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P300 on Steroids: Evaluating the Suitability of Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation for Implicit Emotional Word Processing in Bilinguals
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Poster C23 in Poster Session C, Wednesday, October 25, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
Olivia Molina-Nieto1, Marcin Naranowicz2, Iga Krzysik2, Agnieszka Janik2, Guillaume Thierry1,2; 1Bangor University, 2Adam Mickiewicz University
Bilinguals are thought to experience attenuated emotional responses when communicating in their second language (L2). Although behavioural and electrophysiological studies have shown differential emotional modulation in L1 and L2, we need an approach statistically robust at the individual level that will allow researchers to study correlations with other factors such as proficiency and exposure. Here, we attempted to test the suitability of a Frequency Tagging (FT) paradigm to observe L2 emotional detachment in Polish-English bilinguals. In FT, stimuli in different conditions are presented at specific frequencies to which EEG is expected to entrain selectively. Computing frequency power and signal-to-noise ratio then enables the comparison of entrainment in the different conditions. To do this, we showed participants neutral and negative words presented at a fast pace in both languages. Participants (n=30) were asked to press a button upon detecting a word pertaining to a category specified at the beginning of each block (clothing item or colour name). Due to insufficient precision of the stimulus delivery system, negative and neutral word presentation was diluted across four frequencies rather than the two planned, reducing entrainment and interfering with frequency-based analysis. We thus decided to explore the potential fast pace of periodic visual presentation with event-related potentials in each condition between 150–250 ms (“fast” P300 window). Indeed, given that for every ten words, three were negative and seven were neutral, we could expect that negative words would act as deviants. In line with predictions form L2 emotional detachment theory, we found that the response to negative words in English elicited reduced fast P3 amplitudes as compared to Polish equivalents, whereas no significant difference was found between languages for neutral words. We conclude that fast-paced stimulus presentation is compatible with ERP quantification of higher-level word processing, which offers at least three advantages: 1) increased power, 2) reduced experiment duration, and 3) enhanced participant engagement. A temporally accurate version of this study is now underway to evaluate the full potential of FT for the study for written word processing in general, and the L2 emotional detachment in bilinguals, in particular.
Topic Areas: Multilingualism, Meaning: Lexical Semantics