This study investigates hemispheric specialization for emotional words among proficient non-native speakers of English by means of the divided visual field paradigm. The motivation behind the study ...is to extend the monolingual hemifield research to the non-native context and see how emotion words are processed in a non-native mind. Sixty eight females participated in the study, all highly proficient in English. The stimuli comprised 12 positive nouns, 12 negative nouns, 12 non-emotional nouns and 36 pseudo-words. To examine the lateralization of emotion, stimuli were presented unilaterally in a random fashion for 180 ms in a go/no-go lexical decision task. The perceptual data showed a right hemispheric advantage for processing speed of negative words and a complementary role of the two hemispheres in the recognition accuracy of experimental stimuli. The data indicate that processing of emotion words in non-native language may require greater interhemispheric communication, but at the same time demonstrates a specific role of the right hemisphere in the processing of negative relative to positive valence. The results of the study are discussed in light of the methodological inconsistencies in the hemifield research as well as the non-native context in which the study was conducted.
Abstract
Investigations
of the so-called ‘foreign language effect’ have shown that emotional experience is language-dependent in bilingual individuals. Response to negative experiences, in ...particular, appears attenuated in the second language (L2). However, the human brain is not only reactive, but it also builds on past experiences to anticipate future events. Here, we investigated affective anticipation in immersed Polish–English bilinguals using a priming paradigm in which a verbal cue of controlled affective valence allowed making predictions about a subsequent picture target. As expected, native word cues with a negative valence increased the amplitude of the stimulus preceding negativity, an electrophysiological marker of affective anticipation, as compared with neutral ones. This effect was observed in Polish–English bilinguals and English monolinguals alike. The contrast was non-significant when Polish participants were tested in English, suggesting a possible reduction in affective sensitivity in L2. However, this reduction was not validated by a critical language × valence interaction in the bilingual group, possibly because they were highly fluent in English and because the affective stimuli used in the present study were particularly mild. These results, which are neither fully consistent nor inconsistent with the foreign language effect, provide initial insights into the electrophysiology of affective anticipation in bilingualism.
Abstract
It is now well established that reading words in a second language (L2) automatically activates native language (L1) translations in bilinguals. Although there is evidence that access to ...such representations is inhibited when words have a negative emotional valence, the mechanism underlying such inhibition is elusive, and it is unknown whether inhibition arises online as L2 is being processed or whether negative valence affects subsequent L1 processing. Here, we recorded event-related brain potentials in Chinese-English bilinguals engaged in an implicit translation-priming paradigm involving L2 (English) word pairs. Participants performed a semantic relatedness task, unaware that word pairs could conceal a sound repetition if translated into Chinese. When emotional valence was manipulated in prime position (first word), we observed form repetition priming through L1 translations for positive but not for negative words. However, when emotional valence was manipulated in target position (second word), priming occurred for both positive and negative word valences. This result begins to elucidate the mechanism by which emotion regulates language processing in bilinguals: Negative words in L2 induce a refractory period during which cross-language lexical access is blocked. These findings show that despite being neuroanatomically distinct in the human brain, emotional (limbic) regulation systems can penetrate language processing.
•Bilinguals produced unusual uses of everyday objects in positive and negative moods.•Creativity increased in the second language (L2) for ideas produced in a negative mood.•This is likely due to ...reduced interference from a negative mood in L2.•Idea fluency increased in the first language and in a positive mood.
Previous research suggests that creativity may be facilitated by a positive mood and inhibited by a negative mood. Likewise, speaking a second language (L2) has been shown to benefit creative performance. However, little is known about a possible interactive effect of mood and bilingualism on creative thinking. This question becomes more interesting in light of accumulating evidence that bilinguals experience emotional distancing in their second (L2) language compared to their first (L1) language, especially when exposed to negative emotional content. This raises the question of whether bilinguals experience reduced interference from a negative mood when generating ideas in L2 relative to L1, potentially creating conditions conducive to creative thinking. To address this question, Polish–English bilinguals were induced with a positive or negative mood through exposure to classical music excerpts and were asked to generate alternative uses for 12 everyday objects in L1 and L2. Our results show increased idea creativity in L2 compared to L1 when bilinguals were in a negative mood. This result was accompanied by decreased arousal ratings in a negative compared to positive mood in L2 but not in L1. In contrast with idea creativity, participants generated more ideas in L1 than in L2 and in a positive mood than in a negative mood. Together, we provide novel evidence for reduced effects of a negative mood on creative performance in L2 compared to L1, likely enhancing the creative potential of bilinguals when operating in L2.
