The effect of foreign language in fear acquisition

Abstract

Emotions are at the core of human nature. There is evidence that emotional reactivity in foreign languages compared to native languages is reduced. We explore whether this emotional distance could modulate fear conditioning, an essential mechanism for the understanding and treatment of anxiety disorders. A group of participants was verbally informed (either in a foreign or in a native language) that two different stimuli could be either cueing the potential presence of a threat stimulus or its absence. We registered pupil size and electrodermal activity and calculated the difference in psychophysiological responses to conditioned and to unconditioned stimuli. Our findings provided evidence that verbal conditioning processes are affected by language context in this paradigm. We report the first experimental evidence regarding how the use of a foreign language may reduce fear conditioning. This observation opens the avenue to the potential use of a foreign language in clinical contexts.

Figure 1

(A) Percentages of change in the pupil dilation with respect to the baseline epoch averaged by Stimulus Type and Language Context conditions. Light grey bars correspond to threat conditions (CS+) and dark grey bars correspond to neutral conditions (CS−). (B) Percentages of change of the pupillary responses averaged by Stimulus Type and Language Context conditions over the 10 time points corresponding to the 1-second bins of the trials. Light grey lines correspond to threat conditions (CS+) and dark grey lines correspond to neutral conditions (CS−). Solid lines correspond to native language conditions and dotted lines correspond to foreign language conditions. Error bars represent the standard error.

Figure 2

(A) Percentages of change in the electrodermal responses with respect to the baseline epoch averaged by Stimulus Type and Language Context conditions. Light grey bars correspond to threat conditions (CS+) and dark grey bars correspond to neutral conditions (CS−). (B) Percentages of change of the skin conductance averaged by Stimulus Type and Language Context conditions over the 10 time points corresponding to the 1-second bins of the trials. Light grey lines correspond to threat conditions (CS+) and dark grey lines correspond to neutral conditions (CS−). Solid lines correspond to native language conditions and dotted lines correspond to foreign language conditions. Error bars represent the standard error.