The Processing Time Of Conceptual Meaning And Emotional Meaning In The Cognition Of Second Language Emotion Word

The information expressed by emotional words can be divided into two parts: the conceptual semantic that reflects an object or action,and the affective semantic that contains a certain attitude or emotion component.According to the primary processing theory of emotion,the activation of affective semantic is automatic and fast,which can be activated before conceptual semantic;Semantic primacy hypothesis believes that the prime of affective semantic is based on conceptual semantic processing.The process of semantic understanding is influenced by linguistic context,L1 is usually learned and used in daily life,so its emotional representation is more sophisticated and profound.While the acquisition of L2 is more often in classroom,its intensity of exposure is lower.Studies have shown that L2 processing would be characterized by increased emotional distance compared to L1 processing,so the degree of emotional feeling elicited by L2 emotion words are less than that in L1.It is generally found that the activation time of conceptual semantic and affective semantic in L1 is early,and they are interacted with each other.So what is the relationship between conceptual semantic and affective semantic activated by L2 emotional words?Our study intends to investigate the time course and relationship between conceptual semantic and affective semantic in L2 emotion words.The research designed into a preliminary experiment and two experiments,using valence decision task in affective priming paradigm,to separate the conceptual semantic and affective semantic in L2 emotion words by manipulating the semantic relationship between prime words and target words.Meanwhile,we explored the time course and neural mechanisms of the conceptual semantic and affective semantic in L2 emotion words.It was helpful to further investigate the cognitive representation differences between L2 and L1.The preliminary experiment was adopted 2(Valence: Positive,Negative)×3(Correlation: Conceptually correlated-Emotional congruence,Conceptually independent-Emotional congruence,Conceptually independent-Emotional incongruence)× 4(Stimulus Onset Asynchrony: 100 ms,200ms,400 ms,700ms)mixed design,in order to determine the time interval of the lowest priming threshold induced by L2 emotional words in priming paradigm.The final three stimulus onset asynchrony were determined to be 80 ms,100ms and 200 ms through the behavioral results.Experiments 1 and 2 were divided into positive and negative valence respectively,N1,P1 and N170 as indicators were measured by P3/PO3 and P4/PO4 electrodes with ERP technology.We used linear mixed-effects and logistic regression models to analyse behavioral results..Experiment 1 was adopted 3(Correlation: Positive-Conceptually correlated,Positive-Conceptually independent,Neutral-Conceptually independent)× 3(Stimulus Onset Asynchrony: 80 ms,100ms,200ms)within-subjects design.The results showed that the main effect of SOA was significant,and the longer the SOA,the faster the response time;The interaction between two factors were significant,and emotional priming effect could be observed in all SOA.While conceptual priming effect and emotional priming effect appear simultaneously when the SOA was 80 ms.However,ERP results showed that in the right hemisphere,when SOA was 100 ms,lower amplitudes of P1 and N170 were elicited by positive conceptually correlated condition than positive conceptually independent condition.Consistent with the behavioral data,the main effect of SOA was significant,when the presentation time of the prime words was 80 ms,the amplitude of P1 was significantly lower than 100 ms and 200 ms.The results showed the conditions of semantic correlation and emotional congruence in positive emotion could promote the processing of target words.The conceptual meaning and affective semantic were initially extracted when the words were presented for 100 ms.With the increase of prime words presentation time,individuals allocated more attention and cognitive resources to target words.Experiment 2 was adopted 3(Correlation: Negative-Conceptually correlated,Negative-Conceptually independent,Neutral-Conceptually independent)× 3(Stimulus Onset Asynchrony: 80 ms,100ms,200ms)within-subjects design.The results showed that the main effect of SOA was significant,and the response time of SOA at 100 ms was significantly faster than that at 80 ms and 200 ms.The negative priming effect was found in all SOA.The ERP data showed that the main effect of SOA was significant,the amplitude of P1 was significantly lower than 100 ms when the prime word was presented at 80 ms.But there was no significant interaction between correlation and SOA.The results showed that the correlation between prime words and target words could interfere the processing of target words under the condition of negative emotion,and it could capture more attention for target words under the condition of 100 ms.To sum up,it could be concluded that the L2 affective semantic couldn’t be extracted when the words were presented 80 ms,but the conceptual meaning and affective semantic could be preliminarily processed when the words were presented100 ms.The activation of L2 affective semantic need to be obtained through semantic processing,which interacted with the acquisition of conceptual meaning.The processing mode of L2 emotion words was modulated by valence in priming paradigm.Positive valence promoted the processing of target words,and the priming effect decreased gradually with the increase of SOA,which supported the spreading activation hypothesis.While the negative valence had inhibitory effect.The processing mode of L2 emotional words was similar to that in L1 emotional words,which contained automatic process in the early stage,but with no deeply coded.