The Effect Of Language On Emotion Perception: Evidence From Cross-Language Semantic Satiation

According to constructionist approaches to emotion, emotions are constructed by social culture from core affect. Emotion perception is proceeds dependently of social cultural processes. Language as an important role of social culture, the relationship between language and the perception of emotion has been a hot topic in recent years. Previous studies suggest, emotion words shape emotion percepts in semantic processing, the accessibility of emotion words influence participants’speed or accuracy in perceiving facial behaviors depicting emotion. However, existing studies are based on the monolingual semantic satiation paradigm, which could not ensure the influence of language exerted by semantic processing on the perception of emotion. Fours studies assesses the mechanism of language influencing emotion perception, by embracing the paradigm of cross-language semantic satiation.In study 1, participants are Mongolian-Chinese bilinguals (L1 is Mongolian) including compound bilinguals and coordinate bilinguals. Adopting psycholexical approach and individual difference multidimensional scaling procedure, participants are tested to show on their emotion conceptual construction in Chinese. Results show that conceptual constructions of two sorts of bilinguals could match with the circumplex model of affect, meanwhile, it shows cluster differences in unpleasant-relax level between them, demonstrating that emotion conceptual construction of two sorts are some similarities as well as differences.In study 2, participants are Mongolian-Chinese bilinguals (L1 is Mongolian) including compound bilinguals and coordinate bilinguals. A 2 (bilinguals’types: compound vs coordinate bilinguals)×2 (task type:emotion vs affect categorization) between-subjects experiment design was carried out. Accurate rate of context recognition task beyond emotion perception are tested. Results show that significant differences of accurate rate between two sorts of bilinguals observed in emotion categorization condition, showing respective percept features of bilinguals.In study 3 and 4, participants are Mongolian-Chinese bilinguals (L1 is Mongolian) including compound bilinguals and coordinate bilinguals. A 2 (bilinguals types:compound vs coordinate bilinguals)×2 (repetition type:low vs high repetition)×2 (word-face relevance:match vs mismatch) mixed experiment design was carried out. In study 3, effect of Mongolian emotion words on expression recognition are tested in Chinese emotion words semantic satiation condition. Results show, of compound bilinguals, there is a significant main effect of word-face relevance, a significant word-face relevance× repetition type interaction. In study 4, effect of Mongolian emotion words on expression recognition are tested in Chinese emotion concept nodes semantic satiation condition. Results show that of both compound and coordinate bilinguals, there is a significant main effect of word-face relevance, a significant word-face relevance×repetition type interaction.The present findings clearly demonstrate that, a) differences between emotion conceptual construction and percept features of two sorts of bilinguals are caused by the differences of semantic processing, b) semantic satiation is due to meaning satiation, which could transfer along semantic activation network, c) decreasing accessibility of emotion words reduce participants’ speed in perceiving facial expression, language shapes emotion perception, d) as emotion influenced by language, while valance as core affect not impacted by social culture and semantic processing, findings support psychological constructionist approaches to emotion.