Cover not available
Part of
Bilingualism through the Prism of Psycholinguistics: In honour of Albert Costa
Edited by Mikel Santesteban, Jon Andoni Duñabeitia and Cristina Baus
[Bilingual Processing and Acquisition 17] 2023
► pp. 265–285

Chapter 9
Fear conditioning and bilingualism

| Pompeu Fabra University
| Jaume I University | Carlos III Health Institute
| Antonio de Nebrija University | The Arctic University of Norway

There is evidence that the emotional reactivity in a foreign language is reduced as compared to native languages. This differential emotional reactivity has effects in various cognitive domains, as revealed by the so-called foreign language effect on decision-making. This opens doors to the potential use of foreign languages in scenarios where a modulation of the role of emotional involvement would be desirable, like conflict resolution, healthy choices, or psychotherapy. The current chapter focuses on whether fear acquisition and extinction can be modulated by the language context in which people are set. With the lead of Prof Albert Costa, we explored whether this emotional distance could modulate fear conditioning and fear extinction, essential mechanisms for the understanding and treatment of different mental disorders. Our findings provided evidence that certain verbal conditioning processes may be affected by language context, opening the avenue to the potential use of a foreign language in clinical contexts.

Article outline
  • Behind the foreign language effect
  • Foreign language and emotions
  • Foreign language effect in exposure therapy
  • Leading to new studies
  • The effect of foreign language in fear acquisition
  • The effect of foreign language in fear extinction
  • General conclusions
  • References
Published online: 1 September 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bpa.17.09ort
References
Abutalebi, J., Della Rosa, P. A., Ding, G., Weekes, B., Costa, A., & Green, D. W.
(2013) Language proficiency modulates the engagement of cognitive control areas in multilinguals. Cortex, 49 (3), 905–911. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aldao, A.
(2013) The future of emotion regulation research: Capturing context. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8 (2), 155–172. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anooshian, L. J., & Hertel, P. T.
(1994) Emotionality in free recall: Language specificity in bilingual memory. Cognition & Emotion, 8 (6), 503–514. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barlow, D. H.
(2002) Anxiety and its disorders (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Bennett, M., Vervoort, E., Boddez, Y., Hermans, D., & Baeyens, F.
(2015) Perceptual and conceptual similarities facilitate the generalization of instructed fear. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 48 , 149–155. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brouwer, S.
(2021) The interplay between emotion and modality in the Foreign-Language effect on moral decision making. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 24 (2), 223–230. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Caldwell-Harris, C. L., & Ayçiçeği-Dinn, A.
(2021) When using the native language leads to more ethical choices: Integrating ratings and electrodermal monitoring. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 36 (7), 885–901. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Calkins, S. D., Gill, K. L., Johnson, M. C., & Smith, C. L.
(1999) Emotional reactivity and emotional regulation strategies as predictors of social behavior with peers during toddlerhood. Social Development, 8 (3), 310–334. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cipolletti, H., McFarlane, S., & Weissglass, C.
(2016) The moral foreign-language effect. Philosophical Psychology, 29 (1), 23–40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cook, S. A., & Harris, R. E.
(1937) The verbal conditioning of the galvanic skin reflex. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 21 (2), 202–210. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Corey, J. D., Hayakawa, S., Foucart, A., Aparici, M., Botella, J., Costa, A., & Keysar, B.
(2017) Our moral choices are foreign to us. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43 , 1109–1128. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Costa, B., & Dewaele, J. M.
(2014) Psychotherapy across languages: Beliefs, attitudes and practices of monolingual and multilingual therapists with their multilingual patients. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 14 (3), 235–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Costa, A., Foucart, A., Hayakawa, S., Aparici, M., Apesteguia, J., Heafner, J., & Keysar, B.
(2014) Your morals depend on language. PloS One, 9 (4), e94842. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Craske, M. G.
(1999) Anxiety disorder: Psychological approaches to theory and treatment. Westview Press.Google Scholar
Craske, M. G., Hermans, D., & Vervliet, B.
(2018) State-of-the-art and future directions for extinction as a translational model for fear and anxiety. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 373 (1742), 20170025. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Craske, M. G., Kircanski, K., Zelikowsky, M., Mystkowski, J., Chowdhury, N., & Baker, A.
