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‘Good for you!’ Processing social emotions in L2 discourse comprehension: an ERP study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2022

Andrea González-García Aldariz Open the ORCID record for Andrea González-García Aldariz [Opens in a new window] ,
Pablo Rodríguez-Gómez ,
Carlos Romero-Rivas ,
Sara Rodríguez-Cuadrado Open the ORCID record for Sara Rodríguez-Cuadrado [Opens in a new window] ,
Alice Foucart Open the ORCID record for Alice Foucart [Opens in a new window]  and
Eva M. Moreno
Andrea González-García Aldariz
Affiliation:
Universidad Antonio de Nebrija, Madrid, Spain
Pablo Rodríguez-Gómez
Affiliation:
Cardenal Cisneros, Centro de Enseñanza Superior adscrito a la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Carlos Romero-Rivas
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Sara Rodríguez-Cuadrado
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Alice Foucart*
Affiliation:
Universidad Antonio de Nebrija, Madrid, Spain
Eva M. Moreno
Affiliation:
Universidad Antonio de Nebrija, Madrid, Spain Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
*
Author for correspondence: Alice Foucart, Universidad Nebrija Campus Berzosa, Hoyo de Manzanares, 28248 Madrid, Spain E-mail: Alfoucart@gmail.com
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Abstract

Social factors impact sentence comprehension in a first language (L1), suggesting that semantic processing cannot be dissociated from social and moral emotions in relation to pro/antisocial individuals. Given that integrating multiple types of information and processing emotion-laden pragmatic information is costlier in a second language (L2), we investigated whether social factors would affect discourse comprehension similarly in L2. Processing the outcomes of scenarios involving pro/antisocial protagonists provoked similar neural patterns in L2 as in L1 (Rodríguez-Gómez, Martín-Loeches, Colmenares, Romero Ferreiro & Moreno, 2020), suggesting that L2 users simultaneously integrate semantic and discourse-pragmatic information during sentence comprehension.

Keywords

BilingualismDiscourse processingEvent-related potentialsN400Social feeling
Type
Research Notes
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , March 2023 , pp. 440 - 445
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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