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Bilingual Experience and Emotion

Many people who are bilingual say that their second language doesn't "feel right" in certain emotional situations - for example, when they are angry, or praying. San Antonio researchers Linda Anooshian and Paula Hertel (1994) thought that exploring this "feeling" might shed light on the ways bilinguals remember concepts. Some psychologists believe that bilinguals use words in both languages to refer to a single idea; others say that bilingual people have a separate set of concepts for each language.

Spanish-English bilinguals who were native speakers of either English or Spanish learned sets of "emotional" words like "mother" and "church," and neutral words like "table" and "street." Then, subjects were given a surprise test and told to write as many of the words as they could remember. The bilinguals remembered significantly more emotional words than neutral words in their native language, but not in their second language. The stronger memory may be a product of stronger experience: bilingual people tend to learn second languages in school, where the words may not have as powerful emotional associations as they do at home, with family and friends.