Processing advantage for emotional words in bilingual speakers

Effects of emotion on word processing are well established in monolingual speakers. However, studies that have assessed whether affective features of words undergo the same processing in a native and non-native language have provided mixed results: studies that have found differences between L1 and L2 processing, attributed it to the fact that a second language (L2) learned late in life would not be processed affectively, because affective associations are established during childhood. Other studies suggest that adult learners show similar effects of emotional features in L1 and L2. Differences in affective processing of L2 words can be linked to age and context of learning, proficiency, language dominance, and degree of similarity between the L2 and the L1. Here, in a lexical decision task on tightly matched negative, positive and neutral words, highly proficient English speakers from typologically different L1 showed the same facilitation in processing emotionally valenced words as native English speakers, regardless of their L1, the age of English acquisition or the frequency and context of English use

Explicit recognition of emotional facial expressions is shaped by expertise: evidence from professional actors

Can reading others' emotional states be shaped by expertise? We assessed processing of emotional facial expressions in professional actors trained either to voluntary activate mimicry to reproduce character's emotions (as foreseen by the “Mimic Method”), or to infer others' inner states from reading the emotional context (as foreseen by “Stanislavski Method”). In explicit recognition of facial expressions (Experiment 1), the two experimental groups differed from each other and from a control group with no acting experience: the Mimic group was more accurate, whereas the Stanislavski group was slower. Neither acting experience, instead, influenced implicit processing of emotional faces (Experiment 2). We argue that expertise can selectively influence explicit recognition of others' facial expressions, depending on the kind of “emotional expertise”

The role of emotional valence in learning novel abstract concepts

A recent study by Ponari et al. (2017), showed that emotional valence (i.e., whether a word evokes positive, negative or no affect) predicts age-of-acquisition ratings, and that up to the age of 8-9, children know abstract emotional words better than neutral ones. On the basis of these findings, emotional valence has been argued to provide a bootstrapping mechanism for the acquisition of abstract concepts. However, no previous work has directly assessed whether words’ valence, or valence of the context in which words are used, facilitates learning of unknown abstract words. Here, we investigate whether valence supports acquisition of novel abstract concepts. Seven to 10 years old children were taught novel abstract words and concepts (words typically learnt at an older age and that children did not know); words were either valenced (positive or negative) or neutral. We also manipulated the context in which words were presented: for one group of children, the teaching strategy emphasised emotional information; for the other, it emphasised encyclopaedic, non-emotional information. Abstract words with emotional valence were learnt better than neutral abstract words by children up to the age of 8-9, replicating previous findings; no effect of teaching strategy was found. These results indicate that emotional valence supports abstract concepts acquisition, and further suggest that it is the valence information intrinsic to the word’s meaning to have a role, rather than the valence of the context in which the word is learnt

How do young children learn abstract concepts? - Final public report

Research by Gabriella Vigliocco, Courtenay Norbury and Marta Ponari (supported by the Nuffield Foundation) uncovers some basic facts about how children learn words and concepts like "idea", "philosophy" and "culture

The acquisition of emotion-laden words from childhood to adolescence

Studies investigating how children acquire emotional vocabularies have mainly focused on words that describe feelings or affective states (emotion-label words, e.g., joy) trough subjective assessments of the children’s lexicon reported by their parents or teachers. In the current cross-sectional study, we objectively examined the age of acquisition of words that relate to emotions without explicitly referring to affective states (emotion-laden words, e.g., cake, tomb, rainbow) using a picture naming task. Three hundred and sixty participants belonging to 18 age groups from preschool to adolescence overtly named line drawings corresponding to positive, negative, and neutral concrete nouns. The results of regression and mixed model analyses indicated that positive emotion-laden words are learnt earlier in life. This effect was independent of the contribution of other lexical and semantic factors (familiarity, word frequency, concreteness, word length). It is proposed that the prioritized acquisition of positive emotion-laden words might be the consequence of the communicative style and contextual factors associated with the interaction between children and caregivers. We also discuss the implications of our findings for proposals that highlight the role of language in emotion perception and understanding

Structural connectivity in a single case of progressive prosopagnosia: The role of the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus

Progressive prosopagnosia (PP) is a clinical syndrome characterized by a progressive and selective inability to recognize and identify faces of familiar people. Here we report a patient (G.S.) with PP, mainly related to a prominent deficit in recognition of familiar faces, without a semantic (cross-modal) impairment. An in-depth evaluation showed that his deficit extended to other classes of objects, both living and non-living. A follow-up neuropsychological assessment did not reveal substantial changes after about 1 year. Structural MRI showed predominant right temporal lobe atrophy. Diffusion tensor imaging was performed to elucidate structural connectivity of the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) and the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), the two major tracts that project through the core fusiform region to the anterior temporal and frontal cortices, respectively. Right ILF was markedly reduced in G.S., while left ILF and IFOFs were apparently preserved. These data are in favour of a crucial role of the neural circuit subserved by right ILF in the pathogenesis of PP

“Avoiding or approaching eyes”? Introversion/extraversion affects the gaze-cueing effect

We investigated whether the extra-/introversion personality dimension can influence processing of others’ eye gaze direction and emotional facial expression during a target detection task. On the basis of previous evidence showing that self-reported trait anxiety can affect gaze-cueing with emotional faces, we also verified whether trait anxiety can modulate the influence of intro-/extraversion on behavioral performance. Fearful, happy, angry or neutral faces, with either direct or averted gaze, were presented before the target appeared in spatial locations congruent or incongruent with stimuli’s eye gaze direction. Results showed a significant influence of intra-/extraversion dimension on gaze-cueing effect for angry, happy, and neutral faces with averted gaze. Introverts did not show the gaze congruency effect when viewing angry expressions, but did so with happy and neutral faces; extraverts showed the opposite pattern. Importantly, the influence of intro-/extraversion on gaze-cueing was not mediated by trait anxiety. These findings demonstrated that personality differences can shape processing of interactions between relevant social signals

Learning Abstract Words and Concepts: Insights from Developmental Language Disorder

Some explanations of abstract word learning suggest that these words are learnt primarily from linguistic input, using statistical co-occurrences of words in language whereas concrete words can also rely on non-linguistic, experiential information. According to this hypothesis, we expect that, if the learner is not able to fully exploit the information in the linguistic input, abstract words should be affected more than concrete ones. Embodied approaches, instead, argue that both abstract and concrete words can rely on experiential information and, therefore, there might not be any linguistic primacy. Here, we test the role of linguistic input in the development of abstract knowledge with children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and Typically Developing (TD) children aged 8-13. We show that DLD children, who by definition have impoverished language, do not show a disproportionate impairment for abstract words in lexical decision and definition tasks. These results indicate that linguistic information does not have a primary role in the learning of abstract concepts and words, rather, it would play a significant role in semantic development across all domains of knowledge