. A. (2019). Self-bias and the emotionality of foreign languages. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72(1), 7689. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021818781017Google Scholar
Jin, Y. S. (1990). Effects of concreteness on cross-language priming in lexical decisions. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 70(3_suppl), 11391154.Google Scholar
Jończyk, R., Boutonnet, B., Musiał, K., Hoemann, K., & Thierry, G. (2016). The bilingual brain turns a blind eye to negative statements in the second language. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 16, 527540.Google Scholar
Kanske, P., & Kotz, S. A. (2007). Concreteness in emotional words: ERP evidence from a hemifield study. Brain Research, 1148, 138148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2007.02.044Google Scholar
Kauschke, C., Bahn, D., Vesker, M., & Schwarzer, G. (2019). The role of emotional valence for the processing of facial and verbal stimuli—positivity or negativity bias? Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1654.Google Scholar
Kumar, A. A., Balota, D. A., & Steyvers, M. (2020). Distant connectivity and multiple-step priming in large-scale semantic networks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 46(12), 2261.Google Scholar
Kuperman, V., Estes, Z., Brysbaert, M., & Warriner, A. B. (2014). Emotion and language: Valence and arousal affect word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(3), 10651081. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035669Google Scholar
Ladueña, G. A., Behzad, M. D., & Gros, C. (2014). Exploration in free word association networks: models and experiment. Cognitive Processing, 15(2), 195200. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-013-0590-0Google Scholar
Lemhöfer, K., & Broersma, M. (2012). Introducing LexTALE: A quick and valid lexical test for advanced learners of English. Behavior Research Methods, 44, 325343. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-011-0146-0Google Scholar
Lowe, C. J., Cho, I., Goldsmith, S. F., & Morton, J. B. (2021). The bilingual advantage in children's executive functioning is not related to language status: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Science, 32(7), 11151146.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2008). A unified model. Ellis, N., Robinson, P. (Eds.), Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition. Lawrence Erlbaum Press.Google Scholar
Meara, P. (1978). Learners' word associations in French. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin, 192211.Google Scholar
Meara, P. (1982). Word associations in a foreign language. Nottingham Linguistic Circular, 11(2), 2938.Google Scholar
Meara, P. (2009). Connected words: Word Associations and Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition (24). John Benjamins Publishing.Google Scholar
Mikolov, T., Chen, K., Corrado, G., & Dean, J. (2013). Efficient estimation of word representations in vector space. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR’13).Google Scholar
Miozzo, M., Navarrete, E., Ongis, M., Mello, E., Girotto, V., & Peressotti, F. (2020). Foreign language effect in decision-making: How foreign is it? Cognition, 199, 104245.Google Scholar
Moors, A., De Houwer, J., Hermans, D., Wanmaker, S., Van Schie, K., Van Harmelen, A. L., De Schryver, M., De Winne, J., & Brysbaert, M. (2013). Norms of valence, arousal, dominance, and age of acquisition for 4,300 Dutch words. Behavior Research Methods, 45(1), 169177. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-012-0243-8Google Scholar
Nelson, D. L., McEvoy, C. L., & Schreiber, T. A. (2004). The University of South Florida free association, rhyme, and word fragment norms. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36(3), 402407. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195588Google Scholar
Norman, T., & Peleg, O. (2021). The reduced embodiment of a second language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 25(3), 406416. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728921001115Google Scholar
Nusbaum, H. C., Pisoni, D. B., & Davis, C. K. (1984). Sizing up the hoosier mental lexicon: Measuring the familiarity of 20,000 words. Speech Research Laboratory Progress Report. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University.Google Scholar
Odlin, T. (1989). Language Transfer (Vol. 27). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Opitz, B., & Degner, J. (2012). Emotionality in a second language: It's a matter of time. Neuropsychologia, 50(8), 19611967. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.04.021CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osgood, C. E. (1952). The nature and measurement of meaning. Psychological Bulletin, 49(3), 197.Google Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (2005). Emotions and multilingualism. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (2008). Emotion and emotion-laden words in the bilingual lexicon. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11(2), 147164. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728908003283CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (2012). Affective processing in bilingual speakers: disembodied cognition? International journal of psychology: Journal International de Psychologie, 47(6), 405428. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207594.2012.743665CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Perea, M., Dunabeitia, J. A., & Carreiras, M. (2008). Masked associative/semantic priming effects across languages with highly proficient bilinguals. Journal of Memory and Language, 58(4), 916930. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2008.01.003.Google Scholar
Planchuelo, C., Buades-Sitjar, F., Hinojosa, J. A., & Duñabeitia, J. A. (2022). The nature of word associations in sentence contexts. Experimental Psychology, 10.1027/1618-3169/a000547. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1027/1618-3169/a000547Google Scholar
Ponari, M., Rodríguez-Cuadrado, S., Vinson, D., Fox, N., Costa, A., & Vigliocco, G. (2015). Processing advantage for emotional words in bilingual speakers. Emotion, 15(5), 644.Google Scholar
Read, J. (2013). Second language vocabulary assessment. Language Teaching, 46(1), 4152. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444812000377Google Scholar
Riegel, K. F., & Zivian, I. W. (1972). A study of inter-and intralingual associations. In English and German 1. Language Learning, 22(1), 5163. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1972.tb00073.xGoogle Scholar
Roelke, A., Franke, N., Biemann, C., Radach, R., Jacobs, A. M., & Hofmann, M. J. (2018). A novel co-occurrence-based approach to predict pure associative and semantic priming. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25, 14881493.Google Scholar
RStudio Team (2020). RStudio: Integrated Development for R. RStudio, PBC, Boston, MA URL http://www.rstudio.com/.Google Scholar
Sabater, L., Ponari, M., Haro, J., Fernández-Folgueiras, U., Moreno, E. M., Pozo, M. A., & Hinojosa, J. A. (2022). The acquisition of emotion-laden words from childhood to adolescence. Current Psychology, 111. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03989-wGoogle Scholar
Schmitt, N. (1998). Quantifying word association responses: What is native-like? System, 26(3), 389401. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0346-251X(98)00019-0Google Scholar
Sianipar, A., Van Groenestijn, P., & Dijkstra, T. (2016). Affective meaning, concreteness, and subjective frequency norms for Indonesian words. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1907.Google Scholar
Siew, C. S. Q. (2018). The orthographic similarity structure of English words: Insights from network science. Applied Network Science, 3(1), 13. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41109-018-0068-1Google Scholar
Smith, E. E., Shoben, E. J., & Rips, L. J. (1974). Structure and process in semantic memory: A featural model for semantic decisions. Psychological Review, 81(3), 214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stadthagen-Gonzalez, H., Imbault, C., Sánchez, M. A. P., & Brysbaert, M. (2017). Norms of valence and arousal for 14,031 Spanish words. Behavior Research Methods, 49(1), 111123. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-015-0700-2Google Scholar
Steyvers, M., Shiffrin, R. M., & Nelson, D. L. (2005). Word association spaces for predicting semantic similarity effects in episodic memory. In Healy, A. F. (Ed.), Experimental Cognitive Psychology and its Applications, 237249. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10895-018Google Scholar
The jamovi project (2021). Jamovi (Version 1.6) [Computer Software]. Retrieved from https://www.jamovi.orgGoogle Scholar
Trautwein, J., & Schroeder, S. (2018). Orthographic networks in the developing mental lexicon. Insights from graph theory and implications for the study of language processing. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2252. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02252Google Scholar
Van Hell, J. G., & de Groot, A. M. (1998). Conceptual representation in bilingual memory: Effects of concreteness and cognate status in word association. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1(3), 193211.Google Scholar
Vankrunkelsven, H., Verheyen, S., Storms, G., & De Deyne, S. (2018). Predicting lexical norms: A comparison between a word association model and text-based word co-occurrence models. Journal of Cognition, 1(1), 45. https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.50Google Scholar
Van Rensbergen, B., De Deyne, S., & Storms, G. (2016). Estimating affective word covariates using word association data. Behavior Research Methods, 48(4), 16441652. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-015-0680-2CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vinson, D., Ponari, M., & Vigliocco, G. (2014). How does emotional content affect lexical processing?. Cognition & Emotion, 28(4), 737746. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2013.851068Google Scholar
Vitevitch, M., Goldstein, R., Siew, C., & Castro, N. (2015). Using complex networks to understand the mental lexicon. Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting, 1(1), 119138. https://doi.org/10.1515/yplm-2015-0007Google Scholar
Warriner, A. B., Kuperman, V., & Brysbaert, M. (2013). Norms of valence, arousal, and dominance for 13,915 English lemmas. Behavior Research Methods, 45(4), 11911207. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-012-0314-xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yao, Z., Yu, D., Wang, L., Zhu, X., Guo, J., & Wang, Z. (2016). Effects of valence and arousal on emotional word processing are modulated by concreteness: Behavioral and ERP evidence from a lexical decision task. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 110, 231242. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2016.07.499Google Scholar
Zareva, A. (2007). Structure of the second language mental lexicon: how does it compare to native speakers' lexical organization? Second Language Research, 23(2), 123153. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658311423452CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zortea, M., Menegola, B., Villavicencio, A., & Salles, J. F. D. (2014). Graph analysis of semantic word association among children, adults, and the elderly. Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica, 27, 9099. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-79722014000100011Google Scholar