Faces of different socio-cultural identities impact emotional meaning learning for L2 words.

ABSTRACT: This study investigated how exposure to Caucasian and Chinese faces influences native Mandarin-Chinese speakers' learning of emotional meanings for English L2 words. Participants were presented with English pseudowords repeatedly paired with either Caucasian faces or Chinese faces showing emotions of disgust, sadness, or neutrality as a control baseline. Participants' learning was evaluated through both within-modality (i.e., testing participants with new sets of faces) and cross-modality (i.e., testing participants with sentences expressing the learned emotions) generalization tests. When matching newly learned L2 words with new faces, participants from both groups were more accurate under the neutral condition compared to sad condition. The advantage of neutrality extended to sentences a

SUBMITTER: Gu B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11699134 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature