A study shows that fear may be different in native or foreign language contexts



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## A study shows that fear may be different in native or foreign language contexts Knowledge of emotional reactivity will help improve therapies and progress in the use of language as a tool at the service of psychology and psychiatry

16/03/2018 |
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* [![Azucena Palacios estudi-por Azucena_Palacios](/com/investigacio/arxiu/noticies/2018/3/estudi-por/Azucena_Palacios.jpg)](#)

A study carried out by a consortium of researchers from several institutions carried out by the Universitat Jaume I concludes that the psychophysical response to fear varies depending on whether the acquisition of that fear is framed in a context of mother tongue or foreign language. The research has been published in the journal *Scientific Reports* and opens the doors to work in foreign languages ​​in psychological therapies.

The acquisition of fear has been studied for years given its importance in the field of cognitive science and clinical psychology. A study developed by researchers from the Universitat Jaume I (Azucena García Palacios), the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Albert Costa) and the Nebrija University (Jon Andoni Duñabeitia) that has recently been published in the journal *Scientific Reports* of the Nature group concludes that the acquisition of fear can be directly affected by the linguistic context.

This consortium of scientists has shown that two of the psychophysiological measures most indicative of the response to fear – dilation of the pupils and sweating of the skin – showed a minor fear conditioning effect when the participants were in a linguistic context where the prevailing language was the foreign language.

The conditioning to fear is one of the paradigms with greater implications in the field of psychology. It consists of associating an initially neutral stimulus (for example, seeing an object of a certain color) with a clearly aversive stimulus (for example, receiving an electric shock). In this way and through repeated exposure to both stimuli, the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus and people end up developing and showing fear before their mere presence. It is not necessary to experience the electric shock in the flesh, that is, the impact of the aversive stimulus, to be conditioned, but it is enough for one to express verbally that this can take place to show a fear response to the conditioned stimulus.

The study investigated whether the language in which the experiment was performed (native or foreign, Spanish or English, in this study) modulated the automatic response of people to the conditioned stimulus. For this, people were asked to count back while shown two-colour squares. The participants believed that only in the presence of the squares of a particular colour could they receive small electrical discharges through a device that had been placed on them. While half of the participants completed the protocol in their native language (Spanish), the other half did so in a foreign language in which they had a good level (English).

Researchers collected the dilation of the pupils by means of an eye movement recording device before the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli (colored squares), and they also recorded the galvanic response by means of a system to measure the conductance of the skin, both very reliable indexs from conditioning to fear.

Results were conclusive: people who completed the study in a foreign language showed a significantly lower effect of fear conditioning than people who completed the study in their mother tongue. The magnitude of the effects of dilation of the pupils and of sweating of the skin before the conditioned stimuli in relation to the unconditioned ones was greater in the context of the mother tongue than in the context of a foreign language. According to Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, "emotional reactivity is lower in a foreign language, and this makes us more easily distance ourselves from situations full of emotional content when the predominant language of the environment is a foreign language".

"Now we are closer to understanding how the intensity with which we experience our emotions can be affected by the language in which we interact," says Albert Costa, who believes that "these results may have implications for psychological therapies in which patients have problems to express their emotional experience in the face of traumatic events".

Researchers are already working on new studies with applied character that intend to provide evidence in favour of the use of foreign languages ​​as a therapeutic tool. "These results open a new line to explore the usefulness of using a second language in psychological therapies as a method to reduce emotional intensity and in areas of health where emotions can interfere in decision-making", stresses the researcher Azucena García Palacios.

In the near future, the knowledge of this interaction between the linguistic context and the emotional reactivity in very intense situations can help to improve some therapies, turning language into a tool at the service of psychologists and psychiatrists. Thus, one of the next steps for researchers will be to verify the effectiveness of the use of foreign languages ​​in situations of evident conflict between people, as well as in therapies aimed at the extinction of certain conditions that prevent people from living normally.

The study was carried out at the Universitat Jaume I with the collaboration of Miguel Ángel Ruiz Garrido and his colleagues from the Department of English Studies and Irma Mulet and her colleagues from the Language and Terminology Service.

**Bibliographic reference:**

Azucena García-Palacios, Albert Costa, Diana Castilla, Eva del Río, Aina Casaponsa & Jon Andoni Duñabeitia. ‘The effect of foreign language in fear acquisition’. Scientific Reports, 8: 1157.DOI:10.1038/s41598-018-19352-8

<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-19352-8>

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