(2008) Optimizing inhibitory learning during exposure therapy. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 46 (1), 5–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dewaele, J.-M.
(2010) Emotions in multiple languages. Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Driver, M. Y.
(2020) Switching codes and shifting morals: How code-switching and emotion affect moral judgment. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 25 (3), 905–921. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duñabeitia, J. A., & Costa, A.
(2015) Lying in a native and foreign language. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22 , 1124–1129. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eilola, T. M., & Havelka, J.
(2010) Behavioural and physiological responses to the emotional and taboo Stroop tasks in native and non-native speakers of English. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15 (3), 353–369. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fuhrer, M. J., & Baer, P. E.
(1980) Cognitive factors and CS-UCS interval effects in the differential conditioning and extinction of skin conductance responses. Biological Psychology, 10 (4), 283–298. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gallagher, M., & Chiba, A. A.
(1996) The amygdala and emotion. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 6 (2), 221–227. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
García-Palacios, A., Costa, A., Castilla, D., Del Río, E., Casaponsa, A., & Duñabeitia, J. A.
(2018) The effect of foreign language in fear acquisition. Scientific Reports, 8 (1), 1–8. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Geipel, J., Grant, L. H., & Keysar, B.
(2022) Use of a language intervention to reduce vaccine hesitancy. Scientific Reports, 12 (1), 1–6. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Geipel, J., Hadjichristidis, C., & Klesse, A. K.
(2018) Barriers to sustainable consumption attenuated by foreign language use. Nature Sustainability, 1 (1), 31–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gross, J. J., & Thompson, R. A.
(2007) Emotion regulation: Conceptual foundations. In J. J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of emotion regulation (pp. 3–24). Guilford PressGoogle Scholar
Hadjichristidis, C., Geipel, J., & Savadori, L.
(2015) The effect of foreign language in judgments of risk and benefit: The role of affect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 21 (2), 117. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harris, C. L., Ayçíçeğí, A., & Gleason, J. B.
(2003) Taboo words and reprimands elicit greater autonomic reactivity in a first language than in a second language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24 (4), 561–579. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hayakawa, S., Tannenbaum, D., Costa, A., Corey, J. D., & Keysar, B.
(2017) Thinking more or feeling less? Explaining the foreign-language effect on moral judgment. Psychological Science, 28 (10), 1387–1397. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hofmann, S. G.
(2008) Cognitive processes during fear acquisition and extinction in animals and humans: Implications for exposure therapy of anxiety disorders. Clinical Psychology Review, 28 (2), 199–210. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hsu, C. T., Jacobs, A. M., & Conrad, M.
(2015) Can Harry Potter still put a spell on us in a second language? An fMRI study on reading emotion-laden literature in late bilinguals. Cortex, 63 , 282–295. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hugdahl, K., & Öhman, A.
(1977) Effects of instruction on acquisition and extinction of electrodermal responses to fear-relevant stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 3 (5), 608. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hyönä, J., Tommola, J., & Alaja, A. M.
(1995) Pupil dilation as a measure of processing load in simultaneous interpretation and other language tasks. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 48 (3), 598–612. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Iacozza, S., Costa, A., & Duñabeitia, J. A.
(2017) What do your eyes reveal about your foreign language? Reading emotional sentences in a native and foreign language. PloS one, 12 (10). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, D.
(2003) A perspective on judgment and choice: Mapping bounded rationality. American Psychologist, 58 , 697–720. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Keysar, B., Hayakawa, S. L., & An, S. G.
(2012) The foreign-language effect: Thinking in a foreign tongue reduces decision biases. Psychological Science, 23 (6), 661–668. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kreibig, S. D.
(2010) Autonomic nervous system activity in emotion: A review. Biological Psychology, 84 (3), 394–421. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M.
(2007) Putting feelings into words. Psychological Science, 18 , 421–428. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liberman, N., & Trope, Y.
(2014) Traversing psychological distance. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18 (7), 364–369. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lindquist, K. A., Wager, T. D., Kober, H., Bliss-Moreau, E., & Barrett, L. F.
(2012) The brain basis of emotion: A meta-analytic review. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35 (3), 121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lipp, O. V., & Edwards, M. S.
