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The bidirectional influence between emotional language and inhibitory control in Chinese: An ERP study
Huili Wang1, Xiaobing Sun2, Xueyan Li3
1School of Foreign Languages, Hangzhou City University, Hangzhou 310015, China; Hangzhou Collaborative Innovation Institute of Language Services, Hangzhou 310015, China.
Brain and Language
|August 18, 2024
Summary
Negative emotional language enhances inhibitory control in Mandarin Chinese speakers. This study reveals how inhibitory processes influence the integration of negative words, supporting a unified view of emotion and cognition.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Psycholinguistics
- Emotion Science
Background:
- The interplay between emotional language and inhibitory control is established in alphabetic languages.
- Cross-linguistic research is needed to understand variations in nonalphabetic languages.
- Mandarin Chinese presents unique linguistic and neural characteristics for investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the bidirectional relationship between emotional language and inhibitory control in Mandarin Chinese.
- To explore how emotional valence (positive/negative) affects this interaction.
- To test the integrative emotion-cognition view in a nonalphabetic language context.
Main Methods:
- Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) were used to measure neural activity.
- Two experiments were conducted using a Go/NoGo task paradigm.
- Emotional adjectives and Go/NoGo cues were presented in different orders.
Main Results:
- Negative emotional language facilitated inhibitory control when preceding the Go/NoGo cue (Experiment 1).
- Inhibitory control facilitated the semantic integration of negative Chinese words when the cue preceded the language (Experiment 2).
- No significant interaction was found for positive emotional language processing.
Conclusions:
- An interaction exists between inhibitory control and negative emotional language processing in Mandarin Chinese.
- Findings support the integrative emotion-cognition perspective.
- The results highlight language-specific mechanisms in emotion-cognition interactions.
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