Does lexical category matter in effects of emotionality on L2 word processing in late proficient Chinese-English bilinguals? An ERP study.

Although the effects of emotionality on word processing might be modulated by lexical category, a body of extant literature has tended to obviate the need of considering this factor. In this study, we attempted to address how lexical category modulates the effects of emotionality on L2 word processing. To this end, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from a group of late proficient Chinese-English bilinguals while they performed a lexical decision task with a set of tightly matched negative, positive, and neutral words across three lexical categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives). The results revealed a P2 effect, an N400 effect, as well as an LPC effect for word emotionality. Moreover, an interaction between word emotionality and lexical category occurred within the N400 and LPC time windows over fronto-central electrodes, reflecting that the N400 displayed a smaller amplitude for positive nouns and verbs than for their neutral counterparts, as well as for negative as opposed to neutral adjectives, and that the LPC showed a larger amplitude for positive relative to neutral nouns, as well as for positive and negative adjectives than for their neutral counterparts. These results provide initial electrophysiological evidence for the modulation of lexical category to the emotionality effects on L2 word processing at the different stages and highlight the importance of lexical category in research on L2 emotional word processing.