Emotionality ratings and electrodermal responses to university-related expressions in a native and a non-native language

To what extent does emotional reactivity differ when bilinguals process input in their native (L1) or non-native language (L2)? Does the L1 elicit a significantly stronger emotional arousal or can salient second language experience generate comparably strong associations between emotions and the L2? These questions were addressed through two measures of emotional arousal, (online) skin conductance responses (SCR) and (offline) emotionality ratings. Russian-English late bilinguals, UK university students, were presented different types of university-related expressions in English and Russian. The vocabulary types were university-related emotionally-laden expressions (“Плагиат”/“Plagiarism”) and neutral words (“Круг”/“Circle”). Two main results emerged. First, in L1, SCRs showed a significantly increased electro-dermal activity when participants reacted to university-related words. Emotionality ratings showed contrasts based on stimulus type in both languages. These results indicate that university-related words qualify as a category of emotionally charged expressions. Second, between-language tests showed that electrodermal reactivity was not more reduced in L2 than in L1, which was also mirrored in emotionality ratings. These findings are located within the existing empirical context, and alternative interpretations are provided to further our understanding of how an emotionally salient L2 context contributes to shifts from mother tongue dominance to an increased emotional power of the second language.