The Spanish General Knowledge Norms

Published: 01 December 2016This study introduces the Spanish adaptation of the General Knowledge Norms first created by Nelson and Narens (1980) and updated by Tauber et al. (2013). Following a procedure akin to that used in preceding studies and testing comparable samples obtained from Spanish-speaking college students, the current study provides the first cross-cultural normative validation of a database of general knowledge questions. In a series of analyses we demonstrate the reliability of the current dataset by showing a high degree of consistency across cultures and languages, while also highlighting the usefulness and need for cross-cultural and cross-linguistic validations of general-knowledge question sets.This research has been partially funded by grants PSI2015-65689-P and SEV-2015-0490 from the Spanish Government, AThEME-613465 from the European Union and a personal fellowship given by the BBVA Foundation to the first author

Self-bias and the emotionality of foreign languages

Article first published online: June 13, 2018Foreign language contexts impose a relative psychological and emotional distance in bilinguals. In our previous studies, we demonstrated that the use of a foreign language changes the strength of the seemingly automatic emotional responses in the self-paradigm, showing a robust asymmetry in the self-bias effect in a native and a foreign language context. Namely, larger effects were found in the native language, suggesting an emotional blunting in the foreign language context. In the present study, we investigated the source of these effects by directly comparing whether they stem from a language’s foreignness versus its non-nativeness. We employed the same self-paradigm (a simple perceptual matching task of associating simple geometric shapes with the labels “you,” “friend,” and “other”), testing unbalanced Spanish–Basque–English trilinguals. We applied the paradigm to three language contexts: native, non-native but contextually present (i.e., non-native local), and non-native foreign. Results showed a smaller self-bias only in the foreign language pointing to the foreign-language-induced psychological/emotional distance as the necessary prerequisite for foreign language effects. Furthermore, we explored whether perceived emotional distance towards foreign languages in Spanish–English bilinguals modulates foreign language effects. Results suggest that none of the different indices of emotional distance towards the foreign language obtained via questionnaires modulated the self-biases in the foreign language contexts. Our results further elucidate the deeply rooted and automatic nature of foreign-language-driven differential emotional processing.This research has been partially funded by grants PSI2015-65689-P and SEV-2015-0490 from the Spanish Government, AThEME-613465 from the European Union, and a 2016 BBVA Foundation Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators awarded to the last author (J.A.D.)

QJE-SIP_17-194.R2-Supplemenatary_Material – Supplemental material for Self-bias and the emotionality of foreign languages

<p>Supplemental material, QJE-SIP_17-194.R2-Supplemenatary_Material for Self-bias and the emotionality of foreign languages by Lela Ivaz, Kim L Griffin and Jon Andoni Duñabeitia in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology</p

Reduced vividness of emotional memories following reactivation in a second language

We investigated the effect of second language use on the experienced vividness and emotionality of negative autobiographical memories. Fifty native Swedish speakers with English as their second language were asked to recall a negative episodic memory from their past in their native language. Half the participants were then asked to reactivate the same memory in their first language while the other half were asked to reactivate it in their second language, and then rate their experienced vividness and emotionality a second time. Following this reactivation, experienced emotionality was reduced for both groups of participants, with a similar magnitude of reduction for both groups. Experienced vividness, however, was only reduced for the group who reactivated the memory in their second language. No difference in intrusion frequency was found between the groups at a one-week follow-up. The results provide increased insight into how a second language can affect the experienced emotionality and vividness of a negative autobiographical memory

What do your eyes reveal about your foreign language? Reading emotional sentences in a native and foreign language

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.This research was partially supported by grants from the Spanish Government (PSI2014-52181-P, PSI2015-65689-P, PSI2011-23033 and SEV-2015-0490) (http://www.mineco.gob.es/portal/site/mineco/), from the Catalan Government (SGR-2014SGR1210), from the 7th Framework Programme (AThEME 613465) (http://www.atheme.eu/), and a 2016 BBVA Foundation Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators (http://www.fbbva.es/) awarded to JAD. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript