Negative Word Production in Bilinguals Triggers Inhibitory Mechanisms: Evidence from Mass Univariate Time-Frequency Analysis
Abstract
Semantic processing of negative content is attenuated when bilinguals read for comprehension in their second language (L2). This phenomenon, well studied in comprehension, has seldom been studied in production or the auditory modality. Here, we show that the dampening of negative emotional content also applies in a production context, albeit to a different extent in the visual and the auditory modalities, and likely entails inhibitory control when bilinguals translate negative words from L2 to L1. Polish–English bilinguals orally translated written (Experiment 1) or spoken (Experiment 2) negative and neutral words either from L2–to–L1 or L1–to–L2. Event-Related Potential results suggested differential processing of negative and neutral words only in the L2–to–L1 translation direction and only in Experiment 1, between 300–750 ms after stimulus onset. Hierarchical linear modeling of neural oscillation power over time revealed a two-step modulation of alpha power in the case of negative L2 words suggesting reduced sensitivity at the stage of stimulus integration (240–365 ms) and enhanced inhibitory control during the preparation of L1 production (620–800 ms). In Experiment 2, we found modulations of theta and alpha power by valence regardless of language of operation, which may be explained by evolutionary precedence of auditory over visual language processing and may be specific to the current production context. We thus show that data-driven time-frequency analysis reveals language-emotion interactions in the course of speech preparation and offers more sensitivity than traditional mean voltage amplitude approaches.
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BibTeX
@misc{jonczyk2026negative,
title = {{Negative Word Production in Bilinguals Triggers Inhibitory Mechanisms: Evidence from Mass Univariate Time-Frequency Analysis}},
author = {Rafał Jończyk and Marcin Naranowicz and Guillaume Thierry},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/qwcph_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/qwcph_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Negative Word Production in Bilinguals Triggers Inhibitory Mechanisms: Evidence from Mass Univariate Time-Frequency Analysis
AU - Rafał Jończyk
AU - Marcin Naranowicz
AU - Guillaume Thierry
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/13
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/qwcph_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/qwcph_v1/
AB - Semantic processing of negative content is attenuated when bilinguals read for comprehension in their second language (L2). This phenomenon, well studied in comprehension, has seldom been studied in production or the auditory modality. Here, we show that the dampening of negative emotional content also applies in a production context, albeit to a different extent in the visual and the auditory modalities, and likely entails inhibitory control when bilinguals translate negative words from L2 to L1. Polish–English bilinguals orally translated written (Experiment 1) or spoken (Experiment 2) negative and neutral words either from L2–to–L1 or L1–to–L2. Event-Related Potential results suggested differential processing of negative and neutral words only in the L2–to–L1 translation direction and only in Experiment 1, between 300–750 ms after stimulus onset. Hierarchical linear modeling of neural oscillation power over time revealed a two-step modulation of alpha power in the case of negative L2 words suggesting reduced sensitivity at the stage of stimulus integration (240–365 ms) and enhanced inhibitory control during the preparation of L1 production (620–800 ms). In Experiment 2, we found modulations of theta and alpha power by valence regardless of language of operation, which may be explained by evolutionary precedence of auditory over visual language processing and may be specific to the current production context. We thus show that data-driven time-frequency analysis reveals language-emotion interactions in the course of speech preparation and offers more sensitivity than traditional mean voltage amplitude approaches.
ER -