Prior research suggests that bilinguals show reduced sensitivity to negative content when operating in the second language (L2). The available evidence, however, is limited to language comprehension. We tested the production of emotional words in Polish (L1)–English (L2) bilinguals in two EEG studies that manipulated emotional cueing. In Experiment 1 (neutral context), white or black circles indicated whether participants should read aloud (shadow) or translate a subsequently presented word. N400 amplitudes were selectively reduced for negative L2 words regardless of the task. In Experiment 2 (emotional context), we used black or white emojis, either sad or neutral, as cues. The previous interaction between word valence and language of operation vanished, but late positive potential amplitudes elicited by negative words were larger for translation from L2 to L1 (i.e., production in Polish) than L1 to L2. These results validate and extend to production previous findings of attenuated emotional response in L2 comprehension.

中文翻译：

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大脑电位揭示第二语言生成过程中对负面内容的敏感性降低

先前的研究表明，双语者在使用第二语言（L2）时对负面内容的敏感性降低。然而，现有的证据仅限于语言理解。我们在两项操纵情感暗示的脑电图研究中测试了波兰语（L1）-英语（L2）双语者情感词语的产生。在实验 1（中性上下文）中，白色或黑色圆圈表示参与者是否应该大声朗读（阴影）或翻译随后呈现的单词。无论任务如何，N400 幅度都会针对负 L2 词选择性降低。在实验 2（情感背景）中，我们使用黑色或白色表情符号（悲伤或中性）作为提示。先前的词价和操作语言之间的相互作用消失了，但从 L2 到 L1 的翻译（即波兰语的产生）由否定词引起的后期正电位幅度比 L1 到 L2 的翻译要大。这些结果验证并扩展了先前关于二语理解中情绪反应减弱的发现。