The Effects of Post-Encoding Emotion on Second Language Vocabulary Learning

There is evidence that emotion induced in the process of encoding impairs associative memory, yet the effect of post-encoding emotion on second language vocabulary learning remains largely unclear. An experiment was carried out to examine the effects of post-encoding emotion (positive, negative, and neutral) on learning of multidimensional vocabulary knowledge, that is, productive and receptive vocabulary knowledge in five aspects: orthography, meaning and form, grammatical function, syntagmatic association, and paradigmatic association. To carry out the study, 106 Chinese students voluntarily took part in the present study and they were randomly divided into positive group, negative group, and control group. After completing the vocabulary learning task and undergoing emotion manipulation by three video clips (positive, negative, and neutral), all participants sequentially took a multidimensional vocabulary test containing 10 subtests in a immediate, delayed, and post-delayed tests. The result showed a significant impairing effect of post-encoding emotion, especially positive one, on both item memory and associative memory under a longer retention interval, and no significant effect of post-encoding emotion upon semantic memory was found. Both theoretical and practical implications for second language vocabulary learning was put forward. Plain Language Summary The current study extends prior studies concerning the effects of emotion on episodic memory. Although prior studies have shown that post-encoding emotion enhances item memory, the current study provides evidence that post-coding emotion, especially positive emotion, impairs both associative memory and item memory under a longer retention interval. Further, the present study clarifies that learning burden also serves as a factor in measuring the effects of emotion upon episodic memory with evidence from the distinction in memory scores between productive vocabulary knowledge and receptive ones. It is also worth mentioning that post-encoding emotion has no impact on semantic memory considering the memory scores of multidimensional vocabulary knowledge tests as semantic memory refers to general knowledge not related to a particular event or an episode in vocabulary learning.