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Yan Jing Wu1,2, Yang Liu1,3, Manlin Yao1,3

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Social Psychology

Background:

  • Empathy for pain is crucial for social interactions.
  • The impact of language context on empathy is not well understood.
  • Bilingualism offers a unique lens to study cognitive and neural processes.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the foreign-language effect on empathy for pain.
  • To examine behavioral and neural correlates of empathy in native versus foreign languages.
  • To explore how language context influences affective sharing and cognitive evaluation in empathy.

Main Methods:

  • Chinese-English bilinguals completed a pain empathy task in both languages.
  • Event-related potentials (ERPs) and spontaneous alpha oscillations were recorded.
  • Participants rated perceived pain intensity and neural responses were analyzed.

Main Results:

  • Higher perceived pain intensity and enhanced early neural responses (N1, P3) in the foreign (English) language context.
  • Comparable late neural responses (LPP) across language contexts.
  • Reduced pre-stimulus alpha oscillation power in the foreign language, suggesting increased arousal.

Conclusions:

  • A foreign-language effect significantly modulates empathy for pain.
  • This effect impacts both automatic affective sharing and cognitive evaluation.
  • Altered brain states, including increased vigilance and arousal, underlie the foreign-language effect in empathy.