There exists insufficient eye-tracking evidence on the differences in emotional word processing between the first language (L1) and second language (L2) readers. This study conducted an eye-tracking experiment to investigate the emotional effects in L2 sentence reading, and to explore the modulation of L2 proficiency and individual emotional states. Adapted from Knickerbocker et al. (2015), the current study recorded eye movements at both early and late processing stages when late Chinese–English bilinguals read emotion-label and neutral target words in natural L2 sentences. Results indicated that L2 readers did not show the facilitation effects of lexical affective connotations during sentence reading, and they even demonstrated processing disadvantages for L2 emotional words. Additionally, the interaction effect between L2 proficiency and emotion was consistently significant for the measure of total reading time in positive words. Measurements of participants’ depressive and anxious states were not robustly correlated with eye movement measures. Our findings supplemented new evidence to existing sparse eye-tracking experiments on L2 emotion processing, and lent support to several theoretical frameworks in the bilingual research field, including the Emotional Contexts of Learning Theory, Lexical Quality Hypothesis and Revised Hierarchical Model.

中文翻译：

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第二语言处理中的情绪影响：自然句子阅读中眼球运动的证据

关于第一语言（L1）和第二语言（L2）读者之间情感文字处理的差异，没有足够的眼球追踪证据。本研究进行了眼动追踪实验，研究二语句子阅读中的情绪影响，并探讨二语熟练程度和个体情绪状态的调节。改编自 Knickerbocker 等人。(2015)，当前的研究记录了晚期汉英双语者在自然二语句子中阅读情感标签和中性目标词时早期和晚期处理阶段的眼球运动。结果表明，二语读者在句子阅读过程中并没有表现出词汇情感内涵的促进作用，甚至表现出对二语情感词的加工劣势。此外，对于测量积极词汇的总阅读时间而言，第二语言熟练程度和情绪之间的交互作用始终显着。参与者抑郁和焦虑状态的测量与眼动测量没有显着相关性。我们的研究结果补充了现有关于第二语言情感处理的稀疏眼动追踪实验的新证据，并为双语研究领域的几个理论框架提供了支持，包括E动感的C的上下文L赚取时间理论上，L异域风情的问质量H假设和R设想的H等级制的中号奥德尔。