An ERP Study on Affective Priming of Second Language: The Emotion Word Type Effect in Unmasked and Masked Priming Paradigms

Abstract

Emotion word type effect refers to a distinction between emotion-laden words (e.g., injury, gift) and emotion-label words (e.g., fear, joy). The present study examined the second language (L2) emotion word type effect using affective priming paradigms in two experiments (Experiment 1: unmasked affective priming; Experiment 2: masked affective priming). Two groups of Chinese-English bilinguals completed a word valence decision task in which they had to decide whether the emotion-laden target words were negative or positive, and their electrophysiological responses (event-related potentials) were recorded. Experiment 1 revealed that the recognition of emotion target words preceded by emotion-label words was facilitated more by emotion-laden words, with enhanced processing speed and electrophysiological activation. In Experiment 2, when participants were unaware of the primes, facilitation of target word processing was also found for emotion-label words. The results confirmed that the emotion word type effect in the L2 could be found in both explicit (unmasked) and implicit (masked) conditions.