The number of students embarking on a study abroad experience continues to grow steadily. A new setting for study abroad in English has developed recently where students may be studying in an ...environment where English is used as a lingua franca but is not an official language of the country. This setting is referred to as English as a lingua franca study abroad or ELFSA (Köylü 2016). The present study explores the outcomes that may arise from participating in an ELFSA programme and it compares the merits of this type of context to those arising from traditional, anglophone settings. Using a written task and a proficiency test, the L2 gains of 48 Catalan/Spanish undergraduates, learners of English as an L2, were investigated before and after their international stay in either an anglophone country (n = 29) or a non-Anglophone (n = 19) one. Results show that students improved on the four measures investigated and no differences were found between the groups in terms of their L2 gains.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Abstract
Determining the social significance of emotional face expression is of major importance for adaptive behavior, and gaze direction provides critical information in this process. The amygdala ...is implicated in both emotion and gaze processing, but how and when it integrates expression and gaze cues remains unresolved. We tackled this question using intracranial electroencephalography in epileptic patients to assess both amygdala (n = 12) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC; n = 11) time-frequency evoked responses to faces with different emotional expressions and different gaze directions. As predicted, self-relevant threat signals (averted fearful and directed angry faces) elicited stronger amygdala activity than self-irrelevant threat (directed fearful and averted angry faces). Fear effects started at early latencies in both amygdala and OFC (~110 and 160 ms, respectively), while gaze direction effects and their interaction with emotion occurred at later latencies. Critically, the amygdala showed differential gamma band increases to fearful averted gaze (starting ~550 ms) and to angry directed gaze (~470 ms). Moreover, when comparing the 2 self-relevant threat conditions among them, we found higher gamma amygdala activity for averted fearful faces and higher beta OFC activity for angry directed faces. Together, these results reveal for the first time frequency-specific effects of emotion and gaze on amygdala and OFC neural activity.
Alpha cortical oscillations have been proposed to suppress sensory processing in the visual, auditory, and tactile domains, influencing conscious stimulus perception. However, it is unknown whether ...oscillatory neural activity in the amygdala, a subcortical structure involved in salience detection, has a similar impact on stimulus awareness. Recording intracranial electroencephalography (EEG) from 9 human amygdalae during face detection in a continuous flash suppression task, we found increased spectral prestimulus power and phase coherence, with most consistent effects in the alpha band, when faces were undetected relative to detected, similarly as previously observed in cortex with this task using scalp-EEG. Moreover, selective decreases in the alpha and gamma bands preceded face detection, with individual prestimulus alpha power correlating negatively with detection rate in patients. These findings reveal for the first time that prestimulus subcortical oscillations localized in human amygdala may contribute to perceptual gating mechanisms governing subsequent face detection and offer promising insights on the role of this structure in visual awareness.
Performing a stay in a country where the L2 is the official language can provide the perfect immersion for L2 development (traditional study abroad). In the case of English learners, ...internationalization and the role of English as a lingua franca make it unnecessary to perform the stay in an English-speaking country. Hence, an increasing number of students decide to study abroad in countries where English is used as a lingua franca (ELFSA). This study compares a group of Catalan/Spanish undergraduates learning English in a traditional study abroad setting (n = 31) to one doing so in ELFSA countries (n = 20) in order to examine differences concerning (a) reading comprehension and fluency, (b) receptive and productive vocabulary, and (c) L2 use. Participants were administered a reading text, the Updated Vocabulary Levels Test, a written task, and a questionnaire before and after their sojourns. Findings indicate that, subject to individual differences, both contexts provide similar outcomes in reading and vocabulary, and opportunities for L2 practice.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
The present article offers a review of the existing literature on L2 gains arising from participation in a study abroad (SA) experience. The purpose of this article is (1) to provide a general ...overview of research findings on the influence of time abroad on L2 development and (2) to identify the areas which need further research within the SA literature. This article provides an update on Llanes' (2011. The many faces of study abroad: an update on the research on L2 gains emerged during a study abroad experience. International Journal of Multilingualism 8, no. 3: 189-215) state-of-the-art article, focusing on studies published between 2011 and the beginning of 2018. We identify the following as important areas for future research: age of participants, duration of SA programmes, learning contexts and social networks.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
A recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study by our group demonstrated that dynamic emotional faces are more accurately recognized and evoked more widespread patterns of hemodynamic ...brain responses than static emotional faces. Based on this experimental design, the present study aimed at investigating the spatio-temporal processing of static and dynamic emotional facial expressions in 19 healthy women by means of multi-channel electroencephalography (EEG), event-related potentials (ERP) and fMRI-constrained regional source analyses. ERP analysis showed an increased amplitude of the LPP (late posterior positivity) over centro-parietal regions for static facial expressions of disgust compared to neutral faces. In addition, the LPP was more widespread and temporally prolonged for dynamic compared to static faces of disgust and happiness. fMRI constrained source analysis on static emotional face stimuli indicated the spatio-temporal modulation of predominantly posterior regional brain activation related to the visual processing stream for both emotional valences when compared to the neutral condition in the fusiform gyrus. The spatio-temporal processing of dynamic stimuli yielded enhanced source activity for emotional compared to neutral conditions in temporal (e.g., fusiform gyrus), and frontal regions (e.g., ventromedial prefrontal cortex, medial and inferior frontal cortex) in early and again in later time windows. The present data support the view that dynamic facial displays trigger more information reflected in complex neural networks, in particular because of their changing features potentially triggering sustained activation related to a continuing evaluation of those faces. A combined fMRI and EEG approach thus provides an advanced insight to the spatio-temporal characteristics of emotional face processing, by also revealing additional neural generators, not identifiable by the only use of an fMRI approach.
