Emotional Valence, Personal Investment and Initial Lexical Acquisition

Emotion plays a critical role in language acquisition. Learners’ emotional responses can be either positively or negatively valenced. The present study examines the effect of positive and negative emotional valence on learners’ lexical acquisition in terms of initial form-to-meaning mapping, as well as the moderating effect of personal investment on this relationship. A total of 144 Saudi female undergraduate English learners discussed 20 novel English adjectives (10 positive and 10 negative) representing personality traits, counterbalanced across four referential conditions. They were then tested on their ability to recall the meaning of each item as well as the conditions under which it was processed. Multilevel modelling using a Generalized Linear Mixed Model revealed that the effects of emotional valence on item memory were dependent on learners’ personal investment during the initial processing of the lexical items. Memory was better for negative words than for positive ones when words were processed in reference to the self and intimate others compared with when they were processed in reference to familiar information or related words. For source memory, emotional valence influenced performance only in reference to intimate others. The findings provide insight into the role of emotion in additional language acquisition, as well as the role of personal investment as a catalyst for the effects of emotion on memory.