Brain Mechanisms of Lexicality in Bilingual Emotion Processing

Understanding how native speakers and second language (L2) learners process language differently is fundamental to theories of language acquisition, comprehension, and use. A central debate in this literature concerns the inconsistent findings in emotional prosody processing between native speakers and L2 learners, partly attributable to stimulus lexicality: some studies use real words, whereas others use pseudowords. To resolve this discrepancy, we measured fMRI responses in 15 native speakers and 15 L2 learners while they listened to Mandarin real-word and pseudoword stimuli. Both groups engaged in overlapping auditory, cognitive, and affective regions, including the auditory cortex, inferior frontal cortex, superior temporal cortex, and the temporoparietal junction. However, the two groups showed distinct responses depending on lexicality: native speakers showed stronger recruitment of temporal regions for pseudowords, whereas L2 learners showed greater frontoparietal activation for real words. These patterns were consistent across positive and negative prosody conditions. Furthermore, among L2 learners, higher proficiency was associated with greater frontal activation for real words, but not pseudowords. Together, these findings demonstrate that the differences between native speakers and L2 learners depend critically on stimulus lexicality, highlighting the role of lexicality in bilingual emotion processing.