Lexical processing

Emotional words are assumed to have a processing advantage over neutral words due to their emotional content. Meanwhile, this advantage depends on other word features such as frequency and the characteristics of the processor and context of learning. Accordingly, the current study investigated the simultaneous impacts of L2 words’ emotional valence and frequency, and L2 user’s gender on word recognition time in a natural reading context. 43 intermediate EFL learners read 36 sentences in a coherent text for comprehension while their eye movements were recorded by eye-tracker. The findings revealed that participants processed the positive, negative, and neutral words identically based on eye fixation time. However, the frequency effect was attained for both valenced and neutral words. Also, no significant gender differences were approved in terms of recognition time though male participants tended to process all word types slightly faster than female ones. The lack of processing difference between valenced and neutral words is attributed to the disembodiment of L2 emotional words and learning experience of the participants as late EFL learners. These learners have been deprived of affective socialization and the affective sensory experience in their development of L2 emotional words. The absence of valence/frequency interaction is attributed to the L1/L2 relationship in terms of the target words. Although witnessed gender effect did not reach a significance level, it is suggested that the processing of emotional words be viewed in a multidimensional framework where the characteristics of the word, the processor, and the learning context are taken into account

Lexicalization-patterns, the way words are mapped onto concepts, differ from one language to another. This study investigated the influence of first language (L1) lexicalization patterns on the processing of second language (L2) words in sentential contexts by both less proficient and more proficient Persian learners of English. The focus was on cases where two different senses of a polysemous word in Persian are realized by two independent words in English. For example, Persian uses ‘ماه’ to refer to both ‘moon’ and ‘month’ in English. In the present study, the researchers examined the processing of English translations (moon, month) of polysemous Persian words such as ‘ماه’ in a semantic anomaly judgment task. The participants who were two groups of more proficient and less proficient Persian learners of English were presented with two types of anomalous sentences: anomalous test sentences in which one of the two English words (e.g., month) was used in a context where the other word (e.g., moon) was appropriate (e.g., “A pleasant thing to watch at night is a full month”) and anomalous control sentences in which the same word was used in a context where neither of the two words was appropriate (e.g., “A pleasant thing to eat at night is a full month”). The participants were asked to judge, as quickly and accurately as possible, whether the final word could complete the sentence meaningfully (YES response) or whether the final word was semantically unacceptable (NO response). The participants’ reaction time (RT) for correct No responses and their error rates were recorded using DMDX, a psycholinguistics experimentation software package. Using two General Linear Model Repeated Measures, a main effect of sentence type was obtained in the analysis of both RT and errors. Also, there was an interaction between sentence type and proficiency level in the analysis of both RT and errors. The results are discussed in terms of the activation of the semantic specifications of L1 translation equivalent of L2 words.