Emotion regulation by attentional deployment moderates bilinguals' language-dependent emotion differences

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Emotion Research

Background:

• Bilinguals exhibit varied emotional responses to stimuli in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages.
• The causes of these language-dependent emotional differences are debated, with varying effects across emotions and tasks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether attentional resources moderate language-dependent emotions in bilinguals.
• To explore the role of emotion regulation strategies in shaping bilingual emotional experiences.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted, manipulating language (L1 vs. L2) and emotion regulation (distraction, concentration, rumination).
• Study 1 assessed emotion-word valence ratings under distraction and concentration.
• Study 2 measured physiological (pupillary, eye-fixation) and self-report responses during a simulated online-dating task involving L1/L2 stimuli.

Main Results:

• Emotional responses in L2 were reduced when emotion processing was distracted or baseline levels were low.
• Concentration or prior emotion-focused rumination led to comparable or heightened emotionality in L2 compared to L1.
• Both self-reported and physiological measures indicated these emotion regulation effects.

Conclusions:

• Bilinguals' language-dependent emotions are modulated by the level of attentional resources allocated to emotion processing.
• Differential language-processing automaticity likely underlies these observed effects.
• Emotion regulation strategies can influence the extent to which L1 and L2 evoke emotional responses.