College Students' Processing Of Emotional Words In L1 And L2 In Self-paced Reading And RSVP

It is widely accepted that emotional words are more likely to attract attention than neutral words. However, studies into bilinguals'processing of emotional words in LI and L2 do not seem to have yielded consistent results. In the present study, three experiments were conducted to examine how a cohort of Chinese-English bilinguals' processing of emotional words in L1 and L2. A self-paced reading task was adopted in Experiment 1 and 2 and a RSVP task in Experiment 3. In the first experiment, the variables were the valence of emotional words (valence), whether the emotional words appeared in the middle or at the end of the sentences (position), and the language in which the sentences were presented language (language). In the second experiment, the variables were valence and language. Aside from valence and language, time lag between primes and the targets was manipulated in the third experiment.The study produced three results. First, the participants'level of proficiency in the target language affected their performance. Second, the effect of negative bias was found in both L1 and L2. Third, emotional words seemed elicit the effect of attentional blink in both L1 and L2. To achieve a clearer image of how emotional words are processed in bilinguals, however, both valence and arousal should be considered in a single study. A series of such studies on bilinguals that are of different levels of proficiency in L2 would be promising to provide an even deeper insight into how bilinguals process emotional words in general.