Iacozza Sara, Costa Albert, Duñabeitia Jon Andoni
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
International Max Planck Research School for Language Sciences, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2017 Oct 3;12(10):e0186027. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0186027. eCollection 2017.
Foreign languages are often learned in emotionally neutral academic environments which differ greatly from the familiar context where native languages are acquired. This difference in learning contexts has been argued to lead to reduced emotional resonance when confronted with a foreign language. In the current study, we investigated whether the reactivity of the sympathetic nervous system in response to emotionally-charged stimuli is reduced in a foreign language. To this end, pupil sizes were recorded while reading aloud emotional sentences in the native or foreign language. Additionally, subjective ratings of emotional impact were provided after reading each sentence, allowing us to further investigate foreign language effects on explicit emotional understanding. Pupillary responses showed a larger effect of emotion in the native than in the foreign language. However, such a difference was not present for explicit ratings of emotionality. These results reveal that the sympathetic nervous system reacts differently depending on the language context, which in turns suggests a deeper emotional processing when reading in a native compared to a foreign language.
外语通常是在情感中立的学术环境中学习的，这种环境与母语习得的熟悉环境大不相同。有人认为，这种学习环境的差异会导致在接触外语时情感共鸣减少。在本研究中，我们调查了在外语环境中，交感神经系统对情绪刺激的反应性是否会降低。为此，我们在被试大声朗读母语或外语的情感句子时记录了瞳孔大小。此外，在读完每个句子后，我们还提供了情感影响的主观评分，以便进一步研究外语对明确情感理解的影响。瞳孔反应显示，母语中情感的影响比外语中更大。然而，在情感的明确评分中却不存在这种差异。这些结果表明，交感神经系统根据语言环境的不同而有不同的反应，这反过来表明，与阅读外语相比，阅读母语时的情感处理更深入。
