Context Emotionality and Second Language Proficiency Influence Vocabulary Acquisition: An ERP Study

To investigate the neural mechanisms underlying how context emotionality and second language (L2) proficiency influence novel word acquisition, we recruited 48 college students and asked them to learn new words within emotional contexts. We recorded the event-related potentials (ERPs) during word recognition and selected the N1 (70–160 ms) component at frontal and central sites and the late positive complex (LPC; 500–750 ms) component at frontal, central, and parietal sites for statistical analysis. The results showed that words learned in a positive context elicited larger N1 waves in the left frontal region and smaller LPC waves in frontal regions than words learned in a negative context. Furthermore, in the higher-proficiency group, words learned in a negative context induced larger LPC waves in the left posterior region than in the lower-proficiency group. These findings led us to three conclusions: (1) A positive context activates neural responses more rapidly and attenuates them during the late processing stage. (2) L2 fluency modulates the extent to which a negative context affects new word recognition. (3) Higher fluency amplifies the role of learning context in word processing. This study sheds light on how the emotional context and L2 proficiency jointly shape the neural dynamics of vocabulary learning, and future research should explore these mechanisms across diverse learner populations and with more naturalistic learning tasks to better inform emotion-integrated language instruction.