An Empirical Study Of The Relationship Between Middle School Students' Emotion,Working Memory Capacity And English Reading Comprehension

In recent years,many researchers in the field of second language acquisition have begun to pay attention to the function of working memory and emotion under the influence of psychology.They attempt to explore the cognitive process and mental activities of second language learner from the perspective of psycholinguistics.Evidence from cognitive psychology have shown that either individual's personal emotional state or emotion in learning materials can influence their WM to some extent.At the same time,a large number of empirical studies suggested the WM's impact on various aspects of language learning.However,rare studies have combined the emotion,working memory and language learning together.As a complex cognitive activity,it is no doubt that reading comprehension will be influenced by working memory and emotional factors.This study aims to explore the relationship between emotion,working memory and English reading comprehension in the context of second language learning.Three variables are involved in this study.Emotion is the independent variable,working memory capacity is the mediator variable and English reading comprehension performance is the dependent variable.First,the independent variable emotion includes three levels,which are positive emotion group,negative emotion group and neutral emotion group.Second,the mediator variable,i.e.,the working memory capacity,involves two levels which are working memory capacity before the emotion induction and that after the emotion induction.Third,English reading comprehension includes three levels,they are high proficiency readers,intermediate proficiency readers and low proficiency readers.This study analyzed and discussed the effect of different emotional state on working memory capacity,the effect of different emotional state on English reading comprehension performance,the relationship between working memorycapacity and English reading comprehension performance,and whether working memory capacity mediates between participants' emotional state and English reading comprehension.The study finds that,first,working memory capacity of positive emotion group has been improved while that of negative emotion group declined after emotion induction.Secondly,positive emotion group has better performance on reading test than negative emotion and neutral group;and neutral group scored higher than negative emotion group.Thirdly,participants with higher working memory capacity tend to score higher in reading comprehension test than those with lower working memory capacity.Lastly,working memory capacity mediates between emotion and reading comprehension.The present study provides some theoretical and methods implications for the teaching of second language reading comprehension.