Psychology
Walking on Sunshine Versus Vivir Sin Tu Cariño: Emotional Memory in English/Spanish Bilinguals
Document Type
Oral Presentation
Location
Indianapolis, IN
Subject Area
Psychology
Start Date
11-4-2014 1:00 PM
End Date
11-4-2014 2:15 PM
Sponsor
Tara Lineweaver (Butler University)
Description
Past research examining the effects of emotion on memory has documented that individuals find material more memorable when the emotional valence of the information is consistent with their mood state. While these mood-congruency effects have been applied to different contexts, one situation that has not been investigated is the effects of language on mood-congruency in bilinguals. Our study explored mood-congruency effects in English and Spanish bilinguals by inducing a happy or sad mood and examining between-language and within-language memory for positive, neutral, or negative information. We investigated whether mood effects are consistent across languages or if the switch from one language to another reduces the mood-congruency effect. 60 bilingual undergraduate students listened to a happy or sad song in either English or Spanish and then completed a mood state questionnaire. Next, they heard a story that contained happy, neutral, and sad events in either the same or the opposite language and tried to recall the story details. We hypothesized that mood would impact the recall of emotional information when the languages of the song and story were consistent, but not in the cross-language conditions. Although we did not document mood congruency effects in any of our conditions, our results instead suggested that the effect of emotion on memory is language dependent. The emotional valence of information impacted memory in our participants' first language, but not in their second language. This suggests that the first language an individual learns may share stronger connections between emotion and memory than later learned languages.
Walking on Sunshine Versus Vivir Sin Tu Cariño: Emotional Memory in English/Spanish Bilinguals
Indianapolis, IN
Past research examining the effects of emotion on memory has documented that individuals find material more memorable when the emotional valence of the information is consistent with their mood state. While these mood-congruency effects have been applied to different contexts, one situation that has not been investigated is the effects of language on mood-congruency in bilinguals. Our study explored mood-congruency effects in English and Spanish bilinguals by inducing a happy or sad mood and examining between-language and within-language memory for positive, neutral, or negative information. We investigated whether mood effects are consistent across languages or if the switch from one language to another reduces the mood-congruency effect. 60 bilingual undergraduate students listened to a happy or sad song in either English or Spanish and then completed a mood state questionnaire. Next, they heard a story that contained happy, neutral, and sad events in either the same or the opposite language and tried to recall the story details. We hypothesized that mood would impact the recall of emotional information when the languages of the song and story were consistent, but not in the cross-language conditions. Although we did not document mood congruency effects in any of our conditions, our results instead suggested that the effect of emotion on memory is language dependent. The emotional valence of information impacted memory in our participants' first language, but not in their second language. This suggests that the first language an individual learns may share stronger connections between emotion and memory than later learned languages.