Bilingualism Language and Cognition· 2026Q1
Knowing and feeling: The role of semantic valence in emotional prosody perception for L2 Chinese learners
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- 2026year
Short summary
L2 Chinese learners' perception of emotional prosody is facilitated by semantic valence when it matches the emotion, but interfered with when it mismatches, with the strength of this effect predicted by the learner's semantic knowledge.
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Key points
- Semantic valence facilitates L2 Chinese emotional prosody perception when congruent with the emotion.
- Semantic valence interferes with L2 Chinese emotional prosody perception when incongruent with the emotion.
- Learners' semantic knowledge significantly predicts the magnitude of semantic-prosody congruence effects.
- An interaction exists between linguistic knowledge and paralinguistic perception in bilingual emotion processing.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Abstract In Mandarin Chinese, the same acoustic feature, pitch, conveys both semantic valence and emotional prosody. The effects of semantic valence on bilingual emotional prosody perception are mixed, with some studies reporting semantic facilitation and others showing interference. To clarify this, we extend the conceptual account of semantic valence to second language acquisition by examining its two components: learners’ semantic knowledge and the inherent semantic valence of stimuli. We investigated the independent and interactive effects of these components of semantic valence on emotional prosody perception for L1-English L2-Chinese learners in Chinese words and sentences. We found that semantic valence facilitated L2 learners’ perception when congruent with emotional prosody, but interfered when incongruent. Notably, these semantics-prosody (in)congruence effects were significantly predicted by learners’ semantic knowledge. Our results suggest an interaction between linguistic knowledge and paralinguistic perception in bilingual emotion processing.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Bilingualism Language and Cognition, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Experimental and Cognitive PsychologyPsychology