The Effect Of Chinese EFL Learners’ Individual Emotions On The Processing Of Emotional Sentences

Embodied cognition, following the classical cognitive science, has been awidely-focused new framework in current studies of cognitive science. According tothis framework, language comprehension, as an advanced cognitive activity, isembodied and grounded deeply in the experience of action, perception and emotion.After reviewing studies on the interrelationship between language and emotion, wefind that empirical studies in this field are relatively weak and are mainly conductedfrom the perspective of psychology. The studies from the perspective of Englishsentence processing are in a smaller amount. Moreover, there are also lack of studieson language processing of Chinese EFL learnersThe current study adopts the empirical study by way of reaction time toexplore the interrelationship between emotion and language comprehension, andwhether individual emotions of Chinese EFL learners influence their processing ofEnglish emotional sentences. Meantime, this research has explored the differentialeffects that individual emotions aroused by different emotional stimuli have on theprocessing of English emotional sentences. Thus, three questions are put forward:(1)Do individual emotions of Chinese EFL learners influence the processing of Englishemotional sentences?(2) If the individual emotions of Chinese EFL learners haveinfluenced the processing of English emotional sentences, how do individualemotions influence the processing of emotional sentences?(3) are there differentialeffects that individual emotions aroused by different affective priming objects(emotional words and pictures) have on the processing of English emotionalsentences?This research adopts a2(matchtype: emotional consistency, emotionalinconsistency)×2(emotional arouser: words, pictures) within-participants’ design.And all experiments are conducted in the Behavioral Lab of SISU. Before the formalexperiments, two questionnaires concerning the valence of affective priming/arousing stimuli are conducted through the Internet. Totally,30studentsfrom the first, second, and third year of postgraduates majoring in English in SISUhave been selected to take participate in the experiment. The formal experimentalmaterials include affective priming/arousing materials (emotional words andemotional pictures) and English emotional sentences. All materials are programmedby E-Prime2.0and are presented at random on the17inch wide screen. The subjectsare required to comprehend the emotional sentences after the emotion arousingobjects and then continue with any key. Afterwards, a judgment sentence concerningthe emotional sentence is presented on the screen. And the subjects need to judgewhether it is consistent with the emotional sentence. The aim of the judgmentsentence is to check whether the subjects comprehend the emotional sentences trulyand to monitor the subjects. The behavioral data of reaction time are put into thestatistic software SPSS16.0.The following three findings are obtained:(1) There is significant differencefor EFL learners processing the sentences in reaction time [t (29)=2.251, p=0.032]under the condition of word-aroused emotion and no emotion; There is significantdifference for EFL learners processing the sentences in reaction time [t (29)=7.448,p=0.000] under the condition of picture-aroused emotion and no emotion.(2) Underthe condition of word-aroused/picture-aroused consistent emotion, there issignificant difference for subjects processing the emotional sentences in reaction time[t1(29)=2.274, p1=0.031；t2(29)=7.296, p2=0.000]. Simply speaking, the reactiontime of sentence processing influenced by individual emotion is shorter than thatinfluenced by no emotion; Under the condition of word-aroused/picture-arousedinconsistent emotion, there is significant difference for subjects processing theemotional sentences in reaction time[t1(29)=2.211, p1=0.035； t2(29)=7.525,p2=0.000]. Simply speaking, the reaction time of sentence processing influenced byindividual emotion is shorter than that influenced by no emotion.(3) Comparing theprocessing of English emotional sentences under the condition of word-aroused emotion and picture-aroused emotion, there is significant difference in reaction time[t (29)=5.157, p=0.000]. To speak it clearly, the processing time of emotionalsentences influenced by picture-aroused emotion is shorter than that influenced byword-aroused emotion.To sum up:(1) the individual emotion of Chinese EFL learners have indeedinfluenced the processing of English emotional sentences;(2) the individual emotionhas facilitated the processing of emotional sentences under the condition of eitheremotional consistency or emotional inconsistency;(3) the individual emotionaroused by pictures has a larger influence on the processing of sentences than thataroused by words.