Schedule of Events | Symposia

Emotional cues in L2 vocabulary learning: How expressive facial contexts enhance initial learning and long-term vocabulary retention

Poster Session E - Monday, March 31, 2025, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Chunlin Liu¹ (liu.chunlin.b8@tohoku.ac.jp), Takumi Uchihara^1,2, Motoaki Sugiura^1,3,4, Ping Li⁵, Hyeonjeong Jeong^1,2,3; ¹Cognitive Neuroscience Application Center, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, ²Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, ³Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, ⁴International Research Institute for Disaster Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, ⁵Faculty of Humanities, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

How do emotional contexts influence both initial learning and long-term retention in second language (L2) vocabulary learning? This study examines how emotional contexts, particularly expressive facial expressions, enhance the acquisition and retention of L2 emotional vocabulary, focusing on both initial and delayed memory performance. Thirty-four native Japanese speakers with no prior knowledge of Chinese learned Chinese positive and negative vocabulary over three days. They watched videos of either emotional (videos with expressive faces) or neutral contexts (videos with neutral faces). On the fourth day, participants completed memory tasks, including a lexical decision task during MRI scanning and a translation task. One month later, delayed translation task was conducted to assess long-term retention. Results revealed a significant emotional context effect in both initial and delayed translation accuracy, with words learned in emotional contexts outperforming those learned in neutral contexts. Additionally, words learned in emotional contexts activated emotional memory regions, such as the amygdala and hippocampus, more strongly than vocabulary learned in neutral contexts. Neural data also showed a significant negative correlation between hippocampal activation and delayed translation accuracy for positive words learned in emotional contexts, while positive words learned in neutral contexts exhibited a marginally positive correlation. These distinct patterns suggest that emotionally enriched learning contexts facilitate more efficient processing of L2 positive words, requiring fewer cognitive resources. These findings highlight the critical role of emotional contexts in enhancing both the formation and retention of L2 vocabulary, offering new insights into the role of affective processing in language learning.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Lexicon