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Language context and use modulate neural regulation through cognitive reappraisal in bilinguals
Poster Session B, Wednesday, September 30, 4:30 - 6:30 pm, Wangari Maathai
Tatiana Davydova1, Lidón Marin-Marin2, María Baena-Pérez1, Eva Calderón-Rubio1, Víctor Costumero1; 1Universitat Jaume I, Department of Basic and Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, 12071 Castellón, Spain, 2Universitat Jaume I, Department of Developmental, Educational, and Social Psychology and Methodology, 12071 Castellón, Spain.
Keywords: cognitive reappraisal, fMRI, emotion, bilingualism Introduction Cognitive reappraisal is a deliberate emotion regulation strategy that reduces negative affect by reinterpreting the meaning of emotional stimuli or creating psychological distance from them (Gross, 2002; Ochsner et al., 2002; Powers & LaBar, 2019). Successful reappraisal is typically associated with reduced amygdala activity and increased recruitment of frontal, parietal, and cingulate regions involved in cognitive control and meaning change (Buhle et al., 2014; Denny et al., 2023). Because reappraisal depends on verbal and semantic processing (Messina et al., 2015), the language in which it is performed may influence its neural implementation. Prior neuroimaging work suggests that implicit emotion regulation may be impaired in a second-language (L2) context (Vives et al., 2021), whereas behavioral evidence suggests that cognitive reappraisal may be facilitated in L2 (Ortigosa et al., 2024). However, the neural effects of using an L2 for explicit regulation through cognitive reappraisal remain unclear. Here, we examined how language context (L1 vs. L2) affected cognitive reappraisal and how bilingual status (unbalanced vs. balanced) modulated this effect. Methods and Results Experiment 1 included Spanish/English unbalanced bilinguals who completed an fMRI cognitive reappraisal task either in their L1 Spanish (Native group; n = 30) or L2 English (Foreign group; n = 30). The task was adapted from Phan et al. (2005). In Experiment 2, 120 Spanish/Catalan bilinguals completed the same task. Participants were classified by reported language use as unbalanced or balanced bilinguals and were assigned to perform the task in either L1 or L2, resulting in four experimental groups: unbalanced L1, unbalanced L2, balanced L1, and balanced L2. Region-of-interest analyses examined the effects of language context and bilingual status on neural activity during reappraisal. In Experiment 1, reappraisal in L2 was associated with higher amygdala activity than reappraisal in L1, suggesting weaker down-regulation in the non-native context. In Experiment 2, bilingual status modulated the effect of language context. Significant language x bilingual status interactions were observed in left and right inferior parietal regions involved in cognitive control, language processing, and regulatory task implementation. Planned comparisons showed greater inferior parietal activity in unbalanced bilinguals performing the task in L1 than in L2, whereas balanced bilinguals showed no reliable language-related differences. Conclusions These findings provide the first neuroimaging evidence that language context and bilingual experience modulate the neural implementation of cognitive reappraisal. In unbalanced bilinguals, L2 reappraisal was associated with higher amygdala activity in Experiment 1 and reduced inferior parietal recruitment in Experiment 2, suggesting that L2 context may weaken emotion regulation. More balanced bilingual language use appears to reduce these language-related differences, indicating that bilingual experience shapes how language context influences deliberate emotion regulation. These results may have important implications for research in bilingual emotion processing, as well as potential clinical applications in emotion regulation.
Topic Areas: Multilingualism,