Menthol is a cyclic monoterpene alcohol of the essential oils of plants of the genus Mentha, which is in demand by various industries due to its diverse sensorial and physiological properties. ...However, its poor water solubility and its toxic effect limit possible applications. Glycosylation offers a solution as the binding of a sugar residue to small molecules increases their water solubility and stability, renders aroma components odorless and modifies bioactivity. In order to identify plant enzymes that catalyze this reaction, a glycosyltransferase library containing 57 uridine diphosphate sugar-dependent enzymes (UGTs) was screened with (±)-menthol. The identity of the products was confirmed by mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Five enzymes were able to form (±)-menthyl-β-d-glucopyranoside in whole-cell biotransformations: UGT93Y1, UGT93Y2, UGT85K11, UGT72B27 and UGT73B24. In vitro enzyme activity assays revealed highest catalytic activity for UGT93Y1 (7.6 nkat/mg) from Camellia sinensis towards menthol and its isomeric forms. Although UGT93Y2 shares 70% sequence identity with UGT93Y1, it was less efficient. Of the five enzymes, UGT93Y1 stood out because of its high in vivo and in vitro biotransformation rate. The identification of novel menthol glycosyltransferases from the tea plant opens new perspectives for the biotechnological production of menthyl glucoside.
Key message
Association mapping with immortalized lines of landraces offers several advantages including a high mapping resolution, as demonstrated here in maize by identifying the causal variants ...underlying QTL for oil content and the metabolite allantoin.
Landraces are traditional varieties of crops that present a valuable yet largely untapped reservoir of genetic variation to meet future challenges of agriculture. Here, we performed association mapping in a panel comprising 358 immortalized maize lines from six European Flint landraces. Linkage disequilibrium decayed much faster in the landraces than in the elite lines included for comparison, permitting a high mapping resolution. We demonstrate this by fine-mapping a quantitative trait locus (QTL) for oil content down to the phenylalanine insertion F469 in
DGAT1-2
as the causal variant. For the metabolite allantoin, related to abiotic stress response, we identified promoter polymorphisms and differential expression of an allantoinase as putative cause of variation. Our results demonstrate the power of this approach to dissect QTL potentially down to the causal variants, toward the utilization of natural or engineered alleles in breeding. Moreover, we provide guidelines for studies using ancestral landraces for crop genetic research and breeding.
When people are placed in a situation where they are at risk of substantiating a negative stereotype about their social group (a scenario termed stereotype threat), the extra pressure to avoid this ...outcome can undermine their performance. Substantial and consistent gender disparities in STEM fields leave women vulnerable to stereotype threat, including the stereotype that women are not as good at generating creative and innovative ideas as men. We tested whether female students’ creative thinking is affected by a stereotype threat by measuring power in the alpha frequency band (8–12Hz oscillations) that has been associated with better creative thinking outcomes. Counter to expectations that a stereotype threat would reduce alpha power associated with creative thinking, analyses showed increased alpha power following the introduction of the stereotype threat. This outcome suggests that women may have attempted to increase their internal attention during the task in order to disprove the stereotype. Behaviorally, this effort did not lead to changes in creative performance, suggesting that the stereotype threat decoupled alpha power from creative thinking outcomes. These results analyzed by means of a Repeated Measures (RM) ANOVAer often seen in conjunction with creative behavior is not necessarily related to the creativity processes themselves, but rather might be part of a larger network modulating the distribution of attentional resources more broadly.
•EEG was recorded during creative ideation as a stereotype threat was delivered.•Unexpectedly, alpha power regularly linked to creativity increased post-threat.•Sensor-level and independent component cluster-based (ROI) analyses converged.•Stereotype threat did not significantly impact creativity in any behavior measure.•Results are interpreted in line with latest accounts of alpha and inhibition.
Aims:
We study how emotions are represented in Polish-English and Romanian-English bilinguals, whose respective languages either mostly share emotion lexicon (Romanian-English) or not ...(Polish-English). We test to what extent such variance in lexical proximity between the two bilingual groups affects their decisions about emotional word content.
Methodology:
In a masked priming paradigm, participants viewed prime-target adjective pairs, and judged whether the target adjective was positive or negative in meaning. Primes and targets either named (emotion word) or evoked (emotion-laden word) emotions, and were either related – that is, belonged to one word type (emotion or emotion-laden) – or unrelated.
Data and analysis:
Behavioural data were analysed using linear mixed-effects models, with within-subject fixed effects of language, word type, valence and relatedness, and their interactions.
Findings/conclusions:
We found processing facilitation of emotion-laden rather than emotion words in both participant groups, irrespective of language of operation. Emotion target adjectives, particularly of negative valence, tended to slow down responses of Polish-English bilinguals in their first language. In the Romanian-English group, emotion target adjectives were recognized with lower accuracy in the second language. This pattern of results suggests that affective responsiveness is modulated by the lexical proximity between the first language and second language.
Originality:
Extending bilingual emotion research, this study tests how emotions are represented in languages that vary in lexical proximity with English: Polish and Romanian. We demonstrate that cross-linguistic differences between the respective languages of a bilingual impact emotional meaning processing in the first and second language.
Significance/implications:
We provide support for the emotion context-of-learning theory, language-specific episodic trace theory and the sense model in bilingualism, showing that cross-linguistic differences between the first and second language modulate emotion and emotion-laden word processing. Our findings also demonstrate that the distinction between the emotion and emotion-laden words is not as universal as previously assumed.
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