Differential Responses for Emotional Visual and Auditory Word Recognition in First vs. Second Language

Abstract

This study explored how valence and modality affect emotional word recognition in unbalanced Spanish-English bilinguals. Two lexical decision tasks were used: a visual task (Study 1) and an auditory task (Study 2), conducted in either L1 or L2. Data from 80 (Study 1) and 40 (Study 2) unbalanced Spanish-English bilinguals living in an L1-majority country were analyzed using repeated-measure ANOVAs with Bonferroni-corrected post hoc tests. In both studies, performance was assessed through discrimination (d’), bias (C), and reaction times. Results revealed positive words were recognized more accurately and quickly, reflecting a positivity advantage. L1 groups showed better discrimination and fewer false alarms than L2, suggesting more efficient processing. Modality effects varied: L1 participants responded faster to positive pseudowords visually, while L2 participants were more sensitive to emotional pseudowords auditorily. This study is the first to directly compare valence effects across visual and auditory modalities in unbalanced Spanish-English bilinguals using parallel lexical decision paradigms, providing novel evidence on how emotional processing differs between L1 and L2. These findings support the density hypothesis, suggesting that positive words benefit from higher semantic cohesion. A stronger liberal bias for emotional words in L2 may reflect compensatory strategies under lexical uncertainty. findings underscore the interplay of language proficiency, modality, and emotion in bilingual lexical access, with implications for bilingual education, cognitive assessments, and emotional processing research.