The hypothesis that word representations are emotionally impoverished in a second language (L2) has variable support. However, this hypothesis has only been tested using tasks that present words in isolation or that require laboratory-specific decisions. Here, we recorded eye movements for 34 bilinguals who read sentences in their L2 with no goal other than comprehension, and compared them to 43 first language readers taken from our prior study. Positive words were read more quickly than neutral words in the L2 across first-pass reading time measures. However, this emotional advantage was absent for negative words for the earliest measures. Moreover, negative words but not positive words were influenced by concreteness, frequency and L2 proficiency in a manner similar to neutral words. Taken together, the findings suggest that only negative words are at risk of emotional disembodiment during L2 reading, perhaps because a positivity bias in L2 experiences ensures that positive words are emotionally grounded.

Recent studies have reported that emotional words are processed faster than neutral words, though emotional benefits may not depend solely on words' emotionality. Drawing on an embodied approach to representation, we examined interactions between emotional, sensorimotor, and linguistic sources of information for target words embedded in sentential contexts. Using eye-movement measures for 43 native English speakers, we observed emotional benefits for negative and positive words and sensorimotor benefits for words high in concreteness, but only when target words were low in frequency. Moreover, emotional words were maximally faster than neutral words when words were low in concreteness (i.e., highly abstract), and sensorimotor benefits occurred only when words were not emotionally charged (i.e., emotionally neutral). Furthermore, emotional and concreteness benefits were attenuated by individual differences that attenuate and amplify emotional and sensorimotor information, respectively. Our results suggest that behavior is functionally modulated by embodied information (i.e., emotional and sensorimotor) when linguistic contributions to representation are not enhanced by high frequency. Furthermore, emotional benefits are maximal when words are not already embodied by sensorimotor contributions to representation (and vice versa). Our work is consistent with recent studies that have suggested that abstract words are grounded in emotional experiences, analogous to how concrete words are grounded in sensorimotor experiences.

Metaphors are common elements of language that allow us to creatively stretch the limits of word meaning. However, metaphors vary in their degree of novelty, which determines whether people must create new meanings on-line or retrieve previously known metaphorical meanings from memory. Such variations affect the degree to which general cognitive capacities such as executive control are required for successful comprehension. We investigated whether individual differences in executive control relate to metaphor processing using eye movement measures of reading. Thirty-nine participants read sentences including metaphors or idioms, another form of figurative language that is more likely to rely on meaning retrieval. They also completed the AX-CPT, a domain-general executive control task. In Experiment 1, we examined sentences containing metaphorical or literal uses of verbs, presented with or without prior context. In Experiment 2, we examined sentences containing idioms or literal phrases for the same participants to determine whether the link to executive control was qualitatively similar or different to Experiment 1. When metaphors were low familiar, all people read verbs used as metaphors more slowly than verbs used literally (this difference was smaller for high familiar metaphors). Executive control capacity modulated this pattern in that high executive control readers spent more time reading verbs when a prior context forced a particular interpretation (metaphorical or literal), and they had faster total metaphor reading times when there was a prior context. Interestingly, executive control did not relate to idiom processing for the same readers. Here, all readers had faster total reading times for high familiar idioms than literal phrases. Thus, executive control relates to metaphor but not idiom processing for these readers, and for the particular metaphor and idiom reading manipulations presented.