A Lexical Decision Task of Affective Words

Nearly 400 million people worldwide speak English as a second language (ESL), yet little research has been done to show how non-native English speakers determine valence (pleasantness or unpleasantness) of emotional words. A common belief is that non-native English speakers possess a bias toward their first language, making it difficult for individuals to correctly assign valence to an emotional word in their second language. Unfortunately, the literature is lacking evidence to make this a conclusive argument. The aim of this study is to better understand how monolinguals and multilinguals compare when performing a linguistic decision task. We hypothesize monolingual English-speakers will determine valence faster and agree more among each other than multilingual people speaking ESL. Data collection is ongoing. Results will provide greater insight into factors that affect word valence between monolinguals and multilinguals.