(2002) Effect of instructed extinction on verbal and autonomic indices of Pavlovian learning with fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant conditional stimuli. Journal of Psychophysiology, 16 (3), 176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lonsdorf, T. B., Menz, M. M., Andreatta, M., Fullana, M. A., Golkar, A., Haaker, J., … & Merz, C. J.
(2017) Don’t fear ‘fear conditioning’: Methodological considerations for the design and analysis of studies on human fear acquisition, extinction, and return of fear. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 77 , 247–285. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Luck, C. C., & Lipp, O. V.
(2016) Instructed extinction in human fear conditioning: History, recent developments, and future directions. Australian Journal of Psychology, 68 (3), 209–227. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McRae, K., Taitano, E. K., & Lane, R. D.
(2010) The effects of verbal labelling on psychophysiology: objective but not subjective emotion labelling reduces skin-conductance responses to briefly presented pictures. Cognition and Emotion, 24 , 829–839. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mertens, G., Boddez, Y., Sevenster, D., Engelhard, I. M., & De Houwer, J.
(2018) A review on the effects of verbal instructions in human fear conditioning: Empirical findings, theoretical considerations, and future directions. Biological Psychology, 137 , 49–64. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, G. A., Levin, D. N., Kozak, M. J., Cook III, E. W., McLean Jr., A., & Lang, P. J.
(1987) Individual differences in imagery and the psychophysiology of emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 1 (4), 367–390. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morawetz, C., Oganian, Y., Schlickeiser, U., Jacobs, A. M., & Heekeren, H. R.
(2017) Second language use facilitates implicit emotion regulation via content labeling. Frontiers in Psychology, 8 . DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Movahedi, S.
(1996) Metalinguistic analysis of therapeutic discourse: Flight into a second language when the analyst and the analysand are multilingual. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 44 (3), 837–862. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ochsner, K. N., & Gross, J. J.
(2008) Cognitive emotion regulation: Insights from social cognitive and affective neuroscience. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17 (2), 153–158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Olsson, A., & Phelps, E. A.
(2004) Learned fear of “unseen” faces after Pavlovian, observational, and instructed fear. Psychological Science, 15 ( 12 ), 822–828. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ortigosa-Beltrán, I., Duñabeitia, J. A., Costumero, V., Castilla, D., Jaén, I., Costa, A., & García-Palacios, A.
(2023) Languages and psychotherapy: the effect of foreign language on fear extinction. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pape, H. C., & Pare, D.
(2010) Plastic synaptic networks of the amygdala for the acquisition, expression, and extinction of conditioned fear. Physiological Reviews, 90 (2), 419–463. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Phelps, E. A., O’Connor, K. J., Gatenby, J. C., Gore, J. C., Grillon, C., & Davis, M.
(2001) Activation of the left amygdala to a cognitive representation of fear. Nature Neuroscience, 4 (4), 437–441. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Puntoni, S., de Langhe, B., & van Osselaer, S. M.
(2009) Bilingualism and the emotional intensity of advertising language. Journal of Consumer Research, 35 (6), 1012–1025. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schrauf, R. W.
(2000) Bilingual autobiographical memory: Experimental studies and clinical cases. Culture & Psychology, 6 (4), 387–417. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ugland, C. C., Dyson, B. J., & Field, A. P.
(2013) An ERP study of the interaction between verbal information and conditioning pathways to fear. Biological Psychology, 92 (1), 69–81. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vervliet, B., Craske, M. G., & Hermans, D.
(2013) Fear extinction and relapse: State of the art. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 9 , 215–248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vives, M. L., Aparici, M., & Costa, A.
(2018) The limits of the foreign language effect on decision-making: The case of the outcome bias and the representativeness heuristic. PloS One, 13 ( 9 ), e0203528. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vives, M. L., Costumero, V., Ávila, C., & Costa, A.
(2021) Foreign language processing undermines affect labeling. Affective Science, 2 (2), 199–206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Williams, L. M., Das, P., Liddell, B., Olivieri, G., Peduto, A., Brammer, M. J., & Gordon, E.
(2005) BOLD, sweat and fears: fMRI and skin conductance distinguish facial fear signals. Neuroreport, 16 (1), 49–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar