Native and non-native language contexts differently modulate mood-driven electrodermal activity
Creators: name: Behnke, Maciej
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2023
Subjects: Other psychology not elsewhere classified

description: Bilingual speakers have been consistently observed to experience reduced emotional sensitivity to their non-native (L2) relative to native (L1) language, particularly to the negatively-valenced L2 content. Yet, little is known about how the L1 and L2 contexts physiologically influence bilinguals' affective states, such as moods. Here, we show that bilinguals may be less physiologically sensitive to mood changes in the L2 compared to the L1 context. Polish-English bilinguals operating in either the L1 or the L2 mode (elicited via reading L1 and L2 sentences) watched positive and negative mood-inducing films while their electrodermal activity was measured. We observed a greater number of skin conductance responses in the negative compared to positive mood condition in the L1 context only, indexing decreased sensitivity to mood changes in the L2 relative to the L1 mode in bilinguals. Also, skin conductance amplitudes were overall increased in the L2 compared to the L1 context, pointing to increased cognitive load when operating in L2. These findings together suggest that bilinguals experience decreased sensitivity to mood changes in their less dominant language due to L2 processing requiring greater cognitive engagement. In today's multilingual world, communicating affectively in the native (L1) and non-native (L2) language may pose personal and interpersonal challenges. This has been reflected in empirical evidence pointing to the emotional detachment in L2, which suggests that bilinguals process emotional content in a language-dependent manner (see Jończyk 1 for a review). Importantly, though recent research has suggested that emotional responding both influences and is influenced by the language of operation (L1 vs. L2) 2,3 , the underlying mechanisms guiding the interplay between bilinguals' affective states and L2 mood regulatory abilities remain largely under-researched. To address this research gap, the present study focuses on how being in an L1 and an L2 mode (i.e., processing information in L1 and L2) influences bilinguals' physiological reactivity when induced experimentally into a positive and a negative mood. In contrast to emotion (i.e., a short-lived, specific, and full-blown affective state), mood is defined here as a slowly-changing, low-intensity background affective state that rather unobtrusively fluctuates over time from feeling positive (i.e., good and pleasant) to negative (i.e., bad and unpleasant) 4. Affect and bilingualism. Accumulating evidence has demonstrated increased emotional distance when unbalanced bilinguals process emotional content (e.g., words, sentences, or narratives) in their less dominant language (see Caldwell-Harris 5 ; Jończyk 1 for reviews). Such attenuated emotional reactivity has been argued to be particularly salient for negatively-valenced L2 content, as supported by self-report 6 , behavioural 7 , physiological 8 , electrophysiological 9 , and neuroimaging 10 research. For instance, Jończyk et al. 9 observed decreased N400 (i.e., an event-related potential component marking lexico-semantic processing) amplitudes for L2 negative words compared to L1 negative words as well as L1 and L2 positive words. Such a pattern points to the less automatic lexico-semantic access to negative content in one's less dominant language, as driven by a decreased activation of the emotional load encoded in negative words in L2. Recent evidence has also suggested that a positive and a negative mood may differently modulate cognitive mechanisms engaged in L1 and L2 processing in unbalanced bilinguals 3,11,12. For instance, Naranowicz et al. 3 observed that meaningful sentences evoked higher late positive complex (i.e., an event-related potential component marking semantic integration and re-analysis) amplitudes in L2 than in L1. Such a pattern suggests that a negative mood leads to the suppression of full semantic integration in L2 only, possibly as a result of high and accumulated cognitive demands triggered by both being in a negative mood and operating in a non-dominant language.