Abstract
Whereas the effects of socio-psychological and conscious (i.e., macro-level) emotion on L2 learning have been well investigated, the existence and the effects of here-and-now and elusive (i.e., micro-level) emotion on L2 learning have not been investigated fully so far. This beachhead study approached this under-cultivated field by investigating whether the difference in emotional valence of L2 words has different impacts on incidental lexical memory. The stimulus words were selected from the prototypical Affective Norms of English Words for Japanese L2 Users of English (proto-ANEW-JLE), which were subdivided into three groups (positive, neutral, and negative). In the study session, participants were asked to rate the emotional valence of each word presented on the computer screen. In the succeeding test session, they were asked incidentally to recall as many words that had been presented in the study session as possible. It was revealed that positive words were recalled significantly more than negative words and marginally more than neutral words, which corroborated positive psychological accounts. The findings propound that the effects of the elusive, pervasive, and subconscious dynamism of micro-level emotion on cognition be a potential target of inquiry and consideration in the field of SLA research and pedagogy.
