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 e...
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| Format: | Article |
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Nature Portfolio
2025-01-01
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| Series: | Scientific Reports |
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-84347-7 |
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| author | Beixian Gu Xiaobing Sun David Beltrán Manuel de Vega |
| author_facet | Beixian Gu Xiaobing Sun David Beltrán Manuel de Vega |
| author_sort | Beixian Gu |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | 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 as participants matched newly learned L2 words with neutral sentences more accurately than with both disgusting and sad ones. Differences between the two groups were also found in the cross-modality generalization test in which the Caucasian-face Group outperformed the Chinese-face Group in terms of accuracy in sad trials. However, the Chinese-face Group was more accurate in neutral trials in the same test. We thus conclude that faces of diverse socio-cultural identities exert different impacts on the emotional meaning learning for L2 words. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-54881b010bc0451494086c1385c6c3e4 |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 2045-2322 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | Nature Portfolio |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Scientific Reports |
| spelling | doaj-art-54881b010bc0451494086c1385c6c3e42025-08-20T02:16:34ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222025-01-0115111610.1038/s41598-024-84347-7Faces of different socio-cultural identities impact emotional meaning learning for L2 wordsBeixian Gu0Xiaobing Sun1David Beltrán2Manuel de Vega3School of Foreign Languages, Institute for Language and Cognition, Dalian University of TechnologyNational Research Centre for Foreign Language Education, Beijing Foreign Studies UniversityPsychology Department, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)Instituto Universitario de Neurociencia (IUNE), Universidad de La LagunaAbstract 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 as participants matched newly learned L2 words with neutral sentences more accurately than with both disgusting and sad ones. Differences between the two groups were also found in the cross-modality generalization test in which the Caucasian-face Group outperformed the Chinese-face Group in terms of accuracy in sad trials. However, the Chinese-face Group was more accurate in neutral trials in the same test. We thus conclude that faces of diverse socio-cultural identities exert different impacts on the emotional meaning learning for L2 words.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-84347-7DisgustSadnessPseudowordsFacesSecond language |
| spellingShingle | Beixian Gu Xiaobing Sun David Beltrán Manuel de Vega Faces of different socio-cultural identities impact emotional meaning learning for L2 words Scientific Reports Disgust Sadness Pseudowords Faces Second language |
| title | Faces of different socio-cultural identities impact emotional meaning learning for L2 words |
| title_full | Faces of different socio-cultural identities impact emotional meaning learning for L2 words |
| title_fullStr | Faces of different socio-cultural identities impact emotional meaning learning for L2 words |
| title_full_unstemmed | Faces of different socio-cultural identities impact emotional meaning learning for L2 words |
| title_short | Faces of different socio-cultural identities impact emotional meaning learning for L2 words |
| title_sort | faces of different socio cultural identities impact emotional meaning learning for l2 words |
| topic | Disgust Sadness Pseudowords Faces Second language |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-84347-7 |
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