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‘Beyond the literal meaning’. Processing implied emotion in second language sentence processing.

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Poster C31 in Poster Session C, Wednesday, October 25, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port

Alice Foucart¹, Eva Moreno^2,3, Andrea González-García Aldariz¹; ¹Nebrija University, ²Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, ³Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Models of sentence comprehension in a first language (L1) propose that semantic and pragmatic information, including emotions, are processed simultaneously and incrementally through unification operations. Recent event-related brain potential (ERP) studies in second language (L2) comprehension have explored pragmatic processing. These studies indicate that information common to both L1 and L2, such as world knowledge and speaker identity, is processed similarly to L1. This is reflected by an increased N400 component when the information is incongruent. However, when it comes to emotion-related information, which is typically acquired through experience in L1 but challenging to grasp in an L2 classroom setting, pragmatic processing requires additional cognitive effort. This is evident through a sustained positivity observed in the ERP data. Given the importance of interpreting pragmatic information during communicative interactions, our study aims to investigate whether L2 users, like L1 users, incrementally infer implied emotions during sentence comprehension. To achieve this, we conducted an ERP study in which we presented advanced English users who were native Spanish speakers with sentences in both their L1 and L2. In the same sentence context, we manipulated emotionally neutral words to create three conditions: a) negative-semantically congruent, b) emotionally neutral-semantically congruent, and c) emotionally neutral-semantically incongruent. a- A bee flies towards Joe’s ear and then doesn’t move. b- A bee flies towards Joe’s yard and then doesn’t move. c- A bee flies towards Joe’s tennis and then doesn’t move. The ERPs were time-locked to the onset of the critical word (underlined in the examples). Analyses of semantic congruency revealed a larger N400 amplitude for neutral incongruent contexts compared to neutral and negative congruent contexts in both language conditions, suggesting increased difficulty in semantic integration. Regarding implicit emotion processing, we observed a reduced N100 amplitude only in L1 for the negative condition compared with the neutral conditions, indicating early processing of implied emotion. In contrast, in L2, a sustained positivity was observed, larger in the negative than in the neutral conditions, suggesting additional cognitive load when processing emotional sentences. Our findings indicate that implied emotion is incrementally integrated during L2 comprehension, but its processing differs between L1 and L2, aligning with previous observations that emotion-related pragmatic information requires additional processing in L2 sentence comprehension. These findings contribute to our understanding of L2 language comprehension models.

Topic Areas: Morphology, Signed Language and Gesture