THE TIMING OF TABOO EFFECTS IN FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE SPEAKERS OF AMERICAN ENGLISH

Bailey Bird, Amanda Ellis, & Sara Incera Multilingual Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Eastern Kentucky University Bilingual speakers do not experience emotion in their second language as quickly as they do in their first language. We used the mouse tracking paradigm (with an auditory lexical decision task) to measure responses to taboo and neutral words in first (L1) and second language (L2) speakers of American English. The results supported the hypothesis that first language speakers process words more efficiently than second language speakers. Furthermore, the taboo effect (the difference between neutral and taboo words) emerged later for the second language speakers, meaning that second language speakers process the emotionality of taboo words slower than first language speakers. This lack of emotionality can influence how second language speakers interact in everyday situations