The effect of emotion on morphosyntactic learning in foreign language learners

PLoS One. 2018 Nov 26;13(11):e0207592. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0207592. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

Emotions have crucial influence on vocabulary learning and text comprehension. However, whether morphosyntactic learning is influenced by emotional conditions has remained largely unclear. In this study, we investigated how induced positive and negative emotions affect the learning of morphosyntactic rules in a foreign language. It was found that negative emotion increased the accuracy and efficiency of syntactic learning, but had no significant effect on the learning of morphological marking rules. Positive emotion was not found to be significantly associated with learning outcomes. The findings shed light on the effects of affective states on the structural aspects of foreign language learning.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Emotions*
  • Humans
  • Learning*
  • Multilingualism*

Grants and funding

This study is supported by Beijing Social Science Fund (16YYC032, http://www.bjpopss.gov.cn), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (ZJ1605, http://www.bfsu.edu.cn) and Xuguozhang Language Senior Academy (https://lsa.bfsu.edu.cn). All funds were awarded to XML. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.