Full text
Available for:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Every year, an increasing number of students decide to study abroad in non-English-speaking countries, and Spain is recently a very popular destination within Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) ...communities. This paper attempts to deepen our knowledge of the impact of international student mobility (ISM) on students’ multicultural identity and career development. To do so, the experiences of 10 LAC students who completed a one-year degree programme in Barcelona are examined. Semi-structured interviews were employed to evaluate the international experiences one year after their completion. During their post-mobility interviews, participants were able to reflect on the ISM through a structured dialogue that allowed them to analyse the experience from a distance. Findings indicate that the ISM helped them to grow personally and professionally and, one year after the stay, they are aware of this evolution. They show an increase in their self-confidence, and they see the experience as an opportunity for personal maturity. This suggests that universities should consider the importance of offering guidance to these students when they end their master’s degree and are considering their plans for the future.
Attention and perception are potentiated for emotionally significant stimuli, promoting efficient reactivity and survival. But does such enhancement extend to stimuli simultaneously presented across ...different sensory modalities? We used functional magnetic resonance imaging in humans to examine the effects of visual emotional signals on concomitant sensory inputs in auditory, somatosensory, and visual modalities. First, we identified sensory areas responsive to task-irrelevant tones, touches, or flickers, presented bilaterally while participants attended to either a neutral or a fearful face. Then, we measured whether these responses were modulated by the emotional content of the face. Sensory responses in primary cortices were enhanced for auditory and tactile stimuli when these appeared with fearful faces, compared with neutral, but striate cortex responses to the visual stimuli were reduced in the left hemisphere, plausibly as a consequence of sensory competition. Finally, conjunction and functional connectivity analyses identified 2 distinct networks presumably responsible for these emotional modulatory processes, involving cingulate, insular, and orbitofrontal cortices for the increased sensory responses, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex for the decreased sensory responses. These results suggest that emotion tunes the excitability of sensory systems across multiple modalities simultaneously, allowing the individual to adaptively process incoming inputs in a potentially threatening environment.
•Reappraisal, but not suppression strategy, modulates early amygdala response (< 200 ms) to emotional stimuli.•This early modulation of amygdala activity by reappraisal is mainly driven by positive ...stimuli.•The insula, but not the superior medial frontal gyrus, is modulated during the reappraisal of negative stimuli at later latencies only.
How emotions unfold through time in the brain, and how fast they can be regulated by voluntary control, remain unresolved. Psychological accounts of emotion regulation posit cognitive reappraisal mechanisms may alter early emotion generative processes directly, whereas suppression impacts only later processing stages, after emotion has arisen. However, to date, there is no neurophysiological data concerning the precise latency of emotion regulation effects on the amygdala, a major emotion processing relay in the brain. Here we record amygdala activity from six patients undergoing surgery for pharmaco-resistant epilepsy during both reappraisal and suppression. We find that emotion reappraisal strategy, but not suppression, modulates early neural responses to emotional scenes during an extended period of time, starting 130 ms post-stimulus onset. Further, reappraisal produced earlier impact on amygdala responses to positive compared to negative scenes. Our results provide the first neurophysiological support for theoretical accounts of emotion regulation that postulate an early modulation of emotion generative processes by reappraisal.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
PDF
