Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Oct 3;12(10):e0186027.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0186027. eCollection 2017.

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

Sara Iacozza  1   2 , Albert Costa  3   4 , Jon Andoni Duñabeitia  5
Affiliations

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

Sara Iacozza et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

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.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Z-scored pupil size means for Native and Foreign Language groups, in both Negative and Neutral Sentence conditions.
Error bars refer to SEM calculated within participant.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Bradley MM, Miccoli L, Escrig MA, Lang PJ. The pupil as a measure of emotional arousal and autonomic activation. Psychophysiology. 2008;45(4):602–7. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2008.00654.x ; PubMed Central PMCID: PMCPMC3612940. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Steinhauer SR, Siegle GJ, Condray R, Pless M. Sympathetic and parasympathetic innervation of pupillary dilation during sustained processing. Int J Psychophysiol. 2004;52(1):77–86. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2003.12.005 . - DOI - PubMed
    1. Laeng B, Orbo M, Holmlund T, Miozzo M. Pupillary Stroop effects. Cogn Process. 2011;12(1):13–21. doi: 10.1007/s10339-010-0370-z ; PubMed Central PMCID: PMCPMC3026931. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Barrett LF, Lindquist KA, Gendron M. Language as context for the perception of emotion. Trends Cogn Sci. 2007;11(8):327–32. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2007.06.003 ; PubMed Central PMCID: PMCPMC2225544. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Braun M. Emotion and language–When and how comes emotion into words? Comment on “The quartet theory of human emotions: An integrative and neurofunctional model” by S. Koelsch et al. Koelsch et al Phys Life Rev. 2015;13:36–7. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2015.04.006 - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources