Interactions between emotion and language of operation on episodic memory in bilinguals

此前的研究表明，情景记忆会受到语言的影响。记忆可以用语言编码，语言也是回忆记忆的主要方式。众所周知，情景记忆受情绪的影响，因此较高的情感突显性会导致更好的编码。此外，双语者在用第一种语言进行测试时，似乎比用第二种语言进行测试时有更好的识别能力。也有证据表明，第一种语言的情绪唤醒程度高于第二种语言。本研究的目的是探讨上述三个因素之间相互作用的性质，即双语者的记忆和回忆、情感突显和语言使用是如何相互作用的。该项目旨在根据反应时的记录、脑电测量和对问卷的明确回答，在外显(有意识的、元认知的)和内隐(无意识的、自动的)水平上寻找这种互动的证据。为此，该项目将在三个不同的实验范式中测试威尔士-英语双语者(可能还有另一种语言，如西班牙语-英语双语者)。实验将逐步考察不同程度的复杂性和表征，即图片、单词、短语和句子。使用的任务将邀请参与者观察短互动的图像或视频，这些互动可能具有积极、消极或中性的情感效价。参与者将被要求确定所呈现的刺激之前是否显示过(旧的)或没有(新的)，这一差异可以在由脑电地形图得出的公开行为测量和内隐测量中检测到。我们预测，较高情感效价的项目将比中性项目更快、更准确地被识别，在正价的情况下，影响往往更强。然而，与中性项目相比，情感项目也更有可能引发错误识别(新项目被识别为旧项目)。操作语言预计会调节这些影响，因此第一种语言的命中和错误警报都比第二种语言更突出，这表明使用第一种语言的参与者非常敏感。

Previous studies have shown that episodic memory is affected by language. Memories can be coded with language and language is also the main modality used to recall those memories. It is also well established that episodic memory is affected by emotion, so that higher affective salience leads to better encoding. In addition, bilinguals seem to have better recognition abilities when tested in their first than in their second language. There is also evidence that emotional arousal is higher in the the first than the second language. The aim of this project is to investigate the nature of the interaction between the three factors described above, that is, how memorisation and recall, affective salience and language use interact in bilinguals. The project aims to find evidence for such interactions both at an explicit (conscious, metacognitive) and an implicit (unconscious, automatic) level, based on records of reactions times, EEG measures and explicit answers to questionnaires.To do so, the project will test Welsh-English bilinguals (and possibly another pair of languages, such as Spanish-English bilinguals) in three different experimental paradigms. The experiments will gradually investigate different levels of complexity and representation, namely pictures, words, phrases, and sentences. The tasks used will invite participants to observe images or videos of short interactions that could have positive, negative, or neutral affective valence. Participants will be asked to determine whether the stimuli presented have previously been shown (old) or not (new), a difference which can be detected both in overt behavioural measures and implicit measures derived from EEG.We predict that items of higher affective valence will be recognised faster and more accurately than neutral items, with a tendency for effects to be stronger in the case of positive valence. However, it is also expected that affective items will be more likely to induce false recognition (new items identified as old) than neutral items. Language of operation is expected to modulate these effects, so that both hits and false alarms are more prominent in the first language than the second, indicative of a great sensitivity of the participant in the first language.