Abstract
Monolingual studies contrasting memory for positive versus negative emotion-laden words have generally used single-trial paradigms and have produced inconsistent results (no difference or an advantage for either positive or negative valence). However, monolingual studies with multiple presentations of stimuli have consistently found a positivity advantage in recall. No bilingual study has examined whether L2 testing, using a multi-trial procedure, will also produce a positivity advantage. We report two experiments in which L1 and L2 participants performed three learning trials (aural exposure, oral recall), followed by multiple delayed oral recall trials and a recognition trial, using lists of English words from ad-hoc semantic categories, with equal numbers of positive versus negative valence words. Results, including an overall positivity advantage, a greater positivity advantage in L2 than L1, and greater valence-based clustering in L2 than L1, were discussed in terms of the effects of stimulus exposure and gist consolidation.
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the participation of our undergraduate research assistants: Johnny Jaber for his help with stimulus selection, and Anacary Ramirez, Caitlyn R. Fastenau, Daisy Ochoa, Elisabeth R. Hartman, Jessica Tadesse, Kateri Nguyen, Mariloli Barcena, Mihoka Fukurai, Olivia Kelly, Panhoia Lee, Sophia Huang, and Yini Wang for their assistance in testing and data entry.
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This research was funded by departmental faculty research funds and was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of California, Davis.
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Shenaut, G.K., Ober, B.A. Multi-Trial Episodic Recall and Recognition of Emotion-Laden Words in First Versus Second Language. J Psycholinguist Res 50, 623–643 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-020-09727-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-020-09727-2