Mood Induction Differently Affects Early Neural Correlates of Evaluative Word Processing in L1 and L2

Abstract

We investigate how mood inductions impact the neural processing of emotional adjectives in one’s first language (L1) and a formally acquired second language (L2). Twenty-three student participants took part in an EEG experiment with two separate sessions. Happy or sad mood inductions were followed by series of individually presented positive, negative, or neutral adjectives in L1 (German) or L2 (English) and evaluative decisions had to be performed. Visual event-related potentials elicited during word processing were analyzed during N1 (125–200 ms), Early Posterior Negativities (EPN, 200–300 ms and 300–400 ms), N400 (350–450 ms), and the Late Positive Potential (LPP, 500–700 ms). Mood induction differentially impacted word processing already on the N1, with stronger left lateralization following happy than sad mood induction in L1, but not in L2. Moreover, regardless of language, early valence modulation was found following happy but not sad mood induction. Over occipital areas, happy mood elicited larger amplitudes of the mood-congruent positive words, whereas over temporal areas mood-incongruent negative words had higher amplitudes. In the EPN-windows, effects of mood and valence largely persisted, albeit with no difference between L1 and L2. N400 amplitude was larger for L2 than for L1. On the LPP, mood-incongruent adjectives elicited larger amplitudes than mood-congruent ones. Results reveal a remarkably early valence-general effect of mood induction on cortical processing, in line with previous reports of N1 as a first marker of contextual integration. Interestingly, this effect differed between L1 and L2. Moreover, mood-congruent effects were found in perceptual processing and mood-incongruent ERP amplification in higher-order evaluative stages.

Altered Processing of Social Emotions in Individuals With Autistic Traits

“…In agreement with previous studies (Kissler and Bromberek-Dyzman, 2021), the results of Experiment 1 showed the N1 amplitudes elicited by the positive and negative pictures were larger than those elicited by the neutral pictures. Since the N1 component represents the early sensory and attention processing of visual information (Huang et al, 2017;Xia et al, 2017;Oeur and Margulies, 2020;Zhao et al, 2020a), the present results suggest that early sensory and attention processing resources were activated by emotional pictures in Experiment 1.…”

Altered processing of social emotions in individuals with autistic traits

“…In agreement with previous studies [58], the results of Experiment showed the N1 amplitudes elicited by the positive and negative pictures were larger than those elicited by the neutral pictures. Since the N1 component represents the early sensory and attention processing of visual information [32,59,60,61], the present results suggest that early sensory and attention processing resources were activated by emotional pictures in Experiment 1.…”

Mood effects on semantic processes: Behavioural and electrophysiological evidence

“…Finally, electrophysiological research on the moodlanguage interactions has recently been extended to the bilingual context (Kissler and Bromberek-Dyzman, 2021;Naranowicz et al, 2022b;Jankowiak et al, 2022; see also Naranowicz et al, 2022a), demonstrating that positive and negative moods may differently affect consecutive stages of L1 and L2 processing (Naranowicz et al, 2022b). In an SDT, Naranowicz et al (2022b) explored how film-induced positive and negative moods affect bilingual language processing in Polish-English bilinguals, who made meaningfulness judgements on words embedded in meaningful (i.e., expected) and meaningless (i.e., rather unexpected) sentences.…”

“…Growing scholarly attention has been devoted to a potentially reciprocal relationship between mood and language. The moodlanguage interactions have been explored in various linguistic domains, including syntactic processing (Vissers et al, 2010;Jiménez-Ortega et al, 2012;Van Berkum et al, 2013;Verhees et al, 2015;Liu et al, 2018;Yano et al, 2018), language production (Isen et al, 1985;Beukeboom and Semin, 2006;Kharkhurin and Altarriba, 2016;Hinojosa et al, 2017;Braun et al, 2019;Forgas and Matovic, 2020;Out et al, 2020), communicative interactions (Forgas, 1999;Koch et al, 2013;Matovic and Forgas, 2018), reading patterns (Bohn-Gettler and Rapp, 2011;Scrimin and Mason, 2015;Mills et al, 2019), and emotional word processing (e.g., Kiefer et al, 2007;Pratt and Kelly, 2008;Egidi and Nusbaum, 2012;Kissler and Bromberek-Dyzman, 2021;Naranowicz et al, 2022a). Arguably, semantic processing (i.e., the cognitive mechanisms engaged in language comprehension) has attracted a particularly keen interest among mood researchers, who have employed a variety of behavioural (e.g., Storbeck and Clore, 2008;Sakaki et al, 2011;Matovic et al, 2014) and electrophysiological measures (e.g., Goertz et al, 2017;Ogawa and Nittono, 2019a,b;Naranowicz et al, 2022b) to understand the principles guiding the relationship between our current affective state and how we understand